Sarah Blake, In Spring Time

 

 

12.

The bird spirit understands that her new form is more beautiful. Even
if it is less seen.

And she flies so easily. Minutes ago she flew right under a bird of prey.

Hours ago she was above the clouds. The air was thin. The stars and
moon were close.

Her body has been singing to her from under the earth.

The song is sad, and when she sings, a whistling noise leaves her
torn stomach.

The mismatched notes of her grieving body are the saddest of all.

The third poetry collection from American expatriate Sarah Blake, a poet and fiction writer currently living outside of London, England, is In Spring Time (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2023), following on the heels of her Mr. West (Wesleyan University Press, 2015) [see my review of such here] and Let’s Not Live on Earth (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) [see my review of such here]. In Spring Time is composed as a book-length suite via a sequence of sixty numbered poems that loosely thread in, across and through the collection, grouped together across four numbered sections (“DAY 1,” “DAY 2,” “DAY 3” and “DAY 4”). Blake composes her meditative thread across a meandering of compressed time and the advent of spring, writing rebirth, renewal and death; she drifts across allegory and the specifics of foliage, wild animals and even a horse. As part “31” offers: “She likes this. She likes you. She has no idea what she wants.”

Offering a poem that sits simultaneously within the body and the body of nature, Blake writes the bounds of a season, following the details of movement and temporal space. “Who’s to say how far away the branches are?” she writes, as part of the poem “16.” in “DAY 2,” “Who’s to say how far / away the sky is? Who spends their time measuring distances? // Is that an act of touching?” In Spring Time offers of and from spring, sketching moments through what appear as a kind of lyrical and physical dream-state of horses, streams and daily meditations, attempting to find her footing. As “20.” includes: “You’re glad the sun is going to spend time every day shining on you. / This version of you that will outlast your body.”