Audio Poem of the Day The Peacock at Alderton
Feb 28, 2026
Quraysh Ali Lansana, poet, educator, and arts organizer known for promoting African American literature, reads Geoffrey Hill's vivid poem. Short scenes explore a survivor self, a vase of peacock feathers as life-evidence, threadbare plumage with bright 'eyes', and a coastal peacock roosting on a Scots pine. The reading evokes texture, color, and memory.
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Poem Uses Constrained Voice To Convey Suffering
- Geoffrey Hill frames voice as an accountable survivor pinioned in a cleft trunk, revealing poetry as a site of constrained selfhood.
- The speaker Quraysh Ali Lansana reads the persona as pain-wedged and poisonous as Ariel to Prospero, linking mythic figures to inner torment.
Peacock Feathers Act As Forensic Lifeline
- The peacock feathers serve as an evidentiary object the narrator tries to describe as if a life depends on it.
- Lansana details threadbare shafts and luminous 'eyes' like omega symbols, making the feathers a fossilized, almost anatomical image.
Microscopic Description Of The Feather Eye
- The poem gives a precise visual of the eye of the feather as omega, metallic blue edge and jet core.
- Lansana notes the white is closer to beige and the whole is encircled with a black-fringed green, making the image clinical and tactile.