À Calendar of Sonnets

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) was an American writer, best known for her campaigning on behalf of the rights of Native Americans. Her book A Century of Dishonor, which documented the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples by the United States government, and her novel Ramona, set in California, are the works for which she is most remembered. She was also a poet, and she wrote verse throughout her life, often signing it with initials or simply “H. H.”

A Calendar of Sonnets appeared in 1886, the year after her death. It is a short volume with one sonnet for each month of the year, celebrating the changing face of nature through the seasons. The sonnet is a fourteen-line form with a long history, and Jackson uses it with a light touch. Each poem is a small picture of a month, with its weather, plants and birds, and with a feeling that nature is constantly renewing itself.

Because the book is a sequence organised by the calendar, it can be enjoyed in order, or by choosing the month that matches the one you are living in. The tone is calm and contemplative, and there is little in the way of argument. The pleasure lies in close observation and in the music of the lines.

The recording has twelve sections, one for each poem, and lasts about twenty minutes. It is read by a single LibriVox volunteer. Why listen today? Poetry about the natural year is a good reminder to look around us. These twelve short poems take little time, and they are a good way to begin or end a day, or to mark the change of the seasons.