Poetry can make us see things differently: ourselves, the world, ourselves in the world. 

This is Episode 64 of Poems for the Speed of Life. I hope that this podcast each weekday morning helps to give you some slight, subtle, but powerful shift of perspective, wherever you are in the world. 

Today's poem is "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert.

Jack Gilbert was an American poet who died in 2012. He lived much of his life in Europe and a lot of his work focused squarely on the small details and challenges of that life: ambition, his desire, relationships. 

He described himself as a serious romantic. In an essay about his work, he wrote, "One of the special pleasures in poetry for me is accomplishing a lot with the least means possible."

One of the things that most appeals about this poem, "Failing and Flying", is how it invites us to question convention. To see something more in what we’re told to see. And to ask us, if we must offer judgment, to make that judgement through a wider lens than just how something ends.

You can read the poem here.

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