Out of
season
It’s neither June nor January, both of which are invoked in Thomas
Carew’s poem “The Spring.” (It’s not June in January.) It’s not long’d-for May,
which is when Carew’s poem seems to begin.
You can read the poem here.
Or you may both read it and hear it read by clicking the YouTube icon below. As
I say in my introduction to the reading, they don’t write poems like this
anymore. “They” would mean, in this case, men. None of us woos his woman by
telling her how beautiful she is now, but it’s not going to last. None of us
has a woman he may call his for one thing. For another, who woos?
The poem is long,
long out of date, then. It remains, however, a delight for some right reasons –
the frost that “candies” the grass, the arch joy of the language, the sound of
the thing with all its headless lines. So, I like it this November day. I like Carew any day of the year. Shoot me!
11.07.19
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