Summary
The first phrase of the poem, "More than," sets up a lengthy comparison that spans the first five and a half lines. These lines, one long sentence, can be broken into three parts: two "more than" clauses that describe what the speaker doesn't really care about, followed by the statement of what she really cares about. The first "more than" clause, in lines 1-2, focuses on a crabapple tree, whose bright purple blossoms are bursting forth. The second "more than" clause, in lines 3-6, focuses on cherry blossoms, and contains its own internal contrast between those "cotton candy-colored blossoms" and the "slate / sky of spring rains." Lastly, the first sentence of the poem ends with the pivotal topic shift: "it's the greening of the trees / that really gets me."
Lines 6-9 see another similarly structured comparison. We go back to the colorful blossoms, once again, but this time we see that the aforementioned spring rain has knocked many of them to the sidewalk already, and they are strewn all about. Then, at the start of line nine, the speaker's attention turns back to the leaves again: "the leaves come."
Lines 9-12 form the third sentence of the poem and expand on these spring leaves, detailing their ability to grow slowly and powerfully over winter. The second half of this sentence, lines 10-12, extends the metaphor to humanity: how we choose to continue living despite hurt and pain.
Lines 12-14 form the final sentence of the poem, in which the tree with these new leaves is imagined to be speaking (to the poet, or to the world): "Fine then, / I'll take it... / I'll take it all." Its new leaves are like a fist unclenching, implying that they are now more like an outstretched hand, ready to accept the ups and downs of life.
Analysis
The poem's title, "Instructions on Not Giving Up," immediately indicates that Limón is writing about human resilience—one of her favorite themes. The reader is primed to accept the descriptions of spring as the setup for a metaphor about resilience.
Limón's usage of dependent clauses with the phrase "more than" in the first few lines creates suspense, diminishing the crabapple and cherry trees before she even describes them. If the first two lines read "The fuchsia funnels are breaking out / of the crabapple tree" instead of "More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out [etc]," they would give the blossoms much more importance. The speaker inserts the judgment of "almost obscene" as she shifts to the cherry tree, setting up the "cotton candy-colored blossoms" not as something idyllic and sweet, but as something garish, cheap, or insensitive. There is a striking contrast between these light, flimsy-sounding flowers and the "slate / sky." Brilliantly, "cotton candy" and "slate" are both being used as color descriptors here, but they also carry their meanings as nouns: cotton candy vanishes the moment it is placed on the tongue, whereas slate is heavy, solid stone. The spring sky is threatening to wreck these flowers, and they cannot withstand it. (In her poem "The Leash," also in The Carrying, Limón uses the same image of the "brute sky opening in a slate-metal maw" to describe gun violence: this echo deepens the sense of apocalyptic skies looming overhead.) Once again, if Limón had not set up this clause with the words "more than," we might be led to believe that these blossoms are a courageous, not weak, symbol of defiance against the heaviness of the sky. But the poem's syntax does not allow for that meaning.
So, then, what does the speaker really find moving, if not the flowers? "The greening of the trees," she answers, but rather than continuing right away to describe the leaves, she continues to build suspense in the poem by returning to the flowers for a few more lines.
The poem relies heavily on metaphor here, which can be hard to follow at first, but everything from "shock of white" to "confetti of aftermath" refers to the spring blossoms that are now littering the ground.
With "white / and taffy," Limón renews the comparison of spring flowers to sweets, using taffy as both a color adjective and noun at once. In line seven, the flowers are "baubles and trinkets," words that evoke prettiness and value but also smallness and superficiality. The speaker's dismissal of the flowers continues with this new but connected metaphor. Baubles and trinkets could be something like rhinestones on clothing, or charms on a bracelet: items that, like cotton candy and taffy, are nice but not substantive.
Then, "the pavement strewn with confetti of aftermath" builds on the previous lines in multiple ways. First, Limón confirms what was threatened in lines 4-5: the "slate / sky of spring rains" has in fact already dashed many of these bright but temporary blossoms to the ground, rendering them lifeless. Second, the metaphor shifts again to "confetti," evoking the day after a party. We've moved smoothly from candy to trinkets to party decorations—all temporary, all disappointingly superficial like the flowers. They are beautiful, but they do not offer the "instructions" that the poet has promised.
In contrast to the extensive, ornate, and messy descriptions of the flowers, we once again get a short and simple phrase to shift our attention back to the leaves in line 9: "the leaves come." If the blossoms are the confetti all over the party floor, the leaves are the hosts slowly and patiently cleaning up the next morning. It's like the chorus of "New Year's Day" by Taylor Swift.
The poem experiences a "turn" at this point: from here on, the attention stays on the green leaves and what they can teach us about human resilience. They are "a green skin / growing over whatever winter did to us," a metaphor that serves to unite the tree and the human speaker. "Us" could be the speaker and the tree, both changed by winter, but could just as easily be a group of people or society.
Limón uses enjambment, or the positioning of her line breaks in the middle of phrases, to great effect in this poem. The second half of the poem, in particular, relies on enjambment. In the line "the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin," we linger to focus on "a green skin" as an image. Likewise, the next line ends enjambed with "a return." These, and other lines, focus our attention on these positives, the movement away from hurt, even before we know what we are "return[ing]" to, for instance. Limón capitalizes on this suspense in line eleven: "the strange idea of continuous living despite" (again, sharp enjambment: despite what?) to point out that simply continuing on can often feel like a difficult choice, in hard times. But it is this strangeness, like the new spring leaves, that has the power to catch us off-guard and remind us of the value of living.
Line twelve uses syntax and enjambment once again to pose almost a question and answer: "the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then[.]" We learn what "despite" was referring to: this nebulous, indescribable pain, whatever it is in our lives that makes us want to "give up" as the title suggests. And then, in the same line, the poet gives us a defiant answer to this hurt: "Fine then." We don't know yet who or what is saying this; even though we learn in the next line that it is the tree, the lack of quotation marks and the enjambment make it function equally as a statement by the speaker herself.
The fusion of the speaker and the tree is complete in the last two lines, as the speaker ascribes to the tree speech that is more likely her own internal monologue, the "instructions on not giving up" that we have arrived at, inspired by the ability of new green leaves to reemerge each spring. The leaves become an unclenching fist, indicating that while we may have the instinct to raise our fists and fight against the hurt, it is arguably more powerful to extend an open hand and accept what life gives us. This acceptance is not meek or flimsy like the flowers; it is daring in the declaration of "I'll take it all," modeling how we may be open to what life gives us without letting it destroy us.
