Fickle April: National Poetry Month

T.S. Eliot called April "the cruellest month." Geoffrey Chaucer referred to it as a "time of sweet showers." Toubadours Simon & Garfunkel note April as a time "When streams are ripe and swelled with rain." Even cartoonists recognize April's split personality.

I posted this poem on David L. Harrison's Word of the Month site, where I've participated regularly for over a year. A word is chosen each month, and the challenge to poets is to create a poem using that word. This month's word, "detour," seemed just right for April.

Contradiction

April detoured from
luscious lilacs and
sun-soaked skin to
cold cloud cover,
wicked wind and
fiendish frost.
Even the showers shiver.
(copyright 2012, Jane Heitman Healy)

What do you think about April?

Hear Eliot himself read from "The Waste Land":


Hear Chaucer's "General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales read in Middle English:
The Canterbury Tales - General Prologue -... by poetictouch

Chaucer's Middle English Still Sounds Good--National Poetry Month

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/ / CC BY 2.0

Our pear and cherry trees bloom, tulips color lawns, and dormant plants spring to attention. This burst of life reminds me of the first line of Chaucer's "Prologue to the Canterbury Tales":

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower....

That's from the modern English version. Chaucer wrote it in Middle English, which is still recognizable, but takes a little work to translate:

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour...

Take a minute and listen to it as the Middle English scrolls by:



See the Middle English and Modern version side by side here.

[Canterbury tales mural by Ezra Winter. North Reading Room, west wall, Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C. According to the inscription, this mural shows (left to right): "The Miller, in the lead, piping the band out of Southwark; the Host of Tabard Inn; the Knight, followed by his son, the young Squire, on a white palfrey; a Yeoman; the Doctor of Physic; Chaucer, riding with his back to the observer, as he talks to the Lawyer; the Clerk of Oxenford, reading his beloved classics; the Manciple; the Sailor; the Prioress; the Nun; and three priests." (Source: John Y. Cole, On These Walls. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1995, p. 79)]

Which of Chaucer's tales do you remember? Which do you like best? How are the pilgrims' travels like your own?