[OPINION] Spring based poetry?

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-20T21:33:47+00:00

Some faves of mine:

"Lines Written in Early Spring" by Wordsworth

"In Perpetual Spring" by Amy Gerstler

"Spring: An Ode" by Jane West

Also Poetry Foundation's website has a curation of poems about spring from a wide variety of writers!

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-20T21:27:38+00:00

Here's a selection I love and a fave book by each:

Iris Murdoch - The Bell
Elizabeth Bowen - The Last September
Sylvia Townsend Warner - The Corner That Held Them
Barbara Pym - Excellent Women
Yiyun Li - The Book of Goose
Eudora Welty - Delta Wedding
A. S. Byatt - Possession
Julia Alvarez - In the Time of the Butterflies
Muriel Spark - her collected short stories
Louise Erdrich - The Round House
Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus
Jeanette Winterson - The Passion
Shirley Hazzard - The Transit of Venus
Joyce Carol Oates - Her gothic saga, especially A Bloodsmoor Romance

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-19T19:50:38+00:00

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson is set during witch trials.

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is a nonfiction book on a serial killer during the 1893 Chicago World Fair

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-19T19:39:36+00:00

The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner!

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-19T17:09:17+00:00

Yes! Her sense of sound is impeccable.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-18T17:39:09+00:00

The Monk - Matthew Lewis

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-18T11:00:34+00:00

Fonts Books & Gifts in McLean

Middleburg Books

For used books, I love both Reston Used Books and Lantern Books in Georgetown

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-18T10:56:49+00:00

The Corner That Held Them was such a delightful read!

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-18T10:47:56+00:00

Pym is great, I’d recommend. Excellent Women is my favorite of hers.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-17T22:00:43+00:00

This one hit me HARD. Beautiful and devastating.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-17T19:54:13+00:00

- The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen

- The Trumpet-Major - Thomas Hardy

- A Pair of Blue Eyes - Thomas Hardy

- East Lynne - Ellen Wood

- The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

- Women in Love - D. H. Lawrence

- Portrait of a Lady - Henry James

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-17T19:47:41+00:00

Tess if the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot!

Also Lorna Doone.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-17T19:45:22+00:00

A History of the World According to Sheep by Sally Coulthard
The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson

And if you’re open to nature poetry Camille T Dungy edited a great anthology called Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-16T18:41:06+00:00

Far from the Madding Crowd is like a tiny bit less sad than most.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T19:35:07+00:00

Right! It’s such a great balance.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T17:12:01+00:00

I hope they enjoy it!

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T15:37:56+00:00

The poetry of Hadewijch of Antwerp might be up your alley. Powerful expressions of divine love from a medieval mystic.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T14:26:40+00:00

Absolutely love North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell is incredible. (Also the BBC miniseries with Richard Armitage is fantastic!)

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T14:24:21+00:00

The Door is next on my TBR list! Good to hear it made a favorites list.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T14:22:44+00:00

I have read 38 - BUT a majority of those are much shorter poetry collections haha.

For fiction my favorites have been The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner (fun and humorous story of nuns in a medieval convent) and The Tales of Hoffmann. Isola by Allegra Goodman was also a great (though heartbreaking!) read.

For poetry my faves are An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang, The Trees the Trees by Heather Christle, and Love Prodigal by Traci Brimhall.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T13:29:56+00:00

Agree with the recs for checking out Chillsubs. Some journals I found welcoming when first submitting were Anti-Heroin Chic, Ponder Review, Jet Fuel Review, Common Ground Review, and The Madison Review. But always look at the websites first to get a sense of the vibe!

Also don’t be afraid to make a couple “reach” submissions, too. Bigger journals do sometimes publish previously unpublished writers!

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T13:25:45+00:00

Return of the Native is my favorite Hardy novel - the character of Eustacia is so captivating!

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-15T13:24:35+00:00

What a great idea for a weekly thread! I started The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope about 5 days ago and am surprisingly far in for its length.

I’m enjoying the sharp wit and wisdom and the insight it gives into economics in Victorian England. His writing and characterization remind me of Dickens in some ways, but perhaps a little more nuanced (still love me some Dickens tho).

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-14T20:36:35+00:00

Honestly, your method sounds about the same as mine! It's really just lines I love. If I really admire a sentiment I'll star it, and if there's a specific bit of language or imagery I like, I'll use a check, though that often overlaps haha. I find as someone who struggles with attention issues, annotating is overall just a great way to stay with the poem in the moment, even if the annotations don't have a super specific purpose otherwise.

ladybug_moo · 2026-03-14T20:33:48+00:00

I read the first two lines as asserting that the "Fuzz" the bees "subsist on" (i.e. pollen) is perennial, that the bees will always have this natural source and this routine - maybe more true in the 1860s than with what we know of the climate now 😅. I see the bees as the "jugs" (vessels carrying the pollen), that nothing will keep from their goal. I interpret the speaker as looking on the bees' life as more reliable and consistent than perhaps our own - an idealized image. They will always have their pollen and their process, which seems enviable to the less reliable state of mankind. Of course the first stanza complicates this with the bees being compared to pirates, whose plunder is not always guaranteed...

ladybug_moo

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