Andrena Zawinski
Return
There is a morning inside you waiting to burst open into Light. ~Rumi The forced tulips blossomed in just a week, petals so dense, so bound to each other, bulbs swollen with new bold blooms dropping their heady orange petals almost as quickly as they seemed to have appeared. Even in this long drought, even with their fading green and quickly wilting stems, I force them deep inside a mound of rich earth, where they stand again even taller, roots reaching downward in the need for revival, in the the want of resurrection beneath a dreamy sun, inside the breathy breeze, awaiting the coming kiss of rain. Judge's Comments -
I keep coming back to the word "forced," such an interesting word in the context of this poem. Of course, it refers to the way one starts tulip bulbs in the first stanza, but then it appears again in the second strophe in its more common use: "I force them deep inside/ a mound of rich earth". The repetition of that verb in those two different contexts ties the strophes together, and also creates a tension between the gentleness of "the coming kiss of rain" at the end and the awareness that a lot of force has gone into the fecundity of spring. I also like the richness of alliteration, as thick in some places as the "petals/ so dense". And yet it's not an overwhelming or artificial alliteration at all. The poet separates some alliterative words with some space -- such as "rebirth" and "resurrection," "rich," "reaching." Other alliterative words are placed next to each other, especially toward the end, echoing the promise of fullness. |
Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection is Landings from Kelsay Books. She has two previous prize winning collection of poetry, Something About and Traveling in Reflected Light and has authored four chapbooks. She is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com and founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon. Her work has appeared in Progressive Magazine, Pacific Review, Rattle, QuarterlyWest, Blue Collar Review, and elsewhere.
|
