Crocus Focus

Crocuses in my garden!

I am finally greeted with the first splash of color in the garden! When I stepped out today, out of the blue ( or rather purple), I saw violet and lavender crocuses waking up from their slumber, stretching their delicate heads out through patches of dry grass and moss, slush and fallen pine needles, and turning their faces upwards to the sky. These cheerful blooms are always the first ones to lead the spring parade of flowers.

Somewhat serendipitously I came across an uplifting poem about crocuses. I am happy to share it with you as it is timely not only because it is spring and the first day of National Poetry Month in the US, but also because it could easily apply to our current situation of social distancing and isolation in these gloomy times.

The poem was penned by Hannah Flagg Gould, a late 18th and early 19th century American poet. She was a prolific poet from Newburyport, MA but never gained much recognition as her other New England contemporary, Emily Dickinson. Like the latter, she led a quiet secluded life and never married. Her mother had died when she was a child and she spent most of her youth caring for her father who was a Revolutionary war veteran.

Her friends collected the poems she contributed to periodicals and published them as Poems in 1832. Inspired by the success of the collection, she went on to pen several more volumes of poetry. Her poems, simple and gentle in expression, and infused with a deep spiritual sensibility, deal with a wide range of themes ranging from American history, religion and war, to poems for children and poems about nature.

The Crocus’s Soliloquy

Down in my solitude under the snow,
Where nothing cheering can reach me;
Here, without light to see how to grow,
I’ll trust to nature to teach me.

I will not despair–nor be idle, nor frown,
Locked in so gloomy a dwelling;
My leaves shall run up, and my roots shall run down,
While the bud in my bosom is swelling.

Soon as the frost will get out of my bed,
From this cold dungeon to free me,
I will peer up with my little bright head,
And all will be joyful to see me.

Then from my heart will young petals diverge,
As rays of the sun from their focus;
I from the darkness of earth shall emerge,
A happy and beautiful Crocus!

Many, perhaps, from so simple a flower,
This little lesson may borrow,
Patient today, through its gloomiest hour,
We come out the brighter tomorrow.

~ Hannah F. Gould

Crocuses blooming in the garden right now!

The crocus is one of the first to spring to life from the bare and barren earth signaling the end of winter and ushering in a new season. There are always a few flowers that don’t make it in the spring; some trees that die and some birds that don’t return home. Nature is filled with uncertainty but the rhythm and recurring patterns continue and keep us going. We can learn a lot about rebirth and renewal from the cycles of nature.

It is fascinating how every verse of this simple 19th century poem resonates with our current reality. I hope we never lose hope and have faith that the trying times we are going through with the global pandemic will be behind us soon even as we lose some of our citizens. Hocus pocus, may we be like the crocus! May we emerge unscathed on the morrow from the darkness of the earth with patience and tenacity like these bright little blooms!

Hannah Gould’s most popular poem is ” A Name in the Sand”, but, unfortunately, it has been erroneously attributed to other people. I hope there is a revival of interest in this poet and that she is lifted out of obscurity. She deserves to come back to life like the crocus she so beautifully describes!

 

 

An Amethyst Remembrance- Three Dickinson Poems on Love and Loss

Cover of the first edition of Emily Dickinson’s  “Poems”, published in 1890

In recognition of National Poetry Month which wraps up today, I am celebrating Emily Dickinson, one of America’s most innovative and unique poets. She is known for the economy of her verse, her unconventional use of grammar and punctuation and blatant disregard of poetic conventions.

She is first and foremost a nature poet who through robins, bees and flowers expounds profound truths about love, life, death and immortality. Her concise poems manage to pack the hardest punch. Typically one or two metaphors are enough to convey the message or the emotion. I have chosen to highlight three poems on love and loss explicitly for their novel use of figurative language.

To lose thee — sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
‘Tis true the drought is destitute,
But then, I had the dew!

The Caspian has its realms of sand,
Its other realm of sea.
Without the sterile perquisite,
No Caspian could be.

