Poetry Review: Blooms of the Berry by Madison Julius Cawein

Madison Julius Cawein

It is the way of the world that some things are inevitably forgotten. The human mind does not possess the capacity to record all the effects of the human race since the time of our banishment from the garden up to whatever epoch we are abiding in. As so it happens, in our journey, some things are bound to fall by the wayside without our advertence and later on never to be remembered again. We have tried to mitigate this imperfection of our fallen humanity by record keeping. However, even then the collection is too vast to collect each and every facet of our long-standing civilization, and owing to the fact that most of them are not equally important, we must pick and choose which of these records are the most valuable, so that we can have more have a proper idea of our past, present, and the forever distance, ever nearing, never touching future.

In one area, we can see this process most clearly: literature. People have written since time immortal and yet not all is remembered. The number of literature cannot all be accounted for, so selection becomes a must. Yet one cannot help but feel a tinge of sadness for those who don’t pass the test. I feel thus for Madison Julius Cawein’s poetry.

If it weren’t for the poetry app installed on my phone and the random, new poem it gave me every day, I should never have come across his poetry. The man is simply, completely forgotten. I wouldn’t be exaggerating when I say that I might be the only living man in the whole wide world to even bring up his name and his works. And this task, I shall do so with zealous duty, for I love his poetry, and it is my confidence that his poetry should be read.

Blooms of the Berry falls into the tradition of the English Romantic movement. Cawein, from what I could gather from the scant information available of him, was hugely influenced by John Keats, so much so that they called him the ‘Keats of Kentucky’. And while I have not read the Englishman in any depth, I am well-acquainted with the material of the other Romantics such as Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge and can say that Mr. Cawein is a fine poet worthy of being counted among them and being read and remembered alongside them.

I think a review of the poetry contained in this collection would be a disservice to Mr. Cawein and his skill, charm, and profundity. It is more productive to read him than hear him being discussed. So, I shall leave you with the very first poem of this book so that you can judge for yourselves the merits of his verse. Perhaps this review itself shall suffer the same fate as the work it is discussing, but if by fate, somebody’s eyes happen to gaze upon it, glow at the poem included, and grope hungrily for more, I would be satisfied with the little seed I could plant.

Proem

Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing,

Led me, wrapped in many moods,

Thro’ the green sonorous woods

Of belated Spring;

Till I came where, glad with heat,

Waste and wild the fields were strewn,

Olden as the olden moon,

At my weary feet;

Wild and white with starry bloom,

One far milky-way that dashed,

When some mad wind o’er it flashed,

Into billowy foam.

I, bewildered, gazed around,

As one on whose heavy dreams

Comes a sudden burst of beams,

Like a mighty sound.

If the grander flowers I sought,

But these berry-blooms to you,

Evanescent as their dew,

Only these I brought.