Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Ron Padgett’s “Autumn’s Day" is a brief yet evocative poem that gestures toward Rainer Maria Rilke’s well-known meditation on time, impermanence, and homelessness. The poem plays with the imagery and philosophical concerns of Rilke’s Herbsttag (Autumn Day), blending them with a contemporary and somewhat surrealist sensibility. Padgett’s approach, marked by economy of language and a playful but poignant reconfiguration of Rilkean themes, creates an atmosphere of both homage and transformation.

The poem opens with an enigmatic statement: Rilke walks towards a dime. I saw. This line is arresting in its strangeness, blending the revered European poet with an unmistakably American object of currency. The dime, small and seemingly insignificant, contrasts with the grandeur of Rilke’s poetry, which often contemplates vast existential concerns. Padgett’s image introduces a touch of irony or absurdity, suggesting that even a poet of Rilke’s stature is caught up in mundane, earthly movements. The phrase I saw gives the speaker a quiet authority, as if bearing witness to a poetic vision unfolding in real time. The line It was very great. But now interrupts itself, as if shifting from admiration to a more sober realization. This abrupt change echoes the fleeting nature of beauty and recognition, mirroring Rilke’s preoccupation with transience.

The following lines—His shadow is fast upon the sundials. / How then can the winds remind / The shadows it is late?—recast the imagery of Herbsttag, in which Rilke famously invokes the sun’s descent and the lengthening of shadows to mark the passage of time. In Padgett’s version, the phrase fast upon the sundials suggests that time is accelerating rather than simply advancing. The paradox of How then can the winds remind / The shadows it is late? reflects a fundamental concern with perception and temporality. The winds, typically associated with change and seasonal shifts, are given the task of reminding shadows—ephemeral entities themselves—that it is late. Shadows, being cast by light, are already indicators of time, so the idea of them needing to be reminded suggests a layered meditation on the difficulty of grasping the passage of time even as it is visibly unfolding.

The second stanza shifts into a direct invocation of Rilke’s voice: "Who has no home cannot build now," / Said Rilke to a grasshopper. This is a clear reference to Herbsttag, where Rilke warns that those who have not secured a home by autumn’s end will remain rootless and solitary. Padgett, however, playfully transforms Rilke’s solemnity by having him address a grasshopper. This echoes the fable of the industrious ant and the carefree grasshopper, adding another layer of intertextuality. The grasshopper, traditionally symbolic of idleness or artistic wandering, becomes the recipient of Rilke’s wisdom, but the juxtaposition also introduces an element of humor. In contrast to Rilke’s tone, which urges a deep reckoning with loneliness and preparation, Padgett’s choice of interlocutor suggests a lightness or absurdity to the idea of offering existential advice to an insect.

The closing lines—Little grasshopper, / You must waken, read, write long letters, and / wander restlessly when leaves are blown.—shift into an imperative, as if echoing both Rilke’s concerns and the inevitability of movement in the changing seasons. The instruction to waken suggests an awareness, a call to consciousness in the face of autumn’s arrival. Read, write long letters evokes an old-fashioned, almost Romantic sense of literary engagement, aligning with Rilke’s belief in solitude and deep reflection. The final phrase—wander restlessly when leaves are blown—suggests an acceptance of transience, mirroring Rilke’s themes but rendering them with a lighter, more contemporary touch. Instead of the stark solitude of Herbsttag, in which those without a home face a long winter of isolation, Padgett’s grasshopper is given a task: to remain engaged with the world through reading, writing, and wandering, even as the leaves—symbols of seasonal change—fall away.

Padgett’s poem, though brief, manages to encapsulate and reinterpret the essence of Herbsttag, filtering it through a modern, slightly surreal lens. While Rilke’s original poem is solemn and filled with a sense of finality, Padgett introduces playfulness and gentle irony. His use of simple language, unexpected juxtapositions, and a conversational tone allows Autumn’s Day to feel both reverent and subtly subversive. The invocation of Rilke’s themes—time, impermanence, and the necessity of preparation—remains intact, but Padgett reframes them with a wry awareness of their poetic weight, offering a meditation that is at once philosophical and whimsically self-aware.

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