update from sparkleup
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@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ wherein the thought of a river moving again being of note implies a thaw after a
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Some of the reason for this paucity of spring-themed poetry is doubtless selection bias: a chapbook titled \emph{Face Down in the Leaves}, with its cover of frost-rimed leaf-litter, is unlikely to contain any paeans to new growth.
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Instead, we are presented with works that focus on the fact that spring is also the time for harrowing. It's the time for tearing up that which was old, the earth that was compacted by time and snow, in order to make room for that growth which is going to come soon, whether we like it or not (the topic of unwanted growth is a topic for later in the year\footnote{Or perhaps later in life, when cancer may rear its ugly head. It is proving quite difficult to write about even seasons of new growth and beginnings without death-thoughts creeping in.})
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Instead, we are presented with works that focus on the fact that spring is also the time for harrowing. It's the time for tearing up that which was old, the earth that was compacted by time and snow, in order to make room for that growth which is going to come soon, whether we like it or not (the topic of unwanted growth is a topic for later in the year\footnote{Or perhaps later in life, when cancer may rear its ugly head. It is proving quite difficult to write about even seasons of new growth and beginnings without death-thoughts creeping in.}).
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This untitled work will stand as our example:
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@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ Within her womb there grows a golden bloom.\footnote{A dandelion, perhaps, those
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This poem\footnote{The choosing of these four poems to focus on was originally intended to be for a music project. These were to be the texts for four art songs in a collection also named ``Seasons''. Every now and then, I get it into my head that maybe I can go back to writing music instead of words, and am quickly disabused of the notion when I sit down to do so. The Madison who wrote music has long since passed.} in three stanzas is largely in an even meter (sometimes iambic, sometimes trochaic), though we are presented with two instances in the first lines of the first two stanzas where that pattern is broken (``The seasonal storms'': ˘ -- ˘ ˘ and ``And here, wrapped in rain'': ˘ -- -- ˘ --). When this is taken with the middle verse's rhymes and other examples of assonance (`become'--`bereft'--`breath' stands out), we pick up a sense of a stumble mid-gallop. Although the procession of time may be linear, the procession of the seasons may be interrupted by little stalls, little snowy loops back into winter as spring presses on towards summer.
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These variations in prosody combined with the third verse being ``played straight'', such as it were, add up to a sense of growth, of rushing forward when Winter (we assume the oldest soul to be) breathes his last. Spring nudges him, and realizing that all she has left are her memories of him and her child, Summer, still unborn within her, walks those plains with only his memory.
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These variations in prosody combined with the third verse being ``played straight'', such as it were, add up to a sense of growth, of rushing forward when Winter (we assume the oldest soul to be) breathes his last. Spring nudges him, and realizing that all she has left are her memories of him and her child, Summer, still unborn within her, walks those plains with only memory.
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This, after all, would be her new beginning. She is no longer bound to winter as she might have been before; there are to be no more of those loops back into snow, she's on her own now, pacing into the grassy flat with its puddles of fish.
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@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ we bind ourselves to others
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\parencite[11]{issa}
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\end{verse}
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Spring is nothing without Winter. Even when it has its own snows, Spring is what it is specifically because it isn't Winter. There's that vernal equinox and then suddenly the days are longer than the nights, the world begins anew, and all that is in it does so as well. As with us: we are nothing without those around us, and we are us specifically because of those in our lives. There is our meeting and then suddenly that which makes us \emph{us} is fuller than before, and we carry within us the golden bloom of who we are to become.\footnote{Or, to continue to use Dandelions as an example, the seeds we are to leave behind to grow in others, borne on warm breezes.}
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Spring is nothing without Winter. Even when it has its own snows, Spring is what it is specifically because it isn't Winter. There's that vernal equinox and then suddenly the days are longer than the nights, the world begins anew, and all that is in it does so as well. As with us: we are nothing without those around us, and we are us specifically because of those in our lives. There is our meeting and then suddenly that which makes us \emph{us} is fuller than before, and we carry within us the golden bloom of who we are to become.\footnote{Or, to continue to use dandelions as an example, the seeds we are to leave behind to grow in others, borne on warm breezes.}
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We are the seasons that comprise our lives. We are beholden to the passing of our days as they are, yes, but we are also unable to truly, truly begin something anew. We are also comprised of that which came before, and are bound to those around us.\footnote{After all, I was bound to Dwale; that's why this essay exists. That's why what little poetry I have exists. I could appreciate the music within poetry, but it wasn't until I met Dwale, became bound to it in friendship, that I was able to understand poetry better on its own terms.}
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@ -30,7 +30,9 @@ The second of these interpolations is the Elihu's speech --- and, indeed, the en
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The editors of the NOAB offer additional insight, that Elihu's speeches may have simply been shuffled out of order (a problem elsewhere in the text) and that his speeches may have originally come after the final of Job's three friends' speeches after chapter 27. This both lends credence to the Hymn to Wisdom in chapter 28\footnote{Indeed, Greenstein suggests that this goes even deeper: that much of the text from chapter 24 through chapter 28 may be jumbled due to this process of interpolation. This would include the Elihu interpretation around the Hymn to Wisdom.``I would explain this phenomenon by observing that toward the end of chapter 24 is a later insertion and that a roll of papyrus pages would have had to have been taken apart in order to insert the Elihu discourses, which include, I am convinced, chapter 38.'' \parencite[28]{greenstein}}being the conclusion of his own speech and ensures that God replies to Job immediately after \emph{his} final speech rather than after Elihu's, which would better fit the structure of the book. There is no reason it cannot be both, of course; the two additions could have been both interpolations and inserted out of order through some mix-up or whim in an early editor's haste.
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Elihu presents a departure from the rest of the book.
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Greenstein disagrees: ``The motive for inserting Elihu into this point in the dialogues, just preceding the deity's speeches (chapters 38--41), is apparent. The divine discourses dwell on God's power and majesty, not on his justice or concern for humanity---which are the elements Job has been seeking.'' \parencite[183]{greenstein} Remember well this disagreement about a remembered text: it will bear fruit soon.
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All this to say that Elihu presents a departure from the rest of the book.
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As the framing device draws to a close, we are introduced to three of Job's friends: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. All three are presented as Job's contemporaries. They are wise, they are learned. They have, we can guess, known him for years now. These three friends have seen a lot with Job, rejoiced with him, wept with him, much as they do in the introduction.
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