Hard to Love: Two Poems for March

It is March, and it is snowing in Maine. So in honor of this month, which is so hard to love in the north country, I will share two poems about March written by poets whom many people also find hard to love.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) is most famous for a collection titled Poems of Passion. She was very popular in her time--a sort of Rod McKuen of the Gilded Age, nearly as celebrated as Kipling--but today is mostly laughed at. Certainly she was prone to sentimental moralizing, and her endings are uniformly tiresome. Still, there are moments in her poems when she moves, almost in spite of herself, into more ambiguous relations with her subject. And because her writing style tends to be direct and uncomplicated, these fragile moments can be poignant.

A March Snow Poem 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 

Let the old snow be covered with the new:
The trampled snow, so soiled, and stained, and sodden.
Let it be hidden wholly from our view
By pure white flakes, all trackless and untrodden.
When Winter dies, low at the sweet Spring's feet
Let him be mantled in a clean, white sheet.

Let the old life be covered by the new:
The old past life so full of sad mistakes,
Let it be wholly hidden from the view
By deeds as white and silent as snow-flakes.

Ere this earth life melts in the eternal Spring
Let the white mantle of repentance fling
Soft drapery about it, fold on fold,
Even as the new snow covers up the old.

On the level of public adulation, Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909) was in a different category from Ella Wheeler Wilcox. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize eight times, hung out with the Pre-Raphaelites, invented the roundel form, and was celebrated by writers and critics such as Arnold, Housman, Lovecraft, and Saintsbury. But the modernists were not so enthusiastic. Writing of Swinburne's prose, T. S. Eliot remarked, "Swinburne stops thinking just at the moment when we are most zealous to go on."

The following poem, "March: An Ode," exemplifies Swinburne's flowery, word-drunk style, so often ridiculed by later poets and critics. But try reading this poem aloud, and then tell me what you think.

March: An Ode 

Algernon Swinburne 

I 

Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite.

II
And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow,
And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low,
How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born
So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn?
Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow
As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn,
Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow.

III
Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed,
Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed
Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers,
Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers,
But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed,
As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour's,
One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed. 

IV
As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and yields up his kingdom to May;
So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes in passion away,
And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with tears or thanksgivings; but thou,
Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months, to what goal hast thou gone from us now?
For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the beat of thy wings that play,
Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow
Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that impelled it on quest as for prey. 

V
Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the winds of the waste north sea?
Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is stormful and strong like thee
Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs assailed by the blast of thy breath?
Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the word that the changed year saith,
Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from spirits triumphant as we
Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men's rearisen from a sleep that was death
And kindled to life that was one with the world's and with thine? hast thou set not the whole world free? 

VI
For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom's the sense of thy spirit, the sound of thy song,
Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the hands of thy kingdom are strong,
Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and fruitful of births divine,
Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights that are drunken with dew for wine,
And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a denser and fierier throng,
And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at heart as they strengthen and shine,
And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of thy reign that it wrought not wrong. 

VII
Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the crown of the steep sky's arch,
And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise of the thorn and the larch:
Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow,
Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow,
And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live woods feel not the frost's flame parch;
For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt at the heart of the forest aglow,
And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands of the gods of the winds of March.

I had a lovely time in New York, and I should have stayed there. After disembarking from an 8-hour bus trip to Augusta, Maine, I chipped several inches of snow and ice off my parked car and then spent the next two hours crawling home through hypnotically swirling snow . . . passing speeders in ditches and police cars flashing their lights beside busy tow trucks, only to get my all-wheel-drive car stuck in the foot or so of snow in my own unplowed driveway. Ugh.

Anyway, here I am.

It's pouring rain in Brooklyn, I think. The wind of the cars and the drops spattering off the air conditioners may be exaggerating the sound. I am doing what I do every morning--sitting in my pink bathrobe at the kitchen table waiting for the coffee to brew, thinking about what words to write to you--but the noises around me are so different: airplanes, sirens, the slam of car doors, idling motors, a bus hissing past, snatches of pedestrian conversation, rain slapping at the windows, cats galloping across the floor in the apartment overhead

I have a day to myself. I thought of going to the New York Botanical Gardens to find a crocus, but the crocus will be so wet. So I think I will go to the Met and look at pictures.

