03.29.2024
Springtime is here, so check out these vintage seasonal offerings from the original Cheshire, two from early, and one from much later, in the magazine’s history. Good and true with age. Happy weekend!
Villanelle — Clarence Owen
When I hear you softly sing,
Little one, with eyes of blue,
All my thoughts are of the Spring.
Violets are blossoming,
Everything seems fresh and new,
When I hear you softly sing.
In the skies the bird’s on wing,
In your eyes the light is true,
And my thoughts are of the Spring.
Little brooks are whispering,
Murm’ring, little one, like you,
When I hear you softly sing.
Though the Autumn winds may ring
Through the trees of sombre hue,
All my thoughts are of the Spring.
Though the Autumn winds may ring
Cold and sadness—sorrow too—
When I hear you softly sing,
All my thoughts are of the Spring.
— Cheshire 1.1 (November 1931)
Approach of Spring — Eunice Rickaby
I’ll bid my daffodils to grow;
I’ll coax my bluebirds back to sing
Songs that lull me with tales aglow
Of sunshine, showers, sap and spring
Even catching the wind on wing
In their melodies throbbing low.
I’ll bid my daffodils to grow;
I’ll coax my bluebirds back to sing;
And then the mild South wind will blow.
Thoughts of gaiety it will bring,
Pledging spring with flowers on row
To salve the past cold winter’s sting.
I’ll bid my daffodils to grow;
I’ll coax my bluebirds back to sing.
— Cheshire 1.4 (May 1932)
Sonnet — G. Chojnacki
Springtime projects are bound to rise and swell
and point to darkened hothouse flowerbeds.
We sweatsoak feeling clumps until well-fed;
In summer’s striking heat we’re parallel.
The stroke of summer but precedes the spell
when autumn’s musk feels green a touching red
between the sheets of leaves, the rest unsaid;
Too soon the soil is bare, too cold to dwell.
Too cold to dwell on the wrinkled snows of death.
Yet spring is anxious to become a fact;
In fact, the summer too is hard to grasp.
But autumn is the time to catch your breath
and keep it there to hold your love intact;
the seasoned gardener guards against the asp.
— Cheshire 33.2 (Summer 1964)
03.08.2024
In the lead-up to our 50th Anniversary next year, Cream City Review is revisiting work in our Archives. Below is one from Ted Kooser, Pulitizer Prize winner, former U.S. Poet Laureate, and one of the great living writers of contemporary poetry. This poem would go on to appear in his excellent collection Weather Central (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). Ted’s website can be found here.
Fireflies
The cricket’s pocket knife is bent
from prying up the lid of a can
of new moons. It skips on the grindstone,
chattering, showering sparks
that float away over the darkened yard.
This is the Fourth of July
for the weary ants, who have no union,
who come home black with coal dust.
Deep in the grass you can hear them
unfolding their canvas chairs.
There is a pier that arches out
into the evening, its pilings of shadow,
its planking of breeze, and on it
a woman stands snapping the shade
of a lantern, signaling someone.
– from Cream City Review 16.1 (Spring 1992).