Sing the year in, bravely sing
Underneath the dark woods now,
For the winter sun’s returning,
Shining through the greenwood bough.
Rime and hoar are brightly gleaming
Where the furrow met the plow,
—from "Turning Time"
I followed a mention by Lewis Turco to my first sighting of The Flea, an online journal of poetry (quite properly commissioned "By Favor of the Sovereign Muse"), offered in the style of a traditional broadsheet, and with much of the streetwise wit of that genre. I first read the two Wesli Court pieces, including the neat pastoral of this post's head quote. I was hooked by the time I read a third piece from the issue, "Carnal Beauty" by Kate Bernadette Benedict, a tasty parody of G.M. Hopkins's Pied Beauty.
Glory be to God for fleshly things—
For thighs like pliant earthloam under working plow
For “those”-moles pushing upward out of secret rim.
I've read half the volume and it's just delight after delight. Many of the poems touch on winter as a theme, to some extent, but the tone varies quite a bit, the sass of "Carnal Beauty" contrasting the somber evocation of "Child of 9-11," by Michael R. Burch.
Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm — I hope you hear it.
But regardless of the tone of each piece, one thing that strikes me is the consistency of craft. This is a collection of skillful poets selected by a discerning editor, a rare discovery for me. It is poetry that to steal a phrase from Maryann Corbett's "A Trenta-Sei of Mixed Feelings at the Early Onset of Winter", "Sucks the marrowbone / of song." And that is a stimulus to distract from the bite of any winter.