Spring is like a perhaps hand

Spring is finally in the air with its beautiful flowers, warm weather, and sunny days. Gone are the dog days of winter, as its barren coldness loosens its grip on our fine campus. As you may have guessed from this short introduction, and because I’m pretty predictable with this blog format, I will be focusing on poems about spring for this week’s edition of Dead Poets Society.

Poems about springtime differ from those about winter and fall in a lot of ways. They often contain stereotypical themes like romance and nature. The nature imagery is very, very detailed in spring themed poetry, seeing as the blooming of flowers and trees is an iconic part of spring. It was also much easier for me to find poems about spring than winter, as it seems to be a more inspirational topic for poets than the dead of winter. I have selected several poems that I found to be emblematic of the spring season.

First up is a poem by one of my favorite wacky poets, E. E. Cummings. His poem is titled ‘Spring is like a perhaps hand’ and is, as per usual, very weird with punctuation and line breaks. It is quite an interesting poem that I think nicely describes the transition of seasons, from old life to new life. I also really like the unique language that Cummings always seems to use in his poems as well as the play on grammar rules. Here’s a stanza that I particularly liked from this poem:

“spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.”

Next up is a poem titled ‘The Enkindled Spring’ by British poet D.H. Lawrence (continuing the trend of poets who use initials in place of a first name.) This poem is interesting to me because of its take on spring imagery. Usually, spring is described in very flowery and pretty terminology, but not in this poem. Instead, spring is described as a “leaping combustion” and the poem seems to rely on a lot of fire related imagery, which, again, is quite weird for a nice springtime poem. Here is the first stanza of the poem, which demonstrates what I am talking about:

“This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.”

Finally, we have a poem simply titled ‘Spring’ by Gerald Manley Hopkins. Certainly the man gets right to the point with this one—it is definitely a poem about spring. He talks about the beauty of spring in this poem, but uses some rather interesting analogies to do so. He also makes biblical references later on, referring to the story of Adam and Eve, which makes sense, seeing as Hopkins was also a reverend and a Roman Catholic convert. Here is the poem in its entirety:

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring—    
  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;    
  Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush    
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring    
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;    
  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush    
  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush    
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         
What is all this juice and all this joy?    
  A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning    
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,    
  Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,    
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,    
  Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.”

While there are many more poems about spring that I could have featured on this blog, I thought that these three were the most intriguing out of the ones I read. Instead of using typical images of flowers and romance and beauty, these poems made unique connections and metaphors. Hopefully these poems will help you enjoy this beautiful season even more, and hopefully the trend of good weather will continue from here on out. As per usual, I hope you enjoyed this week’s post and happy reading!