Poetry Appreciation: Autumn

Hey all,

It's been a while since our last session of Poetry Appreciation, and I know you've all been just dying waiting around for the next one.

Whatever. I'll skip the sass and cut to the poetry now.

Autumn is probably the most poetic time of year, don't you think? Autumn is so crisp, poignant, and exciting.

Here's the first of my two favorite poems about autumn:

The morns are meeker than they were -
The nuts are getting brown -
The berry’s cheek is plumper -
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf -
The field a scarlet gown -
Lest I sh'd be old-fashioned
I’ll put a trinket on. 

Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst, MA

By the immortal Emily Dickinson. She's my favorite.

A lot of her poems leave me scratching my head (which only adds to my enjoyment - it's not poetry unless you feel the top of your head being taken off, as Emily herself would say). But this one I think is very accessible. Even if you've never read an Emily Dickinson poem, you can jump right in.

To my knowledge, it's the only poem she ever wrote about autumn. Which is actually a little surprising. Maybe she preferred the spring.

Here's the second. It's a bit longer, so I'll just give you the first stanza, and encourage you to look up the rest if you like what you see:

To Autumn

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.

London in Autumn (Credit: Garry Knight)

Give it up for John Keats, my other favorite.

The first time I read this poem was in my Romantic poetry class at BYU. Our professor gave us a print out of "To Autumn" and told us to go sit outside somewhere and read it. That was the whole class for the day. Did I mention it was autumn? Yeah, pretty much that professor was the bomb.

On the surface, this poem is just a beautiful description of autumn. Fruit is ripening and getting ready for harvest, and there are a few last warm days before winter sets in.

But underneath, Keats is exploring the idea of "ripeness." He's probably alluding to the line in one of his favorite plays, King Lear:

"Men must endure Their going hence even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all."

In other words, you don't get to decide how long you live, or when you die. It comes when you're ripe for it. And the best you can do is accept it gracefully.

This was especially apt for Keats, because he always had the sense that his life was going to be cut short. It ran in the family: his father, mother, and brother all died young, and his grandmother died "before her time."

("Why do you write like you're running out of time?" as Hamilton would say. OK, I've never seen Hamilton or even listened to it, but that line is amazing.)

Anyway, the upshot is that Keats died at 25, so that premonition was pretty spot on.

This has been Poetry Appreciation with Erin. I promise it's not always this depressing.



'Til tomorrow.