This bittersweet poem on pain going hand in hand with pleasure illustrates Tennyson’s famous lines that ” ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Where there is love, there is loss but there is something sweet about the loss too. The speaker is bereft but she was lucky enough to have had something to lose. Being in drought makes her appreciate the dew or the contrasting emotion of elation she once enjoyed.

In this particular poem I was intrigued by the image of the Caspian Sea as a metaphor of life, love and vitality and the dry sand the pain of loneliness and desolation. Marine images feature in many of Dickinson’s poems. In fact there are other poems that allude specifically to the Caspian Sea like this succinct two line poem on submitting to her beloved :

Least Rivers — docile to some sea.
My Caspian — thee. 

The Caspian sea interestingly is not a boundless sea but a landlocked body of water. It  could not exist without its boundaries. Everything has its limits and must end somewhere. The sand marks the end of the sea. Similarly love must end too. Loss is a necessary part of life. Without the sterile desert, there would be no appreciation of the sea. It is fascinating how Dickinson employs a topographical feature to illuminate the workings of the mind.

I held a Jewel in my fingers—
And went to sleep—
The day was warm, and winds were prosy—
I said ”Twill keep’—

I woke—and chid my honest fingers,
The Gem was gone—
And now, an Amethyst remembrance
Is all I own—

The speaker/poet thought her love as rare and exquisite as a jewel would last forever but it was evanescent and only memories remain. She went to sleep lulled by the comfort that she was secure in her relationship but maybe she took it for for granted. She blames herself for when she wakes up her precious treasure has slipped away and what remains with her are her cherished memories. Love is fleeting and is synonymous with loss but there is a vague triumph in the loss. I interpreted “Jewel” to denote love but the jewel could mean life, possessions, dreams or anything we held on to dearly. The nostalgic tone of the poem is accentuated by the use of innumerable dashes which could denote a pause in her thoughts as she strives to recollect her past.

This is one of my favorite Dickinson poems as I love the image of ” an Amethyst remembrance”. An amethyst is a semi-precious stone compared to the precious jewel. So one could argue that what remains is definitely less precious than what one has experienced. But it could be the opposite too. Isn’t it interesting that we don’t have a precise picture of the jewel but the description of the memory is more concrete? Our memories are often idealized versions of a past that was far from perfect. The colorful, lustrous and sparkling picture of the amethyst evoked at the end of the day and perhaps at the sunset of her life suffuses the poem in a violet glow. What a gem of a poem!

We outgrow love like other things
  And put it in the drawer,
Till it an antique fashion shows
  Like costumes grandsires wore.

We outgrow love like other things. What a cynical start to the poem! Love and everything else in life is temporary. Sometimes we hold on to letters and photographs of an ex even if we no longer have any feelings for that person. We don’t want to completely destroy the evidence of the past even if it were painful or even if we are totally indifferent to the person now. We put our feelings in the drawer as we don’t want to deal with them but do we really outgrow love if we are putting it away? There is some lingering affection or sentiment attached if not to the person then at least to the experience or why wouldn’t we just throw it all away?

The object we once desired loses its appeal and charm and becomes an antique that is out of fashion. Again, the use of figurative language is striking. These objects are not necessarily heirlooms that we cherish or that even have a sentimental value but things that get tucked away in a drawer forgotten and possibly never removed ever again “like costumes grandsires wore.”Grandsires” is an archaic word to describe male ancestors. Was love just a short-lived performance? Did we wear love like a costume to be discarded after the act? We want different things in different stages of our lives and what we once prized is now devoid of any value.

Emily Dickinson is my bedside companion. Along with some other cherished books by favorite authors that have found a place on my bedside table, I have an edition of her poems that I turn to for a quick read when I am too tired to read something long or when I am in between books. Dickinson’s poems are just the perfect size for me to savor and to indulge in some introspection. Today is the last day of National Poetry Month. Every day is poetry day and every month is poetry month for me but just like we honor our mothers on Mother’s Day or our significant others on Valentine’s Day though we love them throughout the year, it is wonderful to have a whole month dedicated to poetry appreciation.

