There are so many ways we can play with the idea of wind through language – can comment on the state of life with the phrase “winds of change” or we can set the tone of an entire work of literature by telling our readers that it was “a dark and stormy night” where winds blew the roofs off houses. There is literary fun to be had with the idea of wind because it is tangible and powerful, yet ever-changing and invisible. These characteristics of wind can then be applied to what they represent such as the overwhelming experience of love or the inevitable promise of death. In my reading of the Michael Fields collection of poems Underneath the Bough, I observed how the authors play with the motif of wind or air in many different circumstances to convey concepts that are also above human control but have a great effect on life.
I think that this interest in the air as a concept can be seen in Michael Feilds’ interest in higher powers and how we are ruled by them or how we interact with them. This is especially apparent in their fascination with the Greek Gods of old, especially with Zeus as he was king of the gods and the god of thunder (you can’t have a thunderstorm without the winds that push the cloud formations). Whenever “wind” is named, it is a force that moves others, not the force that is controlled by anyone. For example in A girl on page 51, there is a single line pertaining to “wind” which may seem insignificant “Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the wind” (Fields 51). Then again on page 53 when the wind “takes the crest of my waves resurgent”(Fields 53). This is not just flowery imagery meant to transport you to lovely settings, it connects these poems to the whole of the collection through its attitude towards wind and how it has power over everything.
I was intrigued by the poem on page 51, There comes a change in her breath because it does not speak of powerful winds which chill the bones or knock down trees, but of one person’s breath and how it represents their being. In the greater context of this wind motif, this describes how the wind within ourselves, our breath, acts as our own power which is only a small part of the higher power of worldly winds. As they write in this poem “Her life! Her breath!” as if to say that they are one and the same. Air is a force that makes flowers’ “petals backward curled” and on which “fragrance” is carried (Field 52, 54). Much like love and life, it can be cruel and kind. There are many other poems in this series such as Daybreak and A valley of oak-trees that deal with air and what it carries, both healing and trauma, so its presence cannot be ignored in this series nor the significance of its power. Wind and air in their many forms are used to convey large ideas because they are just as large, but perhaps better understood by all humans who live on this earth.
