“Our Hands Are Light”

In “Our Hands Are Light,” Jonathan Yungkans incorporates words, phrases, and lines from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken (1920). Please click here to read.

About the poem and the process of composing it, Jonathan Yungkans writes:

In this poem, I followed a similar process as in “Forslin’s Jig,” reading Conrad Aiken’s poem line by line in reverse order and letting intuition have its way with overall logic and flow. This time, I also fell back on the poetic form of the duplex, which was created by Jericho Brown in 2018. In it, Brown combines aspects of the sonnet, ghazal, and blues poem: 14 lines of between 9 and 11 syllables each, arranged as couplets and with the second line of one couplet echoed in the opening line of the next. The first line of the poem is repeated at the close to bring the piece full-circle.

Also by Jonathan Yungkans at Heron Tree: “Forslin’s Jig” and “Our Shadows Descend.”