In all the extravagant noise about cicadas – co-emergence of different “broods” numbering in the trillions, Brood XIX and Brood XIII named like two massive gangs — does anyone hear poetry? It could be a giant poetry slam – sound coming from tree crowns, branches, bark, ground as unseen creatures exalt at the top of their lungs. What we hear is the plangent song, the voice of desire and urgency between deep underground and return. No surprise, then, that Plato told a story of cicadas turning into poets; later, the creature became a doomed romantic type, its month of life marked by consummate singing, love, starvation and death.
But pay attention to the voicing. Poet Alice Oswald says the Greek mind listened hard and heard the “thin piping quality that is common to old men speaking.” In a CBC radio interview in 2016, Oswald continues, “I have interest of the cicada as being the insect that poets turn into, if you going on speaking and speaking and speaking, you become nothing but a voice. A high continuous voice.”
Trillions of poets living underground for 13 to 17 years, co-emerging, trying urgently to convey their one untranslatable song. Imagine!