Vernal

[Bar22do]

for the season

Do not hold on vainly to your feet
as though you were in sorrow!
Don't become fatality,
be an eagle-thief,
not a lotus's gaping mouth -
sow stars on plum and apple trees!

In the heart of yet a grey air
reclines your pulchritudinous love,
your undying girl, head on her elbow,
a jonquil in her palm; even light
steals in through the spring portico
for the sole sight of her form!

Defy the buzz of the bees around
the nascent smile on her early, cherry lips…

[blank|verse]

Brilliant, Bar. This one is certainly lighter in tone than other recent ones of yours; it's very playful and great to read.

And it works well because it offers an unusual take on things - usually the poet can be read proclaiming the wonders of a season, not chastising it through a serious of imperative demands, as here. I love the opening image; and the second stanza has touches of Greek myth, I note.

I like the ending as well, the ellipsis cutting off the speaker, even though it's clear they were to go on for some time! (And stopping at the magical 14th line, as well; although I think you'd be hard pushed to say it's a sonnet!)

Very enjoyable, thanks for posting it!

[MorpheusSandman]

What I really liked about this, besides the playfulness and refreshing change of tone for you as BV noted, is how the somewhat esoteric imperatives of the first stanza contrast with the pure and beautiful images in the second stanza, before you return to the imperative for the finale. I wonder if the theme is similar to the ol' "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may", seize the day cliche. If so, you render it quite uniquely.

[Bar22do]

I wrote that within minutes, having looked through the window to the outside world, frustrated with work on my 'heavy' pieces... I'm glad you could appreciate it B/V and Morpheus! I must have been influenced by myth, B/V, as well as by the cliché (MS), but this little piece happened too fast for me to realize it before you've told me.

Thank you so much, Bar

[tailor STATELY]

Wonderful.

Especially "sow stars on plum and apple trees!"... Brilliant !

Best regards,
tailor STATELY

[Bar22do]

Thank you so much Stately,

best from Bar

[AuntShecky]

Bar's postings always inspire yours fooly to do some online research, and this one is no exception. So I'll preface my "take" on your "Vernal" with what my online research revealed:

I suspected that this verse fit nicely within a certain type of poetry (categorized by purpose rather than form) and my best guess is that it is a "didactic" poem, a vast compendium stretching across the ages with plenty of examples from the sublime to the gawdawful. a spectrum that includes Wordsworth's "Be the Best of Whatever You Are" by Douglas Malloch (1872-1938.) When I was in high school, way back when Wordsworth was considered a "modern" poet, the nun who assigned us "The Table Turn'd" for homework failed to see the irony in the opening line: "Up, up, my friend, and quit your books." Farther back, in 4th grade, the teacher made us memorize possibly the Worst. Poem. Ever. Written. Still, we took every word of "Be the Best of Whatever You can Be" to heart with deathless lines such as "Be a bush if you can't be a tree" and "We can't all be captains, we have to have crew" (which MAY be a politically correct version of the line I remember: "We have to have Indians, we can't all be chiefs.") The message of that so-called "poem" urged the reader to accept the low cards he'd been dealt, make the most of his --apparently unmovable--limitations. obviously pre-dating the "Self Esteem" epidemic in American schools. (Still, Malloch, "the Lumberman's Poet," must've been doing something right, as one of his creations became the Official State Song of Michigan.)

I'd put your didactic poem on a scale much closer to Wordsworth than Malloch. There is much more to admire than disdain.

Specific questions/comments:
I can't tell who (or what) is being addressed here, other than, as in "The Table's Turn'd" an unnamed friend (or reader or listener)

Is holding one's feet a symbol of grief or mourning (similar to rending one's garments, etc.)?

This line intrigues me:
Don't become fatality

because I wonder why there is no "a" in front of "fatality." Then again, maybe the speaker is telling the person/thing addressed not to be a metaphor for death? Is this reverse psychology--
counter-intuitively urging winter to stay?

be an eagle-thief,
not a lotus's gaping mouth

I'm asea with "eagle-thief" -- is this a larcenous raptor or someone else stealing the eagle?

"Lotus" with its connotation of forgetting is a good one, but the reader is urged "not" to be a lotus mouth. Ah for what's called "selective memory," in which one has the ability to forget the brutal winter just passed (or we hope has passed.) But I think the speaker's addressee wants Winter to hang around?

Nice word play with "sow/sew") as we're comin' up on plantin' season:
sow stars on plum and apple trees!
If you sow (or plant) stars on the fruit-bearing trees, the blossoms might not come

The "grey air" could mean Winter, taking her sweet time in leaving, "undying,"

your pulchritudinous love,
your undying girl, head on her elbow,
a jonquil in her palm;

The appearance of the early jonquil (not as early as the snowdrops or crocus) means we're at the point of no return--

Even though winter is usually depicted as an elderly, hoary male ("Old man winter" ) here she is a "pulchritudinous" gal. At first I thought she was Spring, but I do think she's winter. Otherwise there's no reason to go into deny and "defy" the buzzing bees around her lips, "cherry," as in "rosy
cheeks and noses back in Feb.

So, what a great poem -- the opposite of our millions of cliché-ridden encomiums to spring!

[deryk]

By line 8, I was transported to a place I thought I would never remember again. That's accomplishing something. The symbols are dense but deft, so I shall make them my own rather than playing the allusiveness game.

[Bar22do]

You got me lost in your translations Dear Auntie! I just happened to fall upon a jar which, as it broke, revealed it contents, for the joy of some in in our dark world, I thought; by means of free associations, a bit wild, I agree, a hymn to youth and spring; of course not didactic even if a little "shouty"! taste of the pre-season's cherries, happy-go-lucky for a moment...

But, as always, I'm grateful for your reading and might return to this insubordinate piece of writing one day to revise, though it declared itself as anarchic before I even got a chance to negotiate a form or a principle...

[Bar22do]

By line 8, I was transported to a place I thought I would never remember again. That's accomplishing something. The symbols are dense but deft, so I shall make them my own rather than playing the allusiveness game.

Please yourself, deryk, and I'm glad L8 caught you breathless! Thanks for reading this!

[blank|verse]

Just coming back to this - the poem it reminds me of (with its imperative-laden hectoring of nature) is John Donne's The Sun Rising (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/oct/05/john-donne-the-sun-rising), which begins:

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour 'prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

[AuntShecky]

Bar, my starting point was the urgent opening lines of your piece. "Didactic" was what the Google (TM) machine gave me for the search words: "Types of poems which urge or encourage the reader to take a specific action." I didn't want to imply that your verse is "didactic" in the sense of preaching or "teaching" (other than Horace's classic definition of the purpose of literature: "To teach and delight" -- your piece, of course, fulfilling the latter. )

[Bar22do]

B/V what a poem! I read it over and over, discovering! How do you always find these connections? Is your memory phenomenal?

Auntie, thanks for your clarification (you know, subtleties escape my foreign mind, at times). I consider my task done :smile5: if this poem has offered a bit of delight!

Thank you both,

Bar