Finding Solace in Springtime and Poetry

Spring has arrived. The season took its time this year, waltzing in a week or so later that its scheduled date. But, never the less, it has come. And, with the calender telling us it is April, I thought I would also take a moment to point out this month is National Poetry Month.

The following is the poem O Sweet Spontaneous by e.e. cummings, written in 1920. Many reviews of this poem I have seen read in to this poem much deeper that its surface meaning - relating it to society and its problems - but I like this piece for its ease. e.e. cummings describes spring's beauty without ever actually describing it. He doesn't embellish the blue skies, or the smell of the lilies. He doesn't listen to the bees buzzing or the robins chirping. The sun does not warm his face, nor do the new emerald green leaves give him shade. To him, spring just is.

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
oftn have the religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)


What is very unusual about this poem is it's format (which Blogger did not quite let me recreate here) - poetry is known for having no set rules, but the spelling of oftn was not a slip of my fingers on the keys, and .how is not a grammatical error. e.e cummings wrote many of his poems this way, and he is probably the only person who will ever know why.

So I leave you with this. I leave you hoping that as expressed in the picture above, spring brings you beauty through the ugly, hope through the doubt, and light through the darkness. As Emily Dickinson once wrote, "A Light exists in Spring / Not present on the Year / At any other period"