Poem of the Week: Spring Day (Walk) - Amy Lowell

Good Afternoon everyone,

Poem of the week this week comes from a style of poetry I've been enjoying this week. The style is called Imagism, and it's an early 20th century style that you can read about on wikipedia. All I want to say about it is that it forces the poet to describe what they see in such a way that it invokes strong emotions (by techniques involving synonym choices and phrasing) without being romantic or obvious. Read this exerpt from one of the great Imagists, Amy Lowell. If you want to read the whole poem (which describes an entire day), you can find it here.

Spring Day
by Amy Lowell

Walk
Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer
away without touching.
On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass
marbles,
with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet
clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red
striped agates.
The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into
the gutters
under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus
in the air,
but there are no flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the
street,
and a girl with a gay Spring hat and blowing skirts. The
dust and the wind
flirt at her ankles and her neat, high-heeled patent leather shoes. Tap,
tap,
the little heels pat the pavement, and the wind rustles among the
flowers
on her hat.
A water-cart crawls slowly on the other side of
the way. It is green and gay
with new paint, and rumbles contentedly, sprinkling clear water
over
the white dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells
of tulips and narcissus.
The thickening branches make a pink `grisaille'
against the blue sky.
Whoop! The clouds go dashing at each
other and sheer away just in time.
Whoop! And a man's hat careers down the street in front
of the white dust,
leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and trundles ahead
of the wind,
jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green.
A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air,
sharp-beaked, irresistible,
shouting to the wind to make way. A glare of dust and
sunshine
tosses together behind it, and settles down. The sky
is quiet and high,
and the morning is fair with fresh-washed air.


P.S. Feel free to leave any comments you have, regarding your experience of reading poems on my blog or other poems you would like to offer up as future poems of the week.