A Familiar Poem, Heard in a New Moment

On November 1, the Poetry Foundation featured Patricia Guzman’s “Perennial” in its Audio Poem of the Day. The poem first appeared in Poetry in June 2024, so this is a new audio feature—not a newly published poem. Read the poem and find the audio feature. (poetryfoundation.org)

The poem brings together spring rain, growth, and absence. I read its “perennial” image as holding two possibilities at once: what returns can offer continuity, but it can also make someone’s absence newly noticeable. That’s an interpretation, not a meaning everyone has to share.

A poem can stay the same while the moment of encountering it changes. When you revisit a piece of writing, what shifts most for you—the words, your attention, or the meaning you bring to them?