From a7c70ce9f102d60f5c26ba0b244d38586628b9c8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Madison Scott-Clary Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2022 21:05:02 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] update from sparkleup --- writing/3/seasons/index.html | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/writing/3/seasons/index.html b/writing/3/seasons/index.html index 6ff2b9e7c..e1a308e37 100644 --- a/writing/3/seasons/index.html +++ b/writing/3/seasons/index.html @@ -57,14 +57,26 @@ The changes wrack his bones with painful cold. His skin is like the sky at night, as many scars Have marked his hide as there are glinting stars. -At once he feels his lungs become bereft of breath, +At once he feels his lungs become bereft of breath,5 His daughter nudges him, to no effect. She walks away rememb’ring days they stalked the plains, Within her womb there grows a golden bloom. \parencite[26]{leaves} -

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.

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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 loops back 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.

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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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Issa says,

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Mi no ue no +tsuyu to mo shirade +hodashikeri + +Heedless that the dews +mark the passing of our day — +we bind ourselves to others + +\parencite[11]{issa}
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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 are also comprised of that which came before, and are bound to those around us.6

Haiku by Issa - https://archive.org/details/autumnwindselect0000koba/page/10/mode/2up

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  • 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”. ↩

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    When its friends learned of its passing, many of us decided to memorialize it with poetry of our own. While I lack the feel, my attempt also incorporated the loss of breath: “Beneath that evening’s breeze the sickly sweet / and brazen scent of countless flow’rs / awoke inside of you a darkened sleep […] What hope have we who wait in life, who sit and pray and watch for your next breath? […] For we exhaled when you breathed in that breeze / and flowers wreathe your sleeping form.” Perhaps it is the cessation of the cyclical nature of breath that brings with it thoughts of death. ↩

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    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 was able to understand poetry better on its own terms. ↩

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