 

When Death Comes: In Memory Of Mary Oliver

The 18th of April is Poem in Your Pocket Day, part of the month-long celebration of National Poetry Month in the United States. The poem I chose to carry in my pocket yesterday was written by Pulitzer Prize -winning poet, Mary Oliver who left our earthly abode two months ago. Her soulful rapport with nature and meditations on the human condition have touched and transformed many lives. To mourn her demise or celebrate her life as the case may be, I fittingly selected a poem on death that teaches us to live. For, after all, aren’t life and death two sides of the same coin?

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

–Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver imparts her wisdom in a gentle way in her poems. This poem is a meditation on mortality or immortality depending on your perspective; it is a mantra on how to live our lives. The speaker resorts to similes and personification to imagine the arrival of death which can take several forms. It can appear as a ravenous bear, as a merciless man with a coin purse, as a dreadful disease or as a huge and chilling mass of ice. Even if death charges at her ruthlessly, she wants to welcome it with curiosity. The “cottage of darkness” is an arresting metaphor as a cottage conjures up an image of a cozy, comfortable and warm place as opposed to death which is cold and frightening. It is interesting that she doesn’t capitalize death. It is just another ordinary and inevitable event in our lives.

The poem is written in free verse without a set rhyme or meter. The twelve stanzas of varying length convey a continuous flow of thoughts. You almost feel like she is having a conversation with you. The liberal use of the comma instead of a period enables us to read the poem without pausing. The use of poetic devices like the ‘enjambment’ or technique of continuing one thought beyond the end of a line to the subsequent line ( lines 11-12 ) and the ‘anaphora’ when a line is repeated at the beginning of a number of lines (“when death comes”) gives the poem an incantatory tone like a prayer chant.

The speaker goes on to question conventional notions of time as linear and finite and considers “eternity as another possibility.” Each life is individual and unique like a flower. Yet all existence is interlinked and the speaker wishes to live with awareness and curiosity and to also live in close communion with nature and the universe. The individual human is a “lion of courage” fearlessly confronting the mysteries of life and the individual human experience is music which moves collectively towards silence or death. The juxtaposition of music and silence is akin to that of life and death.

The speaker wishes to make use of the gift of life she has been offered by embracing the experience fully. She doesn’t choose one or the other but wishes to be married to life both as a bride and a groom- to avail of all the experiences life has to offer. She doesn’t want to just visit the world but inhabit it and immerse in it fully with amazement and wonder. Bridal symbolism to convey the relation between earthly and spiritual love is a recurrent motif in many mystical traditions of the world including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Sufism where the soul is the bride yearning for union with her divine beloved, the Universe. Mary Oliver was perhaps influenced by these spiritual traditions as in a radio interview she had revealed that she read Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet every single day.

Mary Oliver enjoyed going on long walks to seek solace in nature and to be one with the birds, flowers, forests and rivers- to contemplate tiny miracles whether it was a grasshopper moving her jaws back and forth, poppies swaying in the wind or mushrooms sprouting through the ground. In fact, many of her poems are used in workshops on mindfulness. I channel her sometimes when I go on nature walks, when I slow down to gaze at a dewdrop on a flower, or delight in the antics of a determined squirrel or observe a jewel of a dragonfly flapping its gossamer wings on a branch. I, too, hope that at the end of my life I can say that I was a bride married to amazement and that I didn’t end up simply having visited this world. I leave you, friends, to ponder this question that Mary Oliver asked us in one of her most famous poems:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quinceañera

April is the month dedicated to poetry here in the United States. On the last day of this month long celebration of verse, I am sharing my thoughts on a poem penned by Judith Ortiz Cofer that caught my attention.