Greetings from scenic northern New Jersey, where I sit, all dressed up and shiny, at 6:30 a.m., waiting to head south to scenic central New Jersey for the Poetry Out Loud fest.

So far I have eaten dinner at the Coach House Diner, marveled at the glittery Manhattan skyline from the Weehawken shore, and laid my eyes on the actual rock that pillowed Alexander Hamilton's head after Aaron Burr shot him.

The town of Weehawken stores the rock directly behind the more photogenic statue of Hamilton's head on a column. The effect is very odd, more like accidental attic jumble than a display.

However, when I called my son to tell him about the rock, he was thrilled because he is in love with Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton Mixtape." He knows it all by heart.

"Are the mothers of men who rule the world found among the loose-robed women, or among the women who dress in closer-fitting apparel?"

--Sarah Josepha Hale, Godey's Lady's Book (April 1865)

***

Hale's question becomes even more bizarre when I consider what else was happening in April 1865: Grant and Lee's meeting at Appomattox, Lincoln's assassination.

In Specimen Days, Walt Whitman recalled: "The day of [Lincoln's] murder we heard the news very early in the morning. Mother prepared breakfast—and other meals afterward—as usual; but not a mouthful was eaten all day by either of us. We each drank half a cup of coffee; that was all. Little was said. We got every newspaper morning and evening, and the frequent extras of that period, and pass'd them silently to each other."

But you're probably asking yourself: was Mother wearing loose robes or closer-fitting apparel?

I received some excellent news yesterday evening: the Academy of American Poets will be publishing one of my teaching essays on its poets.org site and will also be featuring a couple of curriculum pieces created by dedicated Frost Place participant Jean Kanzinger. In other words (and because I love the torture of a mixed metaphor), our Frost Place pedagogy will get a chance to stand in the bully pulpit. Hurray! [Now draw a cartoon of that.]

To continue the educational theme: on Thursday I'll be heading south to NYC, and on Friday morning I'm off to Princeton University, where I'll be judging New Jersey's Poetry Out Loud state finals and talking to teachers and arts administrators about the Frost Place. [Now draw a cartoon of Dawn in the cloak of an Expert. See Mark Twain's essay "Taming the Bicycle" if you need any suggestions about how to portray Experts.]

In the meantime, I will be Expertly hauling firewood and emptying the compost pail.

Introducing Marcus Jackson: 2015 Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching Faculty

The days are lengthening, the chickadees are singing their phoebe songs, my friends and I are discussing our our upcoming battle strategies for Japanese beetles and poison ivy, and I've been working on Frost Place schedules and plans.

A few weeks ago I introduced you to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, who will be a guest poet at the 2015 Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. Today I want to introduce you to our other guest poet: Marcus Jackson. Marcus was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. After earning his B.A. at the University of Toledo, he continued his poetry studies in NYU's graduate creative writing program and as a Cavem Canem fellow. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and the New Yorker, among many other publications. CavanKerry Press published his debut full-length collection of poems, Neighborhood Register, in 2011. Marcus lives with his wife and son in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches at Capital University. 

Writing about his teaching philosophy, Marcus has said:

The idea of obsession is something I want the poets in my workshops to embrace. Becoming obsessed with a great poem—or one specific element/trait of a great poem—can yield multitudes in the development of one’s own poetic voice. For example, if a student is struck to the bone by Yuesf Komunyakaa’s “My Father’s Love Letters,” the student should get obsessed with figuring out what exactly in the poem causes his or her reaction. Is it the poem’s juxtaposition of tenderness with the gnarly tools in the shed; is it Komunyakaa’s ability to break lines on a great array of nouns; is it the way the poem balances on its axis—the last word in the penultimate line, “almost”? Answers to these queries will give the student a clear look into the movements his or her own poems should be trying to make on the page. As soon as students have a grasp of what they want to emulate, their drafts will have standards and, better yet, blueprints to which they might make their own additions.

For a sample of Marcus's poetry, visit his website. And please be in touch with me if you'd like more information about the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching--including information about graduate and professional-development credits, scholarships, participant reviews, gorgeous views, delicious food, and amazing camaraderie. Past participants have included K-12 teachers, university professors, graduate students, poets who lead private workshops, businesspeople, school administrators, and civil servants. We are open to everyone who wants to make poetry a more intense part of their working life.