[Chiago Mapocho]

Originally Posted by RCL

LUCID WAKING by Annie Finch

from Eve (1997)

Once I wanted the whole dawn not to let me
sleep. One morning, then, I awoke and watched as
waking woke me, came slipping up through half-light
crying softly, a cat leaving her corner,
stretching, tall in the new gray air of morning,
raising paws much too high. She came slow-stepping
down the hallway to crouch, to call, to answer
through the door, making still and slow the dawning
once so bird ridden —and the sun, the curtains—

God, I love that poem from Annie Finch! The way she personifies the subject reminds me of A. E. Stallings at her best. "I awoke and watched as / waking woke me, came slipping up through half-light / crying softly" -- gorgeous, as is that ending. Admirable, the way the syntax at the end mimics a mind just woken from sleep, still groggy and disoriented, only registering the sun, the curtains, no thoughts accompanying or forming from the observations.

On a slightly unrelated note, didn't Annie Finch post here before (or was it just during a few contests over at The Distinguished Guest)?

Frost's poem struck a chord too. Who wouldn't wish they were the ones who wrote those closing lines? And, that Swinburne poem is a study of sonics!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Good on ya, Ralph. I intended to post that Annie Finch poem--which I know is in the book "An Exaltation of Forms". I love it.

[Maryann Corbett]

I knew I had Annie Finch's anthology around somewhere. And lo, in the chapter on hendecasyllabics, by Rachel Hadas, there's one of RH's own poems as an example. I don't have the fortitude to type it out, but it's here: "On That Mountain."

She includes the other examples we've already mentioned, and one we haven't: John Hollander's example of the meter, taken from his book Rhyme's Reason.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Maryann, you're a star! Thanks.

[John Whitworth]

You know, it's not difficult and just a bit sleep-inducing. Perhaps Stevie Smith's example is really the way to go when she writes like Marianne Moore. The syllable count is paramount, not the rhythm, which shifts subtly from line to line.

[ross hamilton hill]

In London and Spring has definitely not sprung yet, except for two trees of pink blossom peeping through by the railway tracks.

[John Whitworth]

Get out to Canterbury. In the Blean Forest spring has sprung like anything, crocuses and daffodils and woodpeckers and people walking the dogs with a spring in their step.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Six inches of snow here on the first day of spring.

Nemo

[Roger Slater]

Yes, it's spring, and yet the weathermen still call it a "winter storm."

[Janice D. Soderling]

Should one have a collection that includes "In Due Season" by WH Auden, it is a nice spring poem. It can also be read online. Just goggle.

The much-quoted "In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love" actually comes from the dismal Tennyson poem "Locksley Hall". Who knew! http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174629