John Keats, "To Autumn," and Amy Lowell "Autumn," Part One

To Autumn

by John Keats (1795-1821)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,   

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless   

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,   

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;     

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells   

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease,    

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?   

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,   

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,   

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook    

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep   

Steady thy laden head across a brook;   

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,    

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?   

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,   

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn   

Among the river sallows, borne aloft    

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;   

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft  

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,     

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

Keats’ “To Autumn” is about as famous as a poem can get, and deservedly so, especially for the sumptuousness of its imagery and the way it reiterates Shakespeare’s theme in the sonnet last week:  “To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

Like everything, however, perfect language is only a virgin once.  No matter how much I enjoy and admire the poem’s focus on sensuous details, fleeting fullness in autumn’s plants and animals as they’re about to leave us, no matter how often that poem and I have gone warmly to bed together, no matter how gracefully it has declined to preach tidy morals, even as closure, the fact is, we’ve been there many times. 
  
So as I browsed for additional autumn poems, look what jumped out at me.  Amy Lowell’s “Autumn” isn’t necessarily a better poem than Keats’ “To Autumn,” but the force of its bold, boastful yellow, its “fire-ball” of a dahlia and the insult of that fertility as it’s presented to a “barren” and now furious, hurt woman—all that creates another, legitimate image of what autumn can mean.  Compared to the familiar beauty of Keats’ season, Lowell’s portrait of autumn as a wound has a fierce vigor that slaps me awake.

Autumn   by Amy Lowell

They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia, Opulent, flaunting.

Round gold

Flung out of a pale green stalk.

Round, ripe gold

Of maturity,

Meticulously frilled and flaming,

A fire-ball of proclamation:

Fecundity decked in staring yellow

For all the world to see.

They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,

To me who am barren

Shall I send it to you,

You who have taken with you

All I once possessed?

Keats’ speaker regards autumn as a filling of things that promises the passing of things; he bestows upon it dignity, elegance and admiration. He doesn’t find autumn cute or cause for a sappy greeting card, the way so many of us do. But as I hear Keats’ ode, he’s much more observant of the luxuriant plenty of what's gorgeous, the climax and afterglow, than the darker fact of its mortality.

That’s more than enough for one day. Part Two will come in a day or two, with more emphasis on Amy Lowell’s poem.

Responding to Readers Responding to Ted Kooser

Reader visits on the October 31 Shakespeare-Ted Kooser comparison here have probably offered the best, most thoughtful, conversational, perceptive comments and interchange among visitors in the three-year life of this blog. Thank you!  The majority of you prefer Kooser to Shakespeare, which was the opposite of my leaning. So I’ve sent myself back for an additional experience with “A Letter in October,” and that’s been enlightening and rewarding. Thank you!

Before I go on, let me quickly mention that I like the poem’s title. In what way and to whom might this be a letter? I can’t answer that, but I think the possibilities enrich the poem.

Now, here again is “A Letter in October”:    

A Letter in October by Ted Kooser : The Poetry Foundation

Ted Kooser is often so quiet it’s easy to write him off, and until this morning, I wrongly did.

By the way, his (apparent) plainspokenness might connect—tenuously—to an issue I’ve brought up before regarding American (or all?) poets:  Are you in the Walt Whitman or the Emily Dickinson tradition?  Yes, that oversimplifies; yes, there’s a vast middle ground. But I still think there’s significant, if incomplete truth in those two columns of tradition, of psyche and style—the loose, casual, and rambling vs. the muscular, tight, and careful.

At first, the Kooser poem was flat for me, but upon a couple of re-readings, I’ve come to like it, starting with the personification of dawn as he watches the light “walk down the hill,” and continues with the light’s placing “a doe there” and stepping upon the pond, which “sows” a “garden” of “reflections.”

That goes well beyond a literal, prosaic way of seeing things. Yet it’s not just decorative; it really imagines, re-creates, and maybe transforms the scene, giving it a new way of being, more interesting and exotic than its prosaic existence, yet a character that’s entirely plausible and appealing.

The continued personification of “Night in its thick winter jacket” doesn’t strike me as charmingly, but maybe that’s just my problem. Communication in metaphorical thinking is subjective like that; it’s rarely a true-false test.

I’m also not sure I like turning the water garden under, though it should work. It extends the metaphor logically, as the poem moves from lightness, delight, strangeness, fantasy, and mystery to less pleasant, more onerous activities involving labor, darkness, and eventually the challenge of introspection.

The “bridle” of leaves on the doe as well as night’s black horse and creaky harness make me feel that Kooser is straining too hard at those figures, forcing them, whereas the earlier images of light felt natural as well as accurate, even necessary and inevitable. I feel I should have seen light creating a deer, and so on; it was there and needed only Ted Kooser to discover it. But I don’t feel that way about the turned garden, or the deer bridle, or the horse; I feel as if I can hear Kooser searching for extended metaphors.

