A KNOCKING OF FOOLS, TREES, AND RESURRECTION FROLIC With notes of “April, come she will,†Dylan’s
standing in the doorway cryin,’ You Are My Sunshine, and What kind of fool Am I, we take up the malignment of April, poetically done, of course. Busy old fool!—That’s John Donne, on the morning sun coming to call. Who knocks? That April—lock the door! I will not be pursued. He stayed away a year to call when I am occupied—that’s Emily Dickinson, in her poem Dear March—come in—. . . .A little poke to Mr. Sun and April, annoyed with joy, wouldn’t you say, on the part of the reverend and reverent John Donne of the Holy Sonnets and Emily Dickinson? What’s up with that? Is crankiness in the air? And then there’s Mr. Eliot, calling April cruel. Let’s remember that just last week we were saying, Winter is over, my loves, come away from your hollows and holes, as the good poet Nancy Willard would say. This is Professor Barbara Mossberg, your host of the Poetry Slow Down, your weekly Rx of poetry’s age-resistant news we need more than ever in hectic times, to slow down and wise up our days of fast-breaking, heart-breaking earth-shaking headline news . . .and in the poets I’ve just quoted, we see some pout if not also impertinence and moods of attitude. Dickinson is our Queen of ‘Tude.
But wait . . . since we left Emily Dickinson our last March show, with a breathless March upstairs with her, giving her all the news, and April’s knock, knock, knocking at Emily’s door. she relents a little: But trifles look so trivial/ As soon as you have come/That Blame is just as dear as Praise/And Praise as mere as Blame—
Well, April, you knocked, knocked, knocked on Emily’s door, and we’re not knocking you, we are welcoming you to this year . . . and exploring your deep meaning—what Dickinson calls a “green frolic,†and on this note, I share a poem I wrote as my mother was dying, the vision of resurrection of a life frolic companion, of what is meant by seeds and regenerative cycles of life, and we’ll discuss Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “there lie the dearest freshness deep down things,†the connection between life and death, at ground level and below, thoughts of Walter Otto, Ranier Maria Rilke, poet philosopher pilot listener Charles Tripi’s “This Story Is All I Have,†and then we consider the role of words in keeping the dark life, the underground life, the loathed and ignored life, of slime and mud and muck and warts and soil, holy and cherished and loved and alive . . . we hear Marianne Moore’s Poetry calling for “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,†we recall Wind in the Willows’ mole and toad, we rethink poems of mole and toad and hedgehog (Paul Muldoon, Marge Piercy, Mary Oliver, Judith Kitchen), E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, what loving earth’s creatures and life means, through the lens of the fox in The Little Prince, and all in all we look at life through the lens of poet’s light on what spring means! Next up, cruel Aprils, taxing Aprils (you know what I’m talking about), the redemption of April, and words we love about the season we (after all) love.
This is Professor Barbara Mossberg, at the Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 540AM, we are April fools, loving improbable things to love with the poet’s eye . . . what kind of fool am I? we wonder; we think of Joyce Kilmer’s poem on trees, poets, and fools, John Muir’s poetry on trees and fools and how the poet fools rush in . . . fools write poems and love trees and moles and save the day. . . wise fools can see moles and know paradise on earth, and that is my wish for you today, Holy Moley, you my sunshine, you are good ones, no fooling, it is a joy to be with you . . . thank you for sharing this time, and we’ll be back next week with poems you have written in my workshops and sent me and that you love . . . we’ll consider early and late poems on April and gardening and spring . . . and who knows . . . We’ll explore opening lines of poetry at my workshop April 16 at the Pacific Grove Library, 9am-noon, and lecture for California Writers Club April 19 (see our posts for further information). I’m thanking Sara Hughes, our producer for KRXA 540AM and of our podcast at BarbaraMossberg.com. Write me at bmossberg@csumb.edu, and let the life force of mole and toad be with you. Because what I hear, listening to these poems with you, sounds of spring underfoot: holy, noses, oil, joy . . . mol . . . ey! Holy Moley!
© Barbara Mossberg 2011
