This week I’ve been posting two poems per day: one in which Dickinson mentioned the month of March, and then a second poem with which to draw some comparison or contrast. This is the final post of these pairings, and today, I have “We like March – his shoes are Purple” and “The Hills erect their Purple Heads.”
| Note: The pic below shows three versions of “We like March.” Two appear in the Johnson edition of “Complete Poems,” and one – which is almost identical to the second Johnson version – appears in the Franklin edition. |  |
Though both poems focus on seasonal change, you can probably guess another connection I made with the poems: the color purple. And interestingly, Dickinson used the word “purple” literally from head to toe.
In the first poem, March comes in with purple ground cover and/or flowers (i.e., its “shoes are purple”), and in the second poem, the crests of hills are purple – but this time, due to the higher elevations, Dickinson states “The Hills erect their Purple Heads.”
The third line of “We like March” made me laugh because I’ve heard that people in the northeast say that their four seasons of the year are summer, fall, winter – and MUD! LOL.
By the way, that penultimate line of “We like March” – “With the Blue Birds buccaneering the sky” – reminded me of the “Buccaneers of Buzz” in yesterday’s poem, “Bees are black with gilt surcingles.”
I love the opening lines of the other poem, “The hills erect their Purple Heads / The Rivers lean to see” – yet how disheartening that Dickinson states the bulk of us seem not to have “A Curiosity” about the renewal of the season. I suppose that many of us get caught up in the perpetual quotidian obligations and responsibilities that we miss out on the wonders around us?
In the first poem, March comes in with purple ground cover and/or flowers (i.e., its “shoes are purple”), and in the second poem, the crests of hills are purple – but this time, due to the higher elevations, Dickinson states “The Hills erect their Purple Heads.”
The third line of “We like March” made me laugh because I’ve heard that people in the northeast say that their four seasons of the year are summer, fall, winter – and MUD! LOL.
By the way, that penultimate line of “We like March” – “With the Blue Birds buccaneering the sky” – reminded me of the “Buccaneers of Buzz” in yesterday’s poem, “Bees are black with gilt surcingles.”
I love the opening lines of the other poem, “The hills erect their Purple Heads / The Rivers lean to see” – yet how disheartening that Dickinson states the bulk of us seem not to have “A Curiosity” about the renewal of the season. I suppose that many of us get caught up in the perpetual quotidian obligations and responsibilities that we miss out on the wonders around us?
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