Quinceañera is a poem about the coming of age ceremony of a girl who turns 15. It’s one of the most important rites of passage in a young girl’s life in Latin communities and has its roots in both indigenous and European Christian traditions. It’s supposed to be a special ceremony to mark the transition from girlhood to womanhood and to present the fifteen year old to the community and thereby increase her prospects for marriage. Quinceañera literally means a fifteen year old girl in Spanish. In recent times the celebration has become as ostentatious and ornate as a wedding featuring long guest lists, photo shoots, lavish decorations and sometimes even a mariachi band. Although it’s a momentous occasion looked forward to by many girls, the tone of Cofer’s poem is dark and depressing accentuating the fact that it’s also a time fraught with anxieties and awkwardness for the growing girl.

Judith Ortiz Cofer was a Latina writer who in her poems and essays wrote about the Puerto Rican immigrant experience in the US mainland. She herself straddled two worlds: that of Puerto Rico where she was born and returned frequently to spend extended time at her grandmother’s house and the states of New Jersey and Georgia where she lived in the US. The movement to and fro between two cultural spaces shapes her work. In her memoir, The Cruel Country, she describes how her mother hated becoming a quinceañera “… which in those days meant announcing your status as a potential wife-nothing like the social extravaganzas of today’s young Latinas, but a serious passage into adulthood. My mother said that when she turned fifteen, she began her training in domestic functions such as childcare and cooking, which didn’t interest her, and she was not allowed to play ball again.” In another of her memoirs, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood , in which this poem is featured, Cofer writes that to her grandmother, she was as a quinceañera ,”a fifteen year old trainee for the demands of marriage”.

Quinceañera

My dolls have been put away like dead
children in a chest I will carry
with me when I marry.
I reach under my skirt to feel
a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft
as the inside of my thighs. My hair
has been nailed back with my mother’s
black hairpins to my skull. Her hands
stretched my eyes open as she twisted
braids into a tight circle at the nape
of my neck. I am to wash my own clothes
and sheets from this day on, as if
the fluids of my body were poison, as if
the little trickle of blood I believe
travels from my heart to the world were
shameful. Is not the blood of saints and
men in battle beautiful? Do Christ’s hands
not bleed into your eyes from His cross?
At night I hear myself growing and wake
to find my hands drifting of their own will
to soothe skin stretched tight
over my bones,
I am wound like the guts of a clock,
waiting for each hour to release me.

The poem is written in free verse in the first person and starts with the image of death, a jarring contrast to the picture of dolls that represent early life. We know that the poem is about a fifteen year old thanks to the title. The speaker/narrator is probably going to take her dolls with her to her marital home in the future and pass them down one day to her own children. The Last Doll or La Ultima Muneca is one of the symbolic traditions of the quinceañera ceremony. The quinceañera gives her last doll to a younger sister or cousin or saves it to pass down to her own children. In some cultures, the doll is tossed over the girl’s shoulder to young girls who have not yet turned fifteen, much like a bride flings her bouquet to young maidens. The ceremony then represents the death of her childhood.

There are many other images of death evoked in the poem with the words “skull”, “poison”, “blood” and “battle”. The satin slip shows that she will be wearing a fancy dress for the rich celebration over the slip or that she will now start needing a slip and will have to dress modestly. The poet resorts to poetic devices like simile and alliteration in spite of the choppy construction. The breaks in lines and stanzas may be a device to show the confusion and frenzy in the mind of the girl.

We have more harsh images of death with the words “skull “and “nails”. Her mother seems to handle her with firmness and hurts her while braiding her hair. The words “twisted” and” tight” suggest constriction. Maybe she is oblivious to the girl’s needs or she wants to send her the message that life will be hard.

Her black hairpins could be a sign of mourning . Ironically the ceremony is supposedly a joyous occasion but she is also lamenting the loss of childhood and dreading the arrival of womanhood with responsibilities.

