Spring Is Here

Many people I know pay some attention to the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice, but does anyone pay any attention to the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox? Well, it just happened on March 20/21 and nobody said boo. Nothing on any of my printed calendars or online calendars, no Facebook posts, no “Happy Spring!” shouted out by passing strangers. And isn’t that a little strange? Except for T.S. Eliot’s nod to April as “the cruelest month,” most people are big fans of Springtime.

 

And why not? The cherry tree and almond trees, the rhododendron and forsythia bushes, the wisteria vines and bougainvillea, the daffodils and tulips, the wildflowers are all a’bloom. The trees are dressing themselves again in green, the robins are returning from warmer climes, the red-wing blackbirds are singing and resurrection and rebirth are in the air, independent of any Easter story or dogma. The animals are mating and the eros puts a little spring in our steps (double meaning) as we're beholding the glory of beautiful bodies in shorts and dresses. 

 

So many English and American poets have sung Spring’s praises. A short list in chronological order:

•  Thomas Nashe’s Spring, The Sweet Spring

• William Shakespeare’s Spring and Sonnet 97 (From you I have been absent in the Spring)

•  William Blake’s To Spring and Spring

•  William Wordsworth’s Lines Written in Early Spring and Daffodils (also titled I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud)

• Robert Browning’s Pippa’s Song

• Emily Dickinson’s A Light Exists in Spring and Dear March…Come in

• AE Housman’s Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now. 

• e.e.cummings In Just Spring

• Langston Hughes An Earth Song

• Mary Oliver Spring

 

Then there’s more praise from various songs in The Great American Songbook. How many do you know?

 

• Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

• Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year

• Just Spring

• They Say It’s Spring

• It Might As Well Be Spring

• Some Other Spring

• Suddenly It’s Spring

• Younger than Springtime

• You Must Believe in Spring

·      April in Paris

·      April Showers

·      I’ll Remember April

·      One Morning in May

 

May I suggest a little homework for the belatedly celebrate the Vernal Equinox? Check out the above poems—and you don’t have to dig up your old poetry anthologies from high school that you probably threw out anyway. Enter any of the titles online and “Voila!” And for the songs, go to Spotify or Pandora or what have you, and Boom! there they are! Or see them live (some of them) on Youtube.  Performed by many different artists, so I’ll just suggest a few renditions: 

 

• Blossom Dearie singing They Say It’s Spring and It Might As Well Be Spring

• Billie Holiday singing Some Other Spring

• Ella Fitzgerald singing April in Paris

• Frank Sinatra I’ll Remember April

• Tony Bennet singing (accompanied by Bill Evans) You Must Believe in Spring

 

Happy homework! Happy Spring!

 

PS Extra credit if you check out all the Japanese haiku about Spring.

PSS Extra extra credit if you go out for a walk to behold the flowers and write your own poem or compose your own song!