Once I’m clear that the darkness in the poem’s conclusion is early morning and not a continuation of the night, I like what happens. Wanting to look outward at the world’s marvels is a virtue, as well as a pleasure, and it ought to be permitted, given freely as a blessing. And looking inward ought to be a virtue; I’m often wishing people would do more of that. But it’s a burden. Inward lies trickery.  Darkness. Complexity. Fear. All of this, I think, makes an extremely good complication and turn on which to end the poem and deepen the ballet of its opening. 

The language of the speaker’s sighting of himself as “Pale and odd,” wouldn’t seem to be especially surprising or effective, yet to me that description is aptly haunting. Thinkers who see the world as he does—or see in the world what he does—probably tend to be “pale and odd” indeed, as they enlarge the world for the rest of us.

How did I miss some of this in my first couple of readings?  Shame on me. Thanks, visitors.

Kensington Metropark

Tufted Titmouse

Tufted Titmouse

 

For early November, this was a fine sunny day in the 50s at Kensington Metropark, a 4,486 acre nature and recreation preserve about 30 miles west-northwest of Detroit, almost halfway to Lansing on I-96. 

Here’s what their publicity says, and it seems accurate to me (somebody had a vision, and the rest of us benefit): 

A scenic recreational facility that provides year-round fun for all ages. Its wooded hilly terrain surrounds beautiful Kent Lake. Attractions include the Splash 'n' Blast which offers two 240-foot twisted water slides and a water sprayground, Island Queen excursion boat, swimming, picnicking, canoeing, scenic drives, ice skating, a nature center with nature trails, a farm center, disc golf course and a 6,378 yard challenging 18 hole par 71 public golf course. Kensington is an official Michigan Wildlife Viewing Area.

I had the same experience at Kensington just about a year ago, including the birds. (Banjo52, November 28, 2010).

Chickadee

The titmice and chickadees don’t think twice about feeding from human hands, but the shy gold finches stayed in the treetops—so high, in fact, that I wasn’t sure what they were until I got home and cropped the photo for identification. 

Gold Finches

Shakespeare's "That Time of Year" and Kooser's "A Letter in October"

Blogspot is fighting me; please ignore the odd spacing. Besides, it's easier on the eyes, I guess.

Here are two poems in which the authors see autumn as a way of, and a cause for, looking inward. Please don’t be overly swayed in by the fact that Shakespeare wrote the older poem, a sonnet. The other writer, Ted Kooser, was the U.S. poet laureate in 2004-2006, so some important people think he can sling some verbal hash in his own right. Here’s the new twist. I want people to vote for the poem they prefer. Wait!  There’s more. You need to vote twice. 

 1.  Which poem do you like better?

 2.  Which poem do you respect more? That is, which is the better poem, whether or not you prefer it?

 Your answers to 1 and 2  may be the same, or not. If you’re a good person in the best of all worlds, including cyberspace, you’ll also talk a bit about why you answered as you did. And if you don’t, you flunk.

 

Sonnet LXXIII: That Time of Year thou mayst in me Behold by William Shakespeare : The Poetry Foundation

 A Letter in October by Ted Kooser : The Poetry Foundation

Robert Graves' "A Boy in Church" and Emily Dickinson's "Some Keep the Sabbath"

But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying

With furious zeal like madmen praying.

I hardly hear the tuneful babble,

    Not knowing nor much caring whether

The text is praise or exhortation

A Boy in Church by Robert Graves : The Poetry Foundation


Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – (236) by Emily Dickinson : The Poetry Foundation





Robert Graves' "A Boy in Church" and Emily Dickinson's "Some Keep the Sabbath" are both a bit on the obvious side, but they nicely raise the question of where one finds church.

Also, a lot of churches, at least as physical structures, present their own beauty, which might inspire as well as nature does.

But such a lot of what goes on inside the buildings is troublesome that the contradictions have been fodder for writers for centuries. One might wonder why, with all those religions out there, more of them can't do better, more consistently--or at least "do no harm."

Maybe if we could just enter, alone, hear our own choice of music, rest and be silent for awhile, and leave . . . .  I suppose the Quakers were on the right track, but even they have to listen to each other as they try to arrive at one painstaking consensus after another.

Now I'm being as obvious as Graves and Dickinson are. We can have our cake and eat it too: church buildings, music, and nature, the whole enchilada (double cheese). So off I go, to The Church of the Holy Enchilada.

A Boy in Church by Robert Graves : The Poetry Foundation

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – (236) by Emily Dickinson : The Poetry Foundation

The July 25, 2010 Banjo52 touches on similar subject matter, Yeats' "Lake Isle of Innisfree":   
http://http://banjo52.blogspot.com/search?q=lake+isle+of+innisfree

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"Thoughts on One’s Head" by William Meredith: Brain and Heart in Poetry and Politics

Indiana University

Thoughts on One’s Head by William Meredith : The Poetry Foundation


Today it may seem I’m reversing myself on the feel-good Oct. 22 post, but I don’t think so. On my team, I want Michaela Terrien, John Prine and William Meredith.

