Kevin Young

Where suddenly, well, maybe it's the second half of the poem, where suddenly there's this she.

Yeah.

And how do you take this, she buried her bone barrette in the ground's woolly shaft?

Braid, burnt.

Quell and cold.

You've convinced me.

Yes, absolutely.

Well, I almost think it's kind of both.

Yeah.

You know, the other is the self in the poem.

The lambs are also a kind of self-ignoring or not frightened.

But then at the end, there's this kind of switch, a tear of her hair, which also, of course, reads almost as a tear of her hair.

An old gift to the burnt other who went first.

I mean, there's a kind of...

you know, support for your theory of this being this she that proceeds, but then also I think is part of the self.

And then right away from first we get my thick braid, my ornament.

And this thick braid, I feel like the poem itself is a kind of braiding of these multiple strands of thought.

And, you know, hair becomes a kind of...

Connection to the lambs, but also the wool, the woolly shaft.

You know, there's a lot happening.