Just a few more days and summer will be here officially on June 21, 2007. Summer provides poets with much motivation to create portrayals of deeply felt experience.
Summer Motivates Poets
The summer season is always a fanciful time of year. The warmth that brings us all outdoors, the warm rain and sunshine that transform the browns and grays of winter into vibrant greens, reds, yellows and all other bright colors all seem to motivate as well as electrify the senses. That such a season is all too short is reason to note it heartily and with a mood of carpe diem.
Emily Dickinson and Summer
And even the end of summer brings strong responses from poets; for example, dramatizing “Indian Summer,” Emily Dickinson writes, “Oh, sacrament of summer days, / Oh, last communion in the haze.” In the same poem, the speaker has claimed, “These are the days when skies put on / The old, old sophistries of June, - / A blue and gold mistake.”
And then she concludes with her notion that something so special as summer must draw to an end in a sacred fashion: “Thy sacred emblems to partake, / Thy consecrated bread to break, / Taste thine immortal wine!”
Poll: What is your favorite summer poem?
As summer tingles the body, it also stimulates the spirit to seek the power behind all of that beauty. Poets are especially open to the call of summer, and many have fashioned fine poems that capture the charm as well as the melancholy that summer effects in minds and hearts.
Please take a moment to vote for your favorite summer poem in this month’s poll. Your choices are:
1. Emily Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives”
2. John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Barefoot Boy”
3. James Whitcomb Riley’s “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”
4. Robert Frost’s “The Oven Bird”
5. Amy Lowell’s “Penumbra”
The poll is located under the blog on the homepage of the Poetry site. Thank you for participating in this month’s poll.
