Fertilize Your Soul
Daylight Saving happened, it snowed for two days, and the Equinox is on Monday. Whether it feels like it or not, Spring is coming.
I dreamt up this blog post last Sunday, which was a day that had a decided spring-ness about it. It wasn’t even that warm, it was just spring-y. Sadly, the sky (so blue on Sunday!) proceeded to dump wintry mix on NYC for two days straight shortly thereafter. I should have known better than to get my hopes up. I DO know better. Even though this week turned out alright, I am now solidly prepared for at least one more snowstorm before the fat lady sings.
Rain/sleet/snow/wind tunnels aside, there is a flavor of Spring in the air. She’s creeping in, faint but undeniable. Just a whiff, a passing flash, a breeze that moves the hair on the back of your head. If you can’t tell, I’m in a bit of a poetic mood. Perceptive readers might be thinking, poetic mood?! That can only mean one thing. And those readers would be correct - it’s time for this month’s poetry post.
Instead of tackling a collection by one poet, I decided to travel the anthology route this time around. I was craving some variety. And, to be honest, I was in the mood for a bit of a best-of. I wanted to conjure up the feelings of springtime within my brain space (heart space? both?), and I wanted to do it with poems that are cream-of-the-crop classics After some light internet searching, I settled on an anthology from Everyman’s Library - The Four Seasons, edited by J.D. McClatchy.
I chose this one for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that it would arrive at my apartment in time for me to both read the poems it contained and write about them before Friday morning(ish). Less logistically, I also liked the fact that it was not just about spring. It contains a section for each season. This way, when summer rolls around, then fall, then winter, and I want to write to you about some seasonally appropriate poetry, I won’t have to go searching for a new anthology. I’ll already have this delightful little volume.
Upon reading the introduction (Tuesday night when it was literally snowing), I knew I had made the right choice. In it, McClatchy focuses on the deep connection between the changing of the seasons and human life. Of course we schedule and measure our lives according to the seasons and the various associations we have with them, but it’s more than that. It’s easy to forget that we are still a part of the natural world in a less conscious way. Just like the blooms and leaves and migrating or hibernating animals, we too are internally wired to operate according to the seasons.
Thinking about the coming of spring with this framing made me feel so…full of feeling. I can’t say exactly what feeling, it might have been the whole spectrum - the emotional equivalent to zooming through spring, summer, fall and winter in the course of 6.5 little pages. It gave me the feeling that something was going to burst out of me, and I couldn’t tell whether it would be tears or laughter or some other something.
This anthology has SO MANY good poems in it - some that I already knew, some that I forgot I once knew, and some that were brand new. I thought I would have two or three favorites to share with you, but unfortunately (fortunately, really), I’m really struggling to choose. There’s Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Robert Herrick, Walt Whitman (<3<3<3), Henry Reed, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop (<3<3<3), and my undisputed favorite, KING of seasonal poetry, Robert Frost. Those among others fill the springtime pages.
There were actually three Robert Frost poems included - more than any other poet, though there were a couple other repeats. This was a treat for me, particularly because I would have expected the fall and winter sections to be more weighted with his writing than the spring. Of course I was expecting “Nothing Gold Can Stay” - no anthology of seasonal poetry worth its salt would leave that one out of the spring section. Every time I read “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” I am immediately transported back to my freshman year English class with Dr. Wilkinson, who I playfully tormented with my ridiculous, giddy springtime energy for an entire year. What is freshman year of high school if not a springtime?
I was so amazed by how true it was that the first greens of spring are in fact a golden yellow color. It’s not just that the first blooms are gold because of their value to those who have been waiting for them all winter. They are also literally that color. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. On a deeper level, this poem is so great because it engages with one of Frost’s most frequently played with patterns - the multi-layered, double meaning, darkness and light existing together thing that he does. People who think of Robert Frost as a calendar poet, haven’t looked at his work closely enough. Frequently he writes poems that seem lighthearted, even inspirational, but that contain a darker, heavier reading as well.
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” flips the script. The words themselves - their meaning at surface level - are quite sad. The early golden blooms of spring are impossible to hold, the flowers die off quickly, replaced with leaves. “Eden sank to grief,” because true beauty and goodness can never last. How depressing?! But reading this poem doesn’t feel depressing. If we want to get technical it’s written in iambic tetrameter, but un-technically, what that means is that it feels like reading a nursery rhyme, and it’s fun to say out loud. Frost is telling his reader that we should not lament the state of transience that we all live in - we should sing about it.
Like many spring poems, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is simultaneously about the beginning and the end of of spring. Considering the fact that we are only still on the precipice, it feels a little early to be preparing for the end. Frost’s other two poems included in this anthology feel more appropriate for the current moment. “Spring Pools” in particular speaks to the torturous back and forth between spring and winter that happens around this time of year. The anticipation, the hope, the risk and potential disappointment.
It is textbook ominous Frost. Pools of water on the forest floor “chill and shiver,” as the still-leafless trees prepare to suck them up from the roots to bring out “dark foliage” He is describing early spring puddles with “flowers beside them,” but instead of an idyllic vision, he focuses on the fact that these fragile pre-spring characters (puddle & flower) are in danger. Where he could have framed the puddles as patiently waiting for the trees to soak them in and turn their simple ground water into beautiful blooming branches, he refers to the coming foliage as “dark.” The puddles are unwilling participants.
In the stanza that follows he turns on the trees, describing their buds as “pent up,” as though the imminent bursting forth of leaves will be violent. Again the summer woods, usually considered the height of nature’s bounty, will “darken nature.” He warns that the trees with their greedy roots should “think twice before they use their powers / To blot out and drink up and sweep away,” the puddles and their flowery friends. After all, the water that they’re made of came “from snow that melted only yesterday.” The classic springtime warning - and oh so appropriate for this week that has only just turned nice again. Don’t get ahead of yourself and bloom too fast - the frost and snow is just around the corner, and may come back and blot our your baby buds. Kind of dark, but that’s Frost, and it’s true.
Finally, our third poem from springtime Frost, “Putting in the Seed,” is a rare love poem and one of my favorites. The premise is simple. A man is out gardening, planting seeds in early spring. His wife has supper on the table, and comes to call him in. He pulls himself away from the task to follow her before she forgets what she came out for and is caught up in the rapture of springtime - before, like him, she turns into a slave to her passion for the earth.
It’s a very romantic poem, and a very sensual one - “How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed” - spring is inherently sensual because it is the time of birth. In this poem, Frost focuses on the fact that, while the moment of birth when the “sturdy seedling with arched body comes / Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs,” is undeniably sweet, the love and passion we feel in that moment actually begins earlier on. It starts with putting in the seed, and waiting and watching, and hoping.
I like that idea most of all. This time of year may be haunted by the knowledge that the coming season, with all its beauty and perfection will be gone before we know it. It may be full of opportunities for disappointment and risk of premature death. Regardless, it is still the time of year to put in the seed. To push forward with the bringing of life (whether literal or metaphorical) that we as a species engage in every year, along with all other species in the world. It is almost spring! It is time to fertilize your life - your relationships, your projects and passions, your soul. I have fertilized my soul this week with some lovely spring poetry, and I highly recommend you do the same!
You can buy this anthology here. I will let you know when I plan on reading the summer section (likely right around the solstice) so that you can read with me. And with that, I’ll leave you with one more poem that really spoke to me from these pages:
