Spring Fever

Lately, I can't stop thinking about Robert Frost. He is the man responsible for my love affair with poetry. It's been years since I've picked up his poems; I've been too distracted by all the amazing contemporary work being produced these days. But Robert. Oh Robert. This time of year, my heart is especially gooey and romantic. I'm looking out the window at this moment. I see cars and our small weedy patch of grass, but somehow Spring has clouded my vision. I'm looking at the world with Frost-vision, that is to say, with Nature on my mind. I throw out the cars and gravel and zone in on the tall evergreen trees across the street, the small birds not eating the seeds we put out for them, and the rhubarb growing in giant patches on the side of the house. I am making Robert proud.

Not all poetry is about nature, but a lot of it is. What's better or more timeless and universal than nature? Our plants and animals up here in the UP may be different from yours down in the tropics, but I bet we all get the same thrill from the natural world. Even when I lived in Pittsburgh, I felt alive and energized just by walking to the park. Mr. Frost knew that nature holds all the elements of humanity. It can be wild or tame, violent or gentle, devastated or bountiful.

"A Prayer for Spring" is a poem that makes nature holy, spiritual. It is a religious poem, especially in the last stanza, but those of us who adhere to an alternate belief system can still feel the wonder and awe in "Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, / Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; / And make us happy in the happy bees, / The swarm dilating round the perfect trees." To me, it's simply hypnotic, almost ritualistic. I hear this stanza as a chant, a call to nature, and a call to humanity to witness the glory of nature. Yes, I am filling my romantic goo quota, but come on folks, I've been Frosted! You, too, can be Frosted anytime you like.

Sayonara National Poetry Month; Konnichiwa Poetry Year!

You may or may not have known that April was National Poetry Month. Does it really matter? Sort of; it's extra fun to have a month where you can get away with posting quotes and sending all your non-literary friends poems and links. But I recommend doing it all year long. Some will shake their heads and think "Oh, so and so, you never quit, do you?" Others will appreciate the effort, and maybe you'll just make their day. One awesome thing about a poetry month is that many poetry sites will highlight or send you a poem of the day (see the links to your left for great poetry resources).

This month, my favorite poem from poets.org is April 29th's "Sharks in the Rivers" by Ada Limon (look it up!). It's an interesting piece that explores the nature of fear. The speaker is afraid of sharks and imagines seeing them in the river, yet I get the feeling that the "sharks" are a symbol for something greater, an intangible fear, or perhaps all fears in general.

There is an odd humor in the poem, too. The speaker's friend sends her an article from National Geographic that states "Sharks bite fewer people each year than New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records." The speaker walks around saying to herself "Sharks are people too" over and over. It's funny, yet it's not really helpful, is it? Facts and rational thinking have nothing to do with fear.

One suggestion I think the poem makes right off is that one of our greatest fears as humans is relationships with other humans, or how they may go astray. Limon says "We'll say unbelievable things / to each other in the early morning—" Is it possible that we are all sharks? That sharks in the rivers is a reference to humans in the world? Is the speaker afraid of interactions with other people?

Limon ends the poem by talking directly to the river, not to the sharks from which her fear stems, but to the river itself, to the place that breeds sharks. I find that the most intriguing part of the poem. The river is the source of fear somehow. Are these last stanzas, addressed to the river, what she really wants to tell the world?

I want to walk through this doorway
But without all those ghosts on the edge,
I want them to stay here. I want them to go on without me.

I want them to burn in the water.

It's a powerful ending, and not at all humorous. It's a declaration, a renouncement of fear. I'm left wondering who or what these ghosts are (they are mentioned in the beginning as well). Are they another manifestation of fear or a reference to actual ghosts, deceased people? And desire. The speaker is all desire. "I want them to burn in the water" is a strong image that demands a sort of destruction of fear, of whatever haunts the speaker.

Bravo, Limon. Bravo. I'll be sending this one out to folks all year long!