Autumn In America – In The Weeks Of Painted Leaves
The mornings are chillier.
Night falls faster.
Green turns to brown.
We find ourselves in Autumn once again.
It’s a bittersweet season. The clarity of sunlight and the crisp air is invigorating, but it’s also a reminder that winter’s fast approaching. Autumn marks both a beginning – of new ventures, fresh starts – and an ending: summer is dying, a fate it shares with everyone and everything.
During this nostalgic time of year, we wanted to revisit a few poets and journey to the places their poems bring to life.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Born in 1207, the 13th Century Persian poet, mystic, and Sufi master Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi is celebrated for his profound spiritual poetry that transcends cultural and religious boundaries. His writings – which feature themes of love, spirituality, and the quest for divine union – continue to inspire readers around the world. Visit the Rumi Center in Seattle.
Rumi’s poem “A Continual Autumn” captures the dual nature of the season:
Inside each of us there’s
a continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are
blown out over the water,
a crow sits in the blackened limbs and
talks about what’s gone.
There’s a necessary dying, and
then we are reborn breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground.
Be crumbled.
So wildflowers will come up where you are.
Pike Street Market – Seattle, WA – Photo by Clarisse Meyer (Unsplash)
Karina Borowicz
Contemporary American poet Karina Borowicz is known for her evocative explorations of memory and place. Her poetry captures a delicate balance of nostalgia and observation, as well as startling imagery. Working in her Massachusetts garden, Borowicz thinks of the past and concludes “September Tomatoes” with these lines:
My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village
as they pulled the flax. Songs so old
and so tied to the season that the very sound
seemed to turn the weather.
For the complete poem, go to the Poetry Foundation
Visit Massachusetts for spectacular Fall Foliage.
Leaf Peeping in MA – Photo by Belia Koziak (Unsplash)
Effie Lee Newsome
Black American poet Effie Lee Newsome (1885 – 1979) grew up in Philadelphia and published numerous poems in leading journals of the Harlem Renaissance. While Newsome edited the children’s column “Little Page” in the NAACP’s publication The Crisis, she also wrote children’s poetry that encouraged young readers to see their own beauty reflected in fairy tales, folklore, and nature. This poem sounds a celebratory autumnal note:
O Autumn, Autumn! O pensive light
and wistful sound!
Gold-haunted sky, green-haunted ground!
When, wan, the dead leaves flutter by
Deserted realms of butterfly!
When robins band themselves together
To seek the sound of sun-steeped weather;
and all of summer’s largesse goes
For lands of olive and the rose!
Philly On A Fall Afternoon – Photo by Chris Henry (Unsplash)
Visit Philadelphia – Autumn in the City of Brotherly Love
Qiu Jin
Qiu Jin was a fascinating figure – a poet, a feminist, and a revolutionary who was beheaded in 1907 for her part in attempting to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. The New York Times included Jin in its “Overlooked” obituary section.
Here’s “A River of Crimson: A Brief Stay in the Glorious Capital,” translated by Yilin Wang:
A brief stay in the glorious Capital;
soon, it’s Mid-Autumn Festival again.
Sheltering by the fence, chrysanthemums bloom everywhere,
the autumn air cool and clear, as if freshly cleansed.
War songs from all four directions falter
as I finally break through the siege of encircling foes;
the aftertaste of these past eight years
makes me long wistfully for Zhejiang.
Bitterly forced to behave as a wife with painted brows,
I’m full of disdain!
Not a man in the flesh,
unable to walk among them;
but my heart is stronger,
more fierce than a man’s!
I think of my inner spirit,
stirring often with passion on others’ behalf.
How can narrow, uncultivated minds
comprehend my nature?
A hero at the path’s end
must suffer trials and tribulations.
In the vast, worldly dust, where can I find my soulmate?
My robe is stained with tears!
Vernon Duke
Any collection of musings on the season must include composer / lyricist Vernon Duke’s ode to a certain East Coast city and its “glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel.” Duke composed this jazz standard in Westport, Connecticut during the summer of 1934, “Autumn in New York”. Many megastars have recorded covers over the years – Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk – and more recently Allison Young & Josh Turner. Have a listen below:
It’s autumn in New York
That brings the promise of new love
Autumn in New York
Is often mingled with pain
Lovers that bless the dark
On benches in Central Park
It’s autumn in New York
It’s good to live it again…
