{"id":1824,"date":"2016-04-08T00:00:47","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T04:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1824"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:47:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:47:49","slug":"april-8-edna-st-vincent-millay-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2016\/04\/08\/april-8-edna-st-vincent-millay-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"April 8 – Edna St. Vincent Millay “Spring”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, \u00a0April 8 \u00a0\u2014> \u00a0“To what purpose, April, do you return again?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several weeks back The New York Times ran a piece on the 1924 Democratic National Convention. \u00a0When teaching US history, I found it helpful to single out 1924 as the meanest of the mean years that roamed the land in the wake of World War I, that brutal, demoralizing war. \u00a0 Clumsy reconstructive surgery for veterans who did not die near the place of their wounds, marked their bodies life-long.\u00a0 None worse, perhaps, than damage from the new chemistry, poison gas. \u00a0And for a young nation alive with bursting industrial achievement, exultant with liberating moral codes, (U.S. women won the right to vote in 1920.) the post war years woke anger and fear on many fronts. \u00a0Racism in the US reached one of its most intense boiling points. \u00a0The Ku Klux Klan peaked in numbers and influence in 1924; lynchings of African Americans peaked that year as well.<\/p>\n

The Democratic National Convention played all this out in a way that makes this year\u2019s GOP stump nastiness look tame; 103 votes to name a candidate, two evenly matched caucuses:\u00a0\u00a0Irish Catholic Tammany Hall vs the Klan. \u00a0Violence was strategic and colorful: \u00a0fist fights, roosters released in the galleries, thrown chairs on the convention floor (http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/03\/16\/nyregion\/gop-path-recalls-democrats-convention-disaster-in-1924.html?_r=0<\/a>) \u00a0\u2014> \u00a0Read it; guaranteed to blow your mind.)<\/p>\n

Such was the world in which Nobel Laureate Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote this hard poem. She lifts a line from Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth who understood that beauty in words carries hard edges and liberates the imagination (“Life in itself\/ Is nothing,\/An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.\u201d). \u00a0The poem can invite the reader to recognize human kinship with the mean and violent as well as the tender and kind. \u00a0“Out loud with pauses?” \u00a0Give it a try. Edna might hear our efforts to pay attention and be smiling.<\/p>\n

Have a blest weekend.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

p.s.\u00a0Hard news notwithstanding, it is still opening day for Tigers baseball in Motown.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cSpring\u201d \u00a0 1921<\/p>\n

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
\nBeauty is not enough.
\nYou can no longer quiet me with the redness
\nOf little leaves opening stickily.
\nI know what I know.
\nThe sun is hot on my neck as I observe
\nThe spikes of the crocus.
\nThe smell of the earth is good
\nIt is apparent that there is no death.
\nBut what does that signify?
\nNot only under ground are the brains of men
\nEaten by maggots
\nLife in itself
\nIs nothing,
\nAn empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
\nIt is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
\nApril
\nComes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.<\/p>\n

\"Millay\"<\/a>
\nEdna St. Vincent Millay \u00a0in 1933
\n(http:\/\/www.kensanes.com\/spring-millay.html<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, \u00a0April 8 \u00a0\u2014> \u00a0“To what purpose, April, do you return again?” Several weeks back The New York Times ran a piece on the 1924 Democratic National Convention. \u00a0When teaching US history, I found it helpful to single out 1924 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1826,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}