April showers bring May flowers, along with longer days, warmer nights, and constant birdsong. So why are poets in such a mood about spring?  Maybe because all that new life is hard to take when you’re grieving a loss or coping with change. Now that we’re well into May, might we look back and agree with T. S. Eliot? Was April the cruelest month?

Resources:

Braganza, V. M. “Our Second April.” Los Angeles Review of Books (24 May 2021). https://lareviewofbooks.org/blog/essays/second-april/  

Chaucer, Geoffrey. General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website. Harvard University.  https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0

Dickinson, Emily. “In Shadow” (I dreaded that first robin so). Poems by Emily Dickinson, ed. Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson.  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12242/12242-h/12242-h.htm#I_dreaded_that_first_robin_so

Eliot, T. S. “The Waste Land.”  Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

Honey Bee Suite. “Good News Bees: More than a Colorful Buzz in the Blooms” (15 April 2023). https://www.honeybeesuite.com/good-news-bees-more-than-a-colorful-buzz-in-the-blooms/

Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Assault.” Second April. A Celebration of Women Writers, ed. Mary Mark Ockerbloom. University of Pennsylvania. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/millay/april/second-april.html#32

---. “Spring.” https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/millay/april/second-april.html#1

Portus, Rosamund. “The Stories We Tell: Exploring the Folklore of Bees in an Age of Extinction.” NICHE (4 November 2022). https://niche-canada.org/2022/11/04/the-stories-we-tell-exploring-the-folklore-of-bees-in-an-age-of-extinction/

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