12.20.15

Here is a selection of poems that seem to be about the season at first. I had been hanging on to a few of these in my email for a while, wanting to put them together.  


A Yellow Leaf

By Ariana Reines

It’s shivering
Like a little lady rattling her bell
Calling for tea
Quivering in the old style

There’s a red light in Boston
At the close of day
Like the red light of idiocy
All along the bricks
Of Harvard Yard & a blue
Sky so hard & irradiated
In the way of old cinema
Whose screens
Reflect the pops & black
Rot spattered
As though it were something
Perhaps nice
As if to say please
No extra charge
Please
Visualize now the idea of your blind spot
I will even do it for you
As the physical reel unspools
& unspools & you blink
In a dark
Room narrow with shadows
Narrow shadows like avant-gardes

It was a dream that woke up
The Fall

It really is something
A sick feeling
Like stopping lying
A dangerous feeling
Like giving up trying to live as though you were otherwise

As though my mouth could water along the split
Waistlines of all the apricot colored squashes
As though the real pumpkins, horns
Of plenty at my hearth
& in my wealth, my death
Were visibly grinning
Thru the rosebud lip of womanhood
Behind which all the women
I really am (they claim)
Hide behind my face & do their flips
Behind my teeth
In the red darkness there
In my potions
In my chemicals
In the mouth I never use
In my poisonous mouth

I get various lenses and screens (this works literally in this poem, not even apologizing for that!) in the way the speaker views the season. In the hard, sere colors of the early winter, things are hidden and displayed. The colors and the cold bring the speaker back in time, with the old lady and the brick landscape, and reel-to-reel projector. Being me, I would put the lens of nostalgia over this, and suggest the speaker sees winter in (or as) a blind spot. What is in that spot is the same secret hidden behind the speaker's face, perhaps. I feel like this deserves a better close reading, with some creative people to help me see more in it. 
 
Paris Winter

by Howard Altmann

That we can breathe and not forget
our dreams entirely. In the cold sun

the warmth of timelessness. There is
panic, rest assured, so much beauty

stirring, I want to touch all that
contains me. We know the questions

and the light shifts without a word.
In the clouds, a philosopher’s chair

rocks. In the riverbed, the buff
and lathe of stones, change glistening

past. And from the afternoon, drops
of her monthly blood drip down

the stairs, the kitchen table, all of her
unopened bills, a cold floor that timed

us. O, the ins and outs of memory
breathe, too, images at rest in the dark

chambers, the gilded daylight whir
a heart’s dusting—one walkup,

one post storm quiet blinking at
infinity. Who shot the moon

and claimed victory in the morning?
The constellations touch down;

the years collapse; the boom
and bust of love lowers the crane

at dawn: in what earth, in what sky
will the soul find its keeper?

This poem starts out with more traditional images of timeless winter; water-tumbled stones, cold clear days, stark cloud-shapes, etc. Then, halfway through, the mundane is like a betrayal to the beautiful images. Or maybe a counterbalance. I particularly like "the cold floor timed us"--timed for speed, marked days passing, perhaps in a judgement of all things mundane. "The ins and outs of memory" is so perfect a way to descripe the vagaries of how we actually remember things (it makes you question the speaker a little, especially with things like "gilded daylights whir/ a heart's dusting" that are so archetypal). I like an unreliable narrator though, they are more relatable. 

The Lighted Window

by Sara Teasdale

He said:
“In the winter dusk
When the pavements were gleaming with rain,
I walked thru a dingy street
Hurried, harassed,
Thinking of all my problems that never are solved.
Suddenly out of the mist, a flaring gas-jet
Shone from a huddled shop.
I saw thru the bleary window
A mass of playthings:
False-faces hung on strings,
Valentines, paper and tinsel,
Tops of scarlet and green,
Candy, marbles, jacks—
A confusion of color
Pathetically gaudy and cheap.
All of my boyhood
Rushed back.
Once more these things were treasures
Wildly desired.
With covetous eyes I looked again at the marbles,
The precious agates, the pee-wees, the chinies—
Then I passed on.

In the winter dusk,
The pavements were gleaming with rain;
There in the lighted window
I left my boyhood.”



I think this one is the most straightforward of the bunch. The lens is a mirror, in which the speaker sees his memory. His memory changes how he feels about the acquisition of simple things, at least momentarily, which brings embarrassment. The visual effects are of contrast, and pretty simple: dark street, lamp light and wet pavement, contrasted with a bright, shining, colorful display window. It could be out of Hallmark movie. (It pains me to capitalize that) However I think this relatable as well, in its simplicity and the fact that we can all remember the Christmases of our childhood.