What the rain might do
John Claiborne Isbell

I was awake at three when the rain started falling

unexpectedly, but then with that sense of quiet fate

which makes the rain such a frequent metaphor.

For months now, it’s been snow, and the rain is welcome

to wet this town and the State of Indiana

for all of me, like some kind of Ode to Spring –

especially with me indoors and not under it.

Every plant with roots must be drinking in this water,

preparing for spring’s resurrection. The glistening streets

are surely almost empty; and as for me,

I too am almost empty, like a jug

the rain might fill if it were left outdoors.

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Fliss: Welcome, John; and once again, well met! Many thanks for your contribution to the present issue. So, here we are in May, and you’re awake at 3 a.m. again, this time listening to the rain. The first thing I notice about the poem is its meter, I think. Is it a het met, a mixed meter, piece?

John: You’re welcome, Fliss, and well met again yourself! Yes, this is het met, which is a fine phrase, though it plays rather closely with iambic pentameter. Written in Indiana, it’s at least ten years old.

F: Yes, I noticed it’s set in Indiana. I hope you enjoyed the visit! I hear two lines of IP, the final two, then plays in lines 3 to 6, 9, and 10. Is that about right? The remaining lines seem more hex, maybe?

J: Thank you, Fliss! It was rather a long visit – I lived there twenty years! Yes, the last two lines are straight-up IP, and the first two are very irregular, but the intervening lines tend to be very loose IP to my ear:

and so forth. IP is a very accommodating or forgiving line in the English tradition, to my mind.

F: Thanks for the scansion, John, which fits with what I have in my ears. That was indeed a long visit! Moving through the poem, I like the ‘Ode to Spring’ at the close of the first stanza. When you wrote the poem, did you have an ode in mind?

J: Now then, an ode; I likely had Keats’s great ‘To Autumn’ in the back of my mind, and perhaps Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. So no, no ode to spring in particular, though I’m sure there are several.

F: Oh yes, we love Keats’s ode at WM. And Stravinsky’s piece too, in a very different way. Your word ‘resurrection’ fits well with The Rite of Spring, I think, and I like the thought of all those plants, drinking. The end is interesting too, concerning the narrator’s state of mind. I’ve never known snow for months; perhaps it has quite an impact?

J: You are quite right to envisage months of snow having an impact. It certainly does, and it leads directly to the word ‘resurrection’ that you have astutely singled out. The move from a frozen world to a green world is dramatic and worth celebrating, I feel. Yes, the plants are all drinking away!

F: Well, we should join them. There happens to be a bar here at WM, so perhaps a couple of ciders! We also have a link to The Rite of Spring conducted by Bernstein (fast!) and another to Keats’ ‘To Autumn’, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation. ‘Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?’

J: Splendid! Perhaps they’ll turn up the more we turn to drinking.

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John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (April 2025), both available free online. John spent 35 years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more!

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What the rain might do John Claiborne Isbell

What the rain might do
John Claiborne Isbell