April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland
April is National Poetry Month. It is a month in which we should both celebrate the wonderful use of words to approach our deepest sensibilities and to decry the space currently wasted on personal laments disguised as poetry. I am much fonder of poets who assail the heights and depths of universal meaning, suffering or love, than of those who simply want us to share in their most recent moment of individual cognition. The former take chances and, even in their failures, say more about the human spirit and the beauty of bundled language than all of those resident in the latter category combined.
This is so because poetry should not just be about a pretty turn of phrase. Clever wording is never enough to turn an ear-pleasing phrase into poetry. Poetry should make us think about, or cause us personally to reflect upon and examine more deeply, something seemingly universal about the human condition, nature, an aspect of time’s irreversible onward march or similar issues of deep imponderability. Pretty phrases may well be pleasing to the ear, but they are quickly forgotten and are invariably impossible to recall a week after being read. True poetry crystallizes a moment, a passion, a truth or a desire in such a manner that each of us – no matter the extent of the diversity of our opinions or our beliefs or our respective levels of education – can relate to endlessly after our own fashion and at all times of our lives. While it is likely true that no two of us receive the same specific information from a piece of true poetry, the overall message we each receive engenders a shared emotional response.
Great poets write in all forms of verse. Many readers of poetry make the mistake of focusing upon a particular style or verse form, believing that their favored style or verse form is what is great and good about poetry. These are the readers who glibly glorify free verse over a traditional sonnet form in all cases, or vice versa. They aren’t listening for the substance of the poetry; they are simply giving voice to their own prejudices without regard to meaning and evidencing their inability to delve into a poem’s message.
Let’s look at poetry concerning the month of April as an example. Most of us can and do quote the first line of T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” It has almost become a cliché, often referring to the fact that in the United States personal income tax returns are due on April 15. But even the most clichéd usage of its opening lines indicates that there is something in the turning of the seasons from Winter to Spring that the month of April symbolically represents that deeply appeals to both humanity’s shared hopes and fears. Why is April the cruelest month in Eliot’s reasoning? He gives us a clear answer: because it mixes memories with desire.
Eliot’s point is well illustrated by “Second April,” a poem written by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.
There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
From orchards near and far away
The gray wood-pecker taps and bores,
And men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.
The larger streams run still and deep;
Noisy and swift the small brooks run.
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun
Pensively; only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.
Millay juxtaposes Eliot’s memory and desire beautifully in this rhymed piece. It begins and lasts as a traditional paean to Spring, only to end abruptly with a sense of loss jarringly inserted in the last one and a half lines – a sense of complete, irrecoverable loss rendered all the more poignant and sharp by its juxtaposition with a lengthy recitation of humanity’s endless fascination with, and desire for, Spring’s rebirth.
Millay again used April as a foil to discuss humanity’s constant fears surrounding life’s meaning in “Spring,” a poem with no discernable rhyme scheme or meter.
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
This time she speaks at length of her sense of loss and her corresponding questioning of life’s purpose, and then suddenly juxtaposes them with a snapshot view of a sillier April cavorting cruelly without purpose.
Both poems are effective in making the reader focus on Eliot’s central theme of April’s cruelty in the mixing of memory and desire, yet, despite this similarity of theme, it couldn’t be more differently expressed in both style or focus – and all by the same poet. These poems are apposite readings of the same cruel mix, and make me, at least, think more carefully about April’s aspects of memory and desire than I would have if I had only read one of the two poems.
And then there is the “April” of William Carlos Williams, a poet who demands all of your attention and all of your mind’s efforts of comprehension. He is never an easy read, and all the more interesting as a result. His April is an overwhelming force almost too much to bear:
If you had come away with me
into another state
we had been quiet together.
But there the sun coming up
out of the nothing beyond the lake was
too low in the sky,
there was too great a pushing
against him,
too much of sumac buds, pink
in the head
with the clear gum upon them,
too many opening hearts of lilac leaves,
too many, too many swollen
limp poplar tassels on the
bare branches!
It was too strong in the air.
I had no rest against that
springtime!
The pounding of the hoofs on the
raw sods
stayed with me half through the night.
I awoke smiling but tired.
Williams’ April is April from the side view, but clearly still an April in the Eliot tradition. He focuses on April’s impact rather than on its inherent contradictions, but the depth of my resulting reaction is as strong to this poem as it is to those of Eliot or Millay.
I am always loath to believe April is the cruelest month since it is the month of my birth, but, if it is, its inherent cruelty is the subject for deep reflection upon the purpose of life’s brevity when measured against infinity’s incomprehensibility. It is also simply a great month to read and enjoy real poetry in all of its guises.
