Poster poems: March

And so here we are: March many-weathers is upon us. For the Romans this was the month of Mars, god of war, when the start of the Mediterranean spring made it possible for the imperial armies to get back to fighting after the winter break. But for most of us, the vernal season probably has more to do with the symbolism of love than with war, and with life rather than death.

In The Shepheardes Calender, Spenser's March is quite clearly the month of Cupid, "the Poets God of Love", and his shepherd boys while away their time singing the praises of the first spring flowers and the boy-god's amorous darts. It is, however, a bitter-sweet song. As Thomalin's emblem warns us:

It is not within the shepherd lad's store of wisdom to know how to ease the bitter gall of love unrequited.

But March doesn't have to have such painful connotations. Indeed, for Emily Dickinson it is "the month of expectation", a welcome visitor bringing colour back to a winter-bleached world. In Gary Snyder's Kyoto: March, the love he writes about is both warmer and more inclusive than anything Thomalin dreamed of, despite the snow that dusts the imminent, and possibly immanent, plum blossoms, and the singing birds that herald the new season.

As Snyder reminds us, March can be both a spring and a winter month. This becomes even more evident in Elizabeth Bishop's poem The End of March, with its icy beach walk, boarded-up summer house and tantalising glimpse of "the lion sun" hinting at better things to come. The poem is a vivid evocation of that between-seasons world where "many things … are dubious" – perhaps because many contradictory things are simultaneously present.

No such meteorological ambiguity affects Algernon Charles Swinburne's March: An Ode. Swinbourne's long lines and rich mouthfuls of consonants presage a benign March that is, as he says, "leader and lord of the year that exults to be born". It seems to be that you should not look to poetry for seasonal or weather-related advice unless you want to end up confused.

The final two poems I want to look at this month refer to important relationships in their writers' lives. The first of these is Swift's Stella's Birthday March 13, 1727, a poem worth celebrating in and for itself because it shows a happier aspect than we normally see in that great writer's often embittered works, as the poet enjoins his beloved companion to "look with joy on what is past" rather than worry about an uncertain future.

The second of this pair is Denise Levertov's To RD, March 4th 1988. The RD of the title is the poet Robert Duncan, who died on the 3 February that same year, and who had been the poet mentor of Levertov's youth. The poem is a lament for a lost friendship, but one that had been misplaced years before Duncan's death. It is a tender and moving gesture of reconciliation, of friendship rediscovered, albeit a bit late. March love can be directed towards the winter gone by as much as the spring to come.

And so we begin the third phase of our Poster poems calendar with this month's challenge: to write poems that reflect your view of March. Is it spring or winter, a season of love or of regret? Maybe you have some personal associations with the month that warrant recording. Whatever it is, please do share your March poems here.

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