She has to start doing her own laundry and other chores. The blood symbolizes the onset of menstruation, a sudden and dramatic moment in a girl’s life. She has to start washing her stained clothes furtively as this natural biological process is viewed with shame. Menstrual taboos exist in many cultures around the world with a notion of impurity attached to menstruation. Her world shrinks but it also expands at the same time as the rite of passage of menarche places new expectations on her from her family and from society at large.

Why is the blood of dying men and Christ considered sacred but not the life giving blood of women? There is so much hypocrisy in our patriarchal culture surrounding menstrual blood. The rhetorical questions and the repetition of the words ”as if” reinforce her anguish.

She is growing rapidly and is aware of the changes in her body which bring about a sexual awakening too, reinforced by the alliteration “soothe stretched skin”. The simile “wound like the guts of a clock” shows that she is anxious and needs a release, both a physical and an emotional one.

The poem suggests that being on the threshold of adulthood is not necessarily the best time in a woman’s life. Traditionally the fifteen year old was presented to society as eligible for marriage and trained for the duties and demands of family life. Needless to say, the custom is outdated and losing its relevance and being celebrated instead as a lavish birthday bash.

Have you participated in a memorable rite of passage ceremony in your life? How meaningful was it to you and how did you feel about the transition and being the center of attention? Interestingly, rituals marking the initiation of menstruation have existed in many cultures since time immemorial. My grandmother like Cofer’s “Mama” was a traditional woman who religiously followed all customs. I had a similar ceremony when I was a teenager. I was dressed as a bride and almost died of embarrassment when relatives came up to me and congratulated me on becoming a woman. Maybe that’s why this poem struck a chord. Or rather a nerve.

 

“The Journey” by Mary Oliver

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

April is ‘National Poetry Month’ in the United States. For me every month is poetry month and every day is poetry day. I would still like to honor the month-long celebration by sharing and examining a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver that resonates with me deeply. In fact, I cannot imagine it not striking a chord with anyone who reads it. We have all at some point experienced the moment when we have to break free from what our family or community members expect of us to follow our own path and leave our own mark in the world. You have to ignore “the old tug at your ankles”, be it of a controlling relative, a needy friend or a difficult co-worker and continue with your journey to discover who you truly are. The voices of opposition can be loud and overbearing. They can do anything in their power to jeopardize your journey. They can give bad advice or drain your energy by asking you to fix their lives.

It is interesting that the speaker employs the second person ‘you’ in the poem and uses it repeatedly. It is a direct conversation with the reader, informal in tone. The use of the second person also establishes the universality of the poem. It is something everyone can relate to. It also emphasizes in an unequivocal manner that ‘you’ and ‘you’ alone are in charge of your destiny.

The personification of the wind that “pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations” is a powerful device to show what you have to contend with. Inflexible in their views, the people around you may try relentlessly to demoralize you or dissuade you from following your path through manipulation and guilt trips. But you ignore their terrible “melancholy” and do what is right for you. You realize that you do not have to conform to the constraints imposed by society.

The journey is a powerful metaphor. It is a wild night and the road is “full of fallen branches and stones”. It is not going to be a smooth journey. There will be obstacles and dangers on the path but despite what is thrown your way, you have to proceed with determination, courage and confidence to listen to your own inner voice. The poem is written in free verse with no stanza breaks. Many of the lines are short and the sentences are cut off and continued in subsequent lines. The lack of stanzas makes the reader move through the poem at a quick pace. The urgency of the task at hand is reinforced with the continuous flow in the structure. Life moves on without stopping and time waits for no one.

It is only when you leave the old voices behind that the stars reveal themselves to you and a new voice becomes audible. You slowly recognize this voice as your own and embrace it. The use of figurative language is striking and effective. The image of stars burning “through the sheets of clouds” conveys the idea that you were predestined to go on this journey. It was written in the stars that you will find your true calling. Repetitions abound towards the end of the poem to show the commitment to the journey. There is no looking back now. From a confining house you move to the wide universe outside and find your authentic voice.

This poem is a wonderful example of how poetry can be a catalyst for healing and for personal growth. Who needs therapy when poetry is free?