Resistance moon: Poplar tassels, willow tendrils

We’re in an ongoing struggle against fear these days. I believe it was fear more than anger that propelled the Kleptocrat into the Oval Office. At the very least, fear was the underpinning of the ugliness we saw at rallies as swastikas and Confederate flags flew proudly, journalists were physically and verbally threatened, and protestors were beaten.

It’s said that the opposite of fear is love, and I tend to agree with that. Love is certainly an evergreen focus of poetry. Every poet since the beginning of writing must have cut his or her teeth on some variant of I-love-my-love-but-my-love-loves-me-not. Either the first blush, the afterglow, or the bitter aftermath.

So let’s have something today from William Carlos Williams, whose day job was as a medical doctor, and who hung about with the likes of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. 

Williams focused on the small things of daily life, and sought to build up a thoroughly American take on poetry, in the face of others he thought were too Euro-centric. He influenced later poets like Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, as well as Denise Levertov.

Here’s his “Memory of April” to get us going.

You say love is this, love is that:

Poplar tassels, willow tendrils

the wind and the rain comb,

tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip—

branches drifting apart. Hagh!

Love has not even visited this country.