The Line Break

Whether you love the crisp, falling leaves, the pumpkin spiced lattes and sweater weather, or whether fall fills you with some deep melancholy you can’t quite name, most people find that fall gives them feelings of some kind. The good news is that writing, like all art, is a place where feelings are a natural part of the context in which we make our art. I will even go so far to say that no writer or artist makes good art by denying, dismissing or minimizing their feelings.

Here is a poem by the 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins that is all about feeling some VERY big feelings in autumn. In fact, it is about an adult watching a child who is crying over the falling leaves. It is such a richly beautiful poem in terms of sonics or sound: “Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed / What heart heard of, ghost guessed”–what incredible lines for the day after Halloween! Though “ghost” really means “spirit” here, like the holy ghost, or the holy spirit. But when I was running through our park yesterday, and the gold poplar leaves were crunching underfoot, I thought of Hopkins’ “though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie”–like WHAT an incredible line that somehow describes the feeling of all the leaves dropping at once and also such a feeling of human desolation, it’s almost a SciFi scene.

Today’s prompt, then: write your fall feelings by first writing a list of ten images or details you’ve noticed about the changing season. And then write your heart out!

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.