"Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England"
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MacLeish treats “spring” less like a season than a roaming national character actor, changing costume as it crosses state lines. The first move is sly: he refuses the tidy, postcard version of American nature. Spring doesn’t arrive on cue; it “come[s] and go[es] in a day” in some cities, while in other places it “hangs around and never quite gets there.” That double bind captures a peculiarly American impatience with transition. We want transformation, we narrate it as destiny, and then geography - and lived weather - interrupts the story.
The phrasing is conversational but strategically exact. “American faces” suggests both diversity and performance, as if the country is a stage where climate becomes identity. He slides from “cities” to “counties,” widening the lens from urban speed to rural sprawl, implying that even time feels regionally engineered. Then comes the virtuoso list: “drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England.” Each image is meteorology as culture. Louisiana summer isn’t sunlight; it’s retreat, interiors, coping. Wyoming’s is not heat but motion - wind as the defining texture of place. New England’s is a canopy of named trees, old-growth respectability, a domesticated kind of wilderness.
Written by a poet steeped in public language and national self-understanding, the passage reads as a quiet corrective to one-size-fits-all “America.” The subtext: the country’s unity is real, but it’s built from uneven local realities that resist simplification. Climate becomes a map of temperament, and the nation’s myth of sameness gets gently, beautifully dismantled.
The phrasing is conversational but strategically exact. “American faces” suggests both diversity and performance, as if the country is a stage where climate becomes identity. He slides from “cities” to “counties,” widening the lens from urban speed to rural sprawl, implying that even time feels regionally engineered. Then comes the virtuoso list: “drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England.” Each image is meteorology as culture. Louisiana summer isn’t sunlight; it’s retreat, interiors, coping. Wyoming’s is not heat but motion - wind as the defining texture of place. New England’s is a canopy of named trees, old-growth respectability, a domesticated kind of wilderness.
Written by a poet steeped in public language and national self-understanding, the passage reads as a quiet corrective to one-size-fits-all “America.” The subtext: the country’s unity is real, but it’s built from uneven local realities that resist simplification. Climate becomes a map of temperament, and the nation’s myth of sameness gets gently, beautifully dismantled.
Quote Details
| Topic | Spring |
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