A Calendar Of Sonnets: January Poem by Helen Hunt Jackson

There are some fines lines here, but the insight into human psychology of this poem is wrong. Love’s loss is painful and anxious even despairing – no Winter metaphor can change that or make us “sleep on content”. The heart, when Love’s summer is over, is not a rose that can sleep through winter, it does not rest in peace. To urge one’s heart to do so, is to imagine that the heart can be subject to the mind’s demands. There is a time when the pain of lost love is over, but that is the beginning of Spring! Winter is (underlined) bad - only a city person with central heating and a full larder could rest in peace in it.

Lovely sonnet on winter by Helen is interesting to read! Poem is very beautiful with images mentioned in it!

It would be easy to get into a long debate about this. However, denying 'that the heart can be subject to the mind's demands' does seem to run counter to the entire 'Cognitive' revolution in modern psychology (beginning, I believe, circa 1980) . It is one of the perspectives in psychology, at least the last time I attended psych 101, in 1997, and one that has many powerful tools for the identification and treatment of psychological disorders, depression, for example. It does suggest that thoughts, emanating, as we know, in the mind, can cause feelings. It is, at least the last time I studied this subject, one of several perspectives. In any event, the idea in this particular poem seems to be a precursor to that line of thinking, and a century before it's time. To my thinking, good poems tend to be open to different interpretations, none of them necessarily 'invalid'. Perhaps this poem, which appears to be an interesting variation on the petrarchan sonnet, is one of them.

that was a really good poem, very good! takes a couple times to understand, but i can well visuliza, good work! Emma

I love poems like this! I love the style of writing. It's so beautiful and it seems ancient today. But like a fine wine, it only grows better with age, especially to those who truly appreciate the art.

Has anyone else noticed that PoemHunter keeps choosing the same poems for poem of the day that was used in a previous year on that same day? Notice that every single comment so far about this poem was made on 14 November, first in 2006, then 2007,2008,2009, then a gap to 2014. Aren't there any real people there at PoemHunter that can actually read poems and pick some new ones for poem of the day that haven't been used before? Or is PoemHunter just a huge bank of computers there in Paris? (You did know that PoemHunter was based in Paris, didn't you? That the website is run by a bunch of Frenchmen (or maybe French computers) trying to run a website in English, which probably accounts for their grammar mistakes on some of the pages. There! Got that of my chest!

I love this sonnet, the flow of langauge and the rich poetic images.

Finest words in beautiful sonnet and wonderful poem it is.

nice sonnet with its flow- O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,

Oh, one potentially relevant follow-up point: poems. I believe that any feelings that arise from poems come from logically processing (aka reading and ruminating on) words, which are, after all, what poems themselves are made of, not actual, real experiences (although they may be 'about' them, and reading a poem is an actual, real experience) . Both the 'content' of poems (the underlying ideas, themes, emotions attempting to be expressed) , and the 'form' of poems (the specific words selected that may affect us on a 'visceral', or 'emotional' level) , need to be processed in our minds before we can feel the emotions the poet wishes to evoke in us.