Good Spring Returns
And I'm taking a break
all those human sings
close not your better ears to, while good Spring
returns with a dance and a sigh
John Berryman, Dream Song 27
It’s that time of year when the words Some Flowers Soon are actually fulfilling their promise in the world beyond the internet, so I’m taking a Spring break from today until April 19th. Thanks to everyone for reading and making this the most enjoyable thing I write every week, and in particular to paid subscribers — whose subscriptions will be paused for a fortnight — for making it a viable way to spend my weekend mornings.
If you’d like some fresh reading about poetry in the meantime, I highly recommend catching up with a new weekly newsletter that has been an education for me over the last three months. On Inner Resources, Robert Potts is writing his way through John Berryman’s 77 Dream Songs (1964), having learned all of them by heart. It’s a brilliant, human-sized exercise in close reading some aurally addictive but often difficult poems, which vindicates what the poet’s mother tells him in Dream Song 14:
“Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.”
You can find all the posts so far here: https://robertpotts.substack.com/profile/posts
