To: Pick a Season

In between stanzas of poem, analysis,

how I came to be attracted to Keats.

Season of ice and snowy drifts…
Is this how they all begin?
A dedication to stereotype?
Perhaps it’s just me,
amateur mind,
Or the curmudgeonly thoughts
Seven years later
Cynic.

I wrote my first poem in sixth grade.

I titled it Alone.

“O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell

Let it not be among the jumbled heap

Of murky buildings.”

The poem was about how my sisters

got along while I felt left out.

For our sixth grade banquet,

we had a talent showcase and

I auditioned to read my poem.

They accepted me

and then ask if I had anything happier.

I didn’t.

But there’s something there
Hidden under dead leaves,
colored like life.
Deep reds, oranges, rich browns.

I tried to write a poem that was happy

and I was disgusted with the result.

It was fake

and plastic

and the ideas about puzzles and

enigmas I was trying to explore

were like stepping into a ten-foot maze

with only one turn.

I had lost my harmony with poetry,

and Harmony was what

Keats strived for.

Small black text on thin, frail,
yellowing paper
They were more than words.
They were fruit—red apples
that brown too quickly,
but always taste sweet.
Mangoes or peaches—some orange fruit
ripe almost to over-ripeness,

“…To Keats,

there is the belief,

repeated over and over in letters

and poetry, that there is an essential

harmony between all things,

and that the poet must continually

partake of the existence of

all other creatures—” (Coombs 46).

juice coursing down your chin
with the first bite.

Even if no one liked it—and

I was so nervous, if there was

scattered applause afterward

I didn’t notice,

I certainly don’t remember

hearing much reaction—

Alone was the poem I’d written and

I wasn’t going to write differently

just because it wasn’t popular.

Applause for a child,

a paycheck for an adult,

popularity and success

were never my goals when I wrote.

Some other time you might be annoyed,
the orange hue will stain your white shirt,
but this time you just smile, lick your lips,
wipe away the pulpy remains, and
you think,
this may be your favorite time to eat fruit.

John Keats, also called Junkets

because of his pronunciation,

struggled throughout his life.

He lost his parents when he was young,

had three siblings to care for,

and money trouble which continued

for years.

As a poet,

his work wasn’t particularly popular

or successful.

Of course, these details

are ones I didn’t know

until fairly recently.

My first memory of encountering

Keats was in high school,

when my AP English teacher

assigned a project that required

the students to find a poem

that spoke to us,

research and study it,

then find a song and

a piece of art that reflects the poem.

Lastly, we had to write a poem

inspired by our chosen subject.

I stumbled across Keats’ To Autumn.

I received a B on that project,

with its landscape painting,

“Seasons of Love” theme song

and a new poem,

inspired by Keats' description of the season,

entitled To Winter.

Only to learn now

that Keats wrote about autumn,

then worked backward to summer,

and even spring,

but did not dwell near winter often.

According to Helen Vendler,

“…it was clear to me that To Autumn ‘said’ things

by means of what I then thought of as collocation—

what Keats called (when he praised it in Milton)

‘stationing.’

Somewhat later I came to see that the autumn ode

‘said’ things also by the activities of its imagery,

by its overlapping structures,

and by its exquisite explorations

of suggestive diction,” (14).

Most of my peers would’ve been happy

with that grade,

but eight years ago,

even now,

I knew I was missing

so much of his meaning

and that my project was

a shell of analysis.

To Autumn,

one of Keats most popular poems,

if not the most popular,

was the culmination of a handful of season

and autumn-themed poems,

as well as founded on the previous odes.

Autumn’s “full ripen’d grain”

standing on the shoulders of Joy’s grape

in Ode to Melancholy.