Spring is the Period

Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.


     -F948, J844, sheet 19, 1865


Spring is the Period
Express from God.

The word "Period" is shorthand in Dickinson for the idea that something will come to an end. This is a poem about beginnings, but a reminder of the end is right there at the beginning of the poem. 

“Express” is another word to consider here. It can mean "to send quickly," but also "to communicate what you think and feel." Both meanings are at play. I also think of another definition of the word, which is to remove milk from a mother's breast using pumping in order to be able to feed it to a baby in a bottle. Spring is God’s expressed milk.

This first sentence ends, we note, with a period instead of the usual dash. It sets us up for the second longer sentence:

Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.

Spring is a gift from God says the first sentence, but the second says that none get there without a friendly, but officious meeting with God.

The word interview is derived from the Middle French entrevue (meaning "to see each other"). The term in 1865 would have been used to describe official meetings. Neither of the two most common modern definitions, the job and journalistic interview, existed back then in the way we understand them today.

Why does Dickinson call an encounter with God an interview rather than a meeting or communion? It turns God from an abstract theological presence into something like the top brass of spring, interviewing the natural world before letting it loose.

The word "cordial" has the connotation of being friendly but formal. “None stir abroad / Without a cordial interview / With God.” could merely mean that everything that comes out into the world in spring has a direct encounter with God, but the tone of the words "cordial interview" hint at something more going on. “Cordial," with it's bureaucratic tone, carries some irony. 

“Cordial” can have that slightly too-polite quality. It's warm and friendly, but also perhaps the kind of phrase you'd use about a meeting with someone who has power over you. It might be a stretch, but I can hear a little menace in the understated irony of this word, like in the Godfather: 

"Don Corleone has requested 'a cordial interview' with you before you leave, signore." 

I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, but I do think there's a hint of a power dynamic in the poem. 

Mostly though the term "cordial interview" is light and humorous. God is conducting interviews with the things that are about to emerge, the flowers and birds. If, after a long difficult winter, God's going to have a little talk with us in March or April, what does He say? The reader of this poem, along with the birds bees and butterflies, is being interviewed. God asks you, "So, what are your summer plans?"

Or, to quote the poet Mary Oliver, "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Maybe Dickinson had this kind of cordial in mind as well?

P.S. The phrase "none stir abroad" reminds me that Emily did not go abroad. She stayed at home, like a flower that refused the cordial interview and kept her own company instead.

P.P.S. I like how the emphatic "d" at the end of God seems to be the impetus for the rhyme scheme of this poem. If you've spent much time in church, you've might've heard how preachers like to emphasize that "d" when they say the word "God." In the Midwest, where I grew up, the sound was sometimes given its own syllable. GawDah. 

In this poem we get a great rhyme scheme with that emphatic ending D sound, which acts like a bass drum thud driving the rhythm. 

1 and Duh

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3 

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

D is an interesting letter, meaning-wise. It is generally thought that the letter started out as an pictogram of "door," and you can see it if you look at the letter. It does look like a door, albeit a hobbit-door. 

But the sound of the letter is more like a door shutting than opening. Thud! If you turn the sound of it way up, like, say, in the word "DeaD," it's scary. It carries a touch of terror when that closing door sound comes so emphatically at the enD.