But first, from Wikipedia, a couple of terms that were new to me:

“The central sulcus is a fold in the cerebral cortex of brains in vertebrates. Also called the central fissure, it was originally called the fissure of Rolando or the Rolandic fissure, after Luigi Rolando.”

And, “Trireme: . . . probably of Phoenician origin . . . as a ship it was fast and agile, and became the dominant warship in the Mediterranean from the 7th to the 4th centuries BC.” 

    With benevolent calm and wit, William Meredith’s poem, “Thoughts on One’s Head,” proposes that the human head, center of reason, carefulness, and correctness, and the home of the soul, ultimately dislikes itself. In the end, and for the sake of self-esteem and pleasure, or even ecstasy, one’s head would prefer beauty and passion to reason and judgment, which amount to the ability to measure. 

Indiana University

    In the timeless war between heart and head, the head is the responsible force that takes care of daily matters, which are necessary but unlovely, dispassionate, heartless, void of pleasure. One of my favorite lines is: “Judgment is in the head somewhere; it keeps sums . . . .” Some readers may have trouble seeing that as a bad thing; sums must be kept, after all, or one ends up trillions of dollars in debt. But what do you want written on your gravestone? “He was responsible”? “He kept sums”? And “sums” of what? Pleasure and pain, Meredith offers. Do you want your pleasure and pain measured out carefully as a sum? 

   The speaker was “ taught to read and write, make love and money, /Operate cars and airplanes, teach in a college . . . ”? Making love is on par with profits, driving cars and airplanes. It’s all taught. We may, for a second, ask what’s wrong with a little technique from a textbook? That’s not so bad. And driving is fun. Why not making love like driving a hot car--you know, down-shifting, double-clutching, peeling out? Well, then, how about teaching in college? Should that be the same kind of operation as making love? 

    The site of this careful rationality is the speaker’s head, “the place the soul calls home just now.” So if one ends up wondering why the speaker “dislikes” his “seat of Me,” one only need think about the old, old conflict between reason and passion. I think we tend to like ourselves better if we can believe we are rascals and outlaws who operate by passion. Robin Hood. Jesse James. We fancy ourselves reckless and romantic; we say all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy--and William Meredith too.  Ask any good Nazi: in the short term, success is all about the appeal to passion. If it feels good, it's irrational.

    It’s easy—and I mean easy—to go weak-kneed over the likes of e.e. cummings, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, or their ancestor Walt Whitman. It can be a labor to follow the lines of Elizabeth Bishop’s thought—or Richard Wilbur’s. 

  

People's Park, Bloomington, Indiana

Are You Sure about That? 

Sit-ins feel good, but they don’t accomplish much until some leaders—who can use their left brains to strategize, as William Meredith does in his poem—come to the rescue and form a plan that might actually accomplish something. What a shame that, consciously or otherwise, we think of those pragmatists as dull. We’d rather swoon to emotional oratory than sit down and crunch the numbers. The fact is, we need it all, though it makes for a drier insurrection, or a drier poem.

Thoughts on One’s Head by William Meredith : The Poetry Foundation

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"In Spite of Ourselves," John Prine, Iris DeMent, Steve McClain, and Michaela Terrien of Iowa

Over the years, a few friends, knowing my musical tastes, have asked about John Prine. Were we soulmates? Fact is, I never fully connected with the guy and didn't know why. I did respect his work at a distance.

That just changed. In scouting Iris DeMent for the last post, I came across her duet with Prine, on his goofy, charming, witty, touching, offbeat love song, "In Spite of Ourselves."  Left Brain tells me not to take it too seriously, while Right Brain tells me it's brilliant and I can't take it seriously enough. If Prine's good-natured, teasing, self-effacing words don't capture what love is, including the heart's hyperbole for young and old, well, it's what love ought to be.

 John Prine & Iris DeMent - In Spite of Ourselves - YouTube

And here is a young couple from Iowa, performing the song, inhabiting it, as we like to say in show biz. These two are the perfect picture of young love. That's not just a rhetorical gesture. They are ideal. These two, including her reserved, reluctant, Iowa adoration of him, and his slightly dumb pretense of control and dominance . . .  these two are young love, though they're old enough to take seriously.

If you disagree, Take your jaded absence of soul down to the crick and noodle a big greasy catfish. I hope he bites you, stings you, fries up bad in your pan, stinks up your kitchen till the cows come home. No, stink forever.

So just be good. Listen, watch now, and fall down in worship: 

In Spite of Ourselves - John Prine & Iris DeMent cover - 2010 Heart of Country - YouTube