While we are verging into the territory of summer, here, as “six months ‘til winter” implies, we do get a sense of those expectations settling into place, a feeling of “ah, so the year is going to be like this”. We also get that sense of growth and greenness with the mention of kudzu, a plant known for its rampant growth, quickly covering all it can in green.
+Blackbirds, while often showing up in the context of winter, do occasionally make their presence known in writings that take place during other seasons. Stevens, for example, has
+wherein the thought of a river moving again being of note implies a thaw after a long winter, a world in which this could not possibly be the case without the blackbird also flying. There is a movement thawed, here.
Some of the reason for this paucity of spring-themed poetry is doubtless selection bias: a chapbook titled Face Down in the Leaves, with its cover of frost-rimed leaf-litter, is unlikely to contain any paeans to new growth.
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 year3)
This untitled work will stand as our example:
@@ -56,7 +63,8 @@ She walks away rememb’ring days they stalked the plains, Within her womb there grows a golden bloom. \parencite[26]{leaves} -This poem in three stanzas is largely in an even meter (sometimes often 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”: ˘ – – ˘ –).
+This poem4 in three stanzas is largely in an even meter (sometimes often 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 assonance and rhymes, 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 loop-backs into winter as spring presses on towards summer.
+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. Here, we might picture that final snow, Spring nudging winter, and realizing that all she has left are her memories of him and her child, Summer, still unborn within her.
Haiku by Issa - https://archive.org/details/autumnwindselect0000koba/page/10/mode/2up
@@ -397,6 +405,9 @@ In the cedar-limbs.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. ↩
The choosing of these four poems to focus on was originally intended to be for a music project. 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. These were to be the texts for four art songs in a collection also named “Seasons”. ↩
+