It was a Damn Cold Year for Carolina
In the changing year, one expects spring’s market in blooms,
with a promise of renewal, in the lengthening light,
in New England’s fields, where hope in spring resumes,
Infant Spring whispered of a coming plight,
Spring goeth all in white, it whispered, like a carpet fair,
Carolina’s sad song echoed in the chilly air.
Carolina wondered if a thousand springs might unite,
As April snow showers baptized the vine,
to take back the season when the ground turned white.
Easter in 1923, she remembers the weather was unkind.
April flowers faded under the frost’s winter tale,
While cold rain drifted by, the chilly mist was a fleeting veil.
The weather whispered desires to return spring to snow’s freeze,
In mourning the birds when spring they did not meet,
sang a rondel for the sun, but the frost, it could not appease.
Finally, May told the world to fill in blossoms, with spring replete.
Then June, July, came like a rapture in the air,
As the hound of Summer bound with flair.
Too soon August’s thoughts lingered on the first frost and it chilled,
September, October, November guests were silent friends,
In the last days of Autumn, chilly, dreams unfulfilled,
where winter’s breath refused to make amends.
In Carolina’s memory, early winter brings a mournful sigh,
and in December’s embrace, Carolina’s hopes of warmth did fly.

Sarah B. Royal’s poem It Was a Damn Cold Year for Carolina, drawn from her Table of Contents constraint poetry project in Diving for Pearls, is a lyrical meditation on climate, memory, and emotional dissonance. Composed using titles from a 1925 poetry anthology, the poem weaves archival fragments into a cohesive narrative that captures both the literal chill of an unkind year and the metaphorical frost of longing, loss, and historical reflection. Through its seasonal progression and regional specificity, Royal transforms constraint, crafting a poem that is as much about inner weather as outer.

The poem opens with a familiar expectation: “In the changing year, one expects spring’s market in blooms…” This line sets the stage for a seasonal arc, where spring is anticipated as a time of renewal and light. Yet the promise is quickly subverted. “Infant Spring whispered of a coming plight,” Royal writes, introducing a tension between hope and foreboding. The phrase “Spring goeth all in white” evokes both purity and snow—an inversion of spring’s usual palette. Carolina’s voice enters as a lament, her “sad song echoed in the chilly air,” suggesting that this is not just a cold year meteorologically, but emotionally and culturally.

The poem’s historical anchor—“Easter in 1923”—grounds the narrative in a specific memory, one where “the weather was unkind.” This moment becomes emblematic of a broader emotional climate. April, traditionally a month of rebirth, is instead marked by “frost’s winter tale” and “cold rain” that veils rather than nourishes. The birds mourn, the sun is serenaded in vain, and spring’s arrival is delayed, distorted, denied. These images reflect a world out of sync, where seasonal rhythms fail to deliver their expected comfort.

Royal’s use of constraint—drawing from poem titles and re-organizing them—adds a layer of literary archaeology to the poem. Each borrowed word or phrase becomes a portal to the past, recontextualized within a modern emotional framework. This technique mirrors the poem’s thematic concern with memory: just as the poet reconstructs meaning from archival fragments, Carolina reconstructs her emotional landscape from seasonal and historical echoes.

The poem’s middle stanzas shift from spring’s betrayal to summer’s brief reprieve. “June, July, came like a rapture in the air,” Royal writes, suggesting a fleeting joy, a momentary warmth. But even this is tempered by August’s premature chill and the silent procession of autumn months. “September, October, November guests were silent friends,” she notes, personifying the months as companions who offer presence but not comfort. The final lines—“In Carolina’s memory, early winter brings a mournful sigh…”—complete the arc, returning to the emotional frost that began the poem. December does not redeem the year; it seals its coldness.

What makes this poem particularly resonant is its fusion of regional identity and emotional weather. Carolina is not just a place—it is a persona, a memory, a metaphor. Her experience of the year reflects a broader cultural mood, one shaped by historical trauma, environmental unpredictability, and personal grief. The poem becomes a kind of elegy for a season that failed to arrive, for warmth that never came, for dreams that remained dormant.

In It Was a Damn Cold Year for Carolina, Royal demonstrates how constraint-based poetry can transcend its formal boundaries to evoke deep emotional truth. By repurposing historical titles into a modern narrative, she bridges past and present, showing that the coldness of a year is not just measured in degrees, but in disappointments, silences, and the longing for renewal. The poem is a testament to the power of poetic form to hold memory, and to the resilience of voice in the face of seasonal and emotional frost.