Morning After Poems: Exploring the Aubade
From the French meaning “dawn,” the aubade is a poem or song announcing the arrival of the morning and usually, but not always, lamenting leaving or being left behind by a lover. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
🎵All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go. / I'm standin' here outside your door. / I hate to wake you up to say goodbye. // But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn. / The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn. / Already, I'm so lonesome I could die.🎵
In the United States, we “sprung forward” last month, entering into our yearly phase of Daylight Savings Time, giving lovers from coast to coast an extra hour in the morning to snuggle in each other’s arms before being torn apart by the rising sun. What better time, then, to celebrate the aubade?
Though aubades are not tied to rules of form the way pantoums are tied to repetition, sonnets are tied to their fourteen-line frames, or abecedarians are tied to their construction of the alphabet, the aubade seem to be tied to more than just the passing of time. Traditionally, an aubade follows time chronologically, starting the poem from darkness into twilight, moving into first light, and finishing with the consequences of the sun’s ascent into the sky.
And there also seems to be a tacit understanding among poets that an aubade explores feelings of frustration, regret, or loneliness, a specific brand of morning-induced melancholy associated with that breaking dawn.
Early Roots for the Aubade
For example, in 1633, John Donne published his aubade, “The Sun Rising,” which begins with “Busy old fool, unruly sun, / Why dost thou thus, / Through windows, and through curtains call on us?” If this poem were written in 2024, perhaps he would have simply written “F*ck off, sun.”
Over three hundred years later in 1977, Phillip Larkin’s “Aubade”—the example of an aubade inundating my Google search results—doesn’t conjure any friendlier feelings:
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. / Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare… / Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, / Making all thought impossible but how / And where and when I shall myself die.
The lament in this case does not seem to be with a lover, but with life itself, dreading the meaning that each passing day brings him one day closer to dying.
Contemporary Aubades
In 2011, from her collection Life on Mars, former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith’s “Aubade” follows a narrative in which the poem’s speaker resists accompanying their lover in walking the dog in the morning. “No, I don’t want to put on clothes and shoes / And dark glasses and follow the dog and you / Down Smith Street. It’s eight o’clock.”
The lament in Smith’s poem, again not necessarily with a departing lover, but with the departing night and the possibility of more sleep. It even feels like the speaker in Smith’s aubade insists that their lover do go so they can go back to sleep! (A sentiment I have shared countless times, I might add.)
Published in Poetry 2014, Ocean Vuong’s “Aubade with Burning City” depicts a scene occurring in South Vietnam on April 29, 1975, on the precipice of a mass evacuation of American civilians and Vietnamese refugees.
Vuong carries us through the tableau as if we are Scrooge and the ghost of Christmas past walking invisibly among the characters and city witnessing the aftermath of looting, a dog dying in the street, a woman facing sexual assault by an American soldier, and a nun on fire, all while Irving Berlin, perhaps also a ghost, croons “White Christmas.” In this world, the reader longs for the dawn to end the current misery of the scene.
Camille Rankine’s “Aubade” published in 2017 by Poem-a-Day begins “They say brave but I don’t want it. / Who will we mourn today. Or won’t we.” A reflection on her experience as a Black woman in America in the face of racism and misogyny, the poem’s speaker seems to be lamenting another day in which they must navigate the multitudes of injustices.
Also published by Poem-a-Day, F. Douglas Brown’s “Aubade with Edits,” from 2022, depicts the speaker unable to sleep at night, riddled with regrets of how their parents passed away as well as regrets of their past conversations with them. These intrusive thoughts fill the speaker’s mind until it’s time for their morning routine before commuting to work. The speaker returns home to their partner and children only to face the night of regrets again:
I do nothing while narratives move // Along the ceiling: I’m ok. I’m ok. / I’m ok. Soon I will tell the lie // To the mirror, to my shoes & car / Keys, to my kiss-goodbye love, // To my needling co-workers at lunch / Time, & the commute home again. // A kiss hello & a kiss for baby, too / Until back to dream // When my dead parents visit / With new things to say.
In Search of the Joyful Aubade
My study in aubades led me to ask, “Does a happy aubade exist? A joyful aubade? An exuberant aubade?” If an aubade requires no rhyme scheme, no meter, no specific length, no repetition, is its requirement the presence of the rising sun hand-in-hand with sorrow, malaise, or at the very least ennui?
The definition in the Poetry glossary of terms suggests YES: "A love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn." (Emphasis mine.) Where, then, are the examples that point to the welcoming of dawn more than the lament of it? I can’t help but hear Nina Simone’s voice in my ears:
🎵It's a new dawn / It's a new day / It's a new life / For me / And I'm feeling good🎵
It has to exist!
I asked Google my question by typing “joyful aubade poem” into the search bar. When it turned up empty-handed, it offered to write me a “joyful aubade poem” using AI. The four stanza robo-poem ended with “So let's get up and start the day, / My love, my life, my everything. / For there's no one I'd rather spend / This beautiful day with than you.”
Okay, so perhaps if not joyful, could I bargain for hopeful? The breaking of a new dawn is, after all, a new beginning, a symbol of the ability to start over, fresh, free from mistakes, free from the shackles of the past.
Hallelujah! It does it exist!
From his 2020 collection, Finna, Nate Marshall declares in “aubade for the whole hood”: “today i offer myself / all the small kindnesses.” And even though the speaker in the poem acknowledges the rationale to despair in the world, “who knew / that we would still be here / to see these injustices,” the speaker still actively chooses hope, and dare I say, joy despite it all.
real talk, / today i stay woke / to all the terror / but also to my favorite food / or my favorite place / or my best hope for our people / & i work to make all / my best lives possible.
In Marshall’s poem, the speaker doesn’t say goodbye to a lover in the morning light, but instead says hello to love—love for himself, love for his community, and love for his world.
Writing Prompt
Explore the concept of an aubade with two versions of the same poem: one in which the rising sun is a symbol of an ending, whether it be the ending of a romance, the ending of an era in one’s life, or some other kind of ending.
In the second version, make the rising sun a symbol of joy, of hope, and/or a new beginning beaming with potential.
Can these two versions exist together somehow? Do the variations end up influencing the beginnings of the poems?
If you write an aubade, share it with us! Or, if you have a favorite aubade that wasn’t included in this article, send us a link so we can check it out!
This article was published on May 1, 2024. Written by:
