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Poetry Prof.

A Curious Incident

March 1, 2010

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

Scotland Yard Detective Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes” “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

This scene from the Sherlock Holmes story, “Silver Blaze,” was inspiration for the title of a 2003 Mark Haddon novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Those of us who loved it were further treated by his 2006 book of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village under the Sea: Poems. Here he reminds us that poets are fallible and the possibility of genuine nonsense cannot be ruled out. He also warns aspirants that there is no money in it. Or, is there?

Prompted by a curious incident, this month I offer The Case of the Two Hundred Million Dollar Gift.

The curious incident occurred in 2002 when Ruth Lilly, the last surviving grandchild of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, gave Poetry magazine a stock pledge that, over time, turned out to be worth two hundred million dollars. Well, she did not personally give ‘em the money. She was, by then, in a mostly vegetative state and this was all handled by guardian nieces and nephews. The fact is that poor Ruth had spent much of her life in mental institutions. And, apparently, for many years she had submitted many poems to Poetry –– none were ever accepted, but rejection letters were encouraging. [The magazine, which publishes about 300 poems a year, is now up to 90,000 submissions per annum.]

In 1981, Ruth’s brother put her fortune into guardianship when she was no longer capable of managing her own affairs. Sad to say that much of her life she was afflicted by clinical depression. In one of those twists of fate, subsequently her mind and mood reportedly improved somewhat when she was put on a new drug developed by the Lilly Company that went by the name of, what was it now? Oh, Prozac.

At the time of this gift, Poetry had an annual budget of $500,000, a staff of four, and circulation of 12,000 copies. When this gift was made, there were sniffs of something curious. Okay, I’m no tax lawyer. But, it seems that Ms. Lilly had made several wills and her guardians, making use of a state probate provision, chose to execute what seemed to them to be the simplest one, one made in 1982 when, by the way, the stock was not worth nearly this gargantuan amount.

When the big gift was made, the magazine editors of twenty years, Joseph Parisi, took interim charge of what would become the Poetry Foundation, and a young poet, Christian Wiman, became editor, a position he still holds. John W. Barr, Wall Street businessman, also a poet, was brought in be president of the Foundation and, in a few months, Parisi was “up and out.” Soon more than half the twelve trustees resigned or said they were forced out.

The death of Ms. Lilly on December 30, 2009, brought new attention to the Poetry Foundation and its immense wealth. One never thought that poetry could inspire this tabloid-like headline in The Chicago Tribune:

A Poetic Clash over Millions in Cash

It rhymes. It scans. Doncha luv it?

And its news lead:

$200 million gift leaves Chicago’s Poetry magazine potentially the better for verse, but torn asunder over the wisest way for the national publication to spend the spoils.

Consonance! Assonance! Alliteration!

Way to go, Ron Grossman, Trib reporter.

There is nothing, of course, to hide. The Poetry Foundation pays out $2 million per year for a staff of 20 and plans are under way to build a $25 million headquarters on Chicago’s Gold Coast overlooking Lake Michigan to house the journal and provide a venue for poetry recitals and lodging for visiting speakers. Oh, and the magazine’s subscription base is now 30,000, a 2.5 fold increase.

A few days before their benefactor passed away, Foundation President Barr had sent out a letter on their website (the website, critics point out, cost $1,000,000 to put up) in which he offered an update five years into their “plan for putting Ruth Lilly’s momentous gift to work for the benefit of poetry.” Their goal, which he reported is being achieved with great success, has been “to help poetry regain a more visible and central presence in our culture.”

Barr offers up what sounds to me like false humility: “Many years from now… my first hope will be that the course of the river of American poetry will have been altered by a few degrees –– or maybe more –– by the Poetry Foundation.” What Richard Howard at Columbia hears is willful boasting: “They want to change poetry –– poetry changes itself. You can’t make poetry do something.” Ah, yes? How many mega-millionaire poetry moguls does it take to change a light bulb?” Only one, but first…

As of this posting, the Illinois Attorney General has staff looking into ex-trustees’ concerns over fiscal practices, conflicts of interest, and nepotism. Now, there may be something there, or not. And, isn’t nepotism okay so long as you kept in the family? [John Barr's wife, not a poet, was paid $23,000 to set up a poetry contest.] Of course, the love of money is the root of all evil, so the Bible says. Will be back with more if something new develops. Right now I haven’t a clue.

Meanwhile, in contrast to the light tone of this month’s piece, I do want to say that Ruth Lilly, though a troubled woman, was a generous human being who gave away a lot of money to support hospitals, colleges & universities, and the Arts. Thank you, Ruth Lilly, amicus poeticae. Yes, she truly was a friend of Poetry, not just the journal, but Poetry qua Poetry.

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Laugh, Laugh, I Made You Cry

January 1, 2010

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

Last month I got one of those “end of the year” bonus checks –– no, nothing like what Wall Street investment bankers get –– but a hearty response to the December 1 Poetry Prof piece on whether or not haiku was poetry. One of the readers who posted a comment, AgSynclair, also sent a personal email and encouraged me to write about senryu, the variation of haiku that focuses on people rather than nature. Senryu is not always intended to be humorous, but often is. So, how about this? This month let’s talk about humor in poetry, specifically in short form.

First, a brief word about senryu. Again, not always mean to be “ha-ha” funny, it does capture what I think of as the comedy of life: our misfortunes, hardships, and woes that beckon us to laugh to keep from crying. I may not yet have a knack for it, but how about this one I wrote last week after this guy cut me off in traffic:

Toyota Tundra driver
flicking his cigarette
his “Breathe Fresh” bumper sticker

I read a lot of senryu –– that’s the best way to learn how to write it, eh? Much of it brings a half-smile, but never an out-loud laugh. And, this I have noted. When the haiku form is used for humor, I see some in the haiku community sneer –– and, yes, sometimes I can hear a “growl.” As for me, I love it. One old college pal, when he heard that I wrote haiku, sent me to this link for “Haiku Error Messages”: http://strangeplaces.net/weirdthings/haiku.html

I found these LOL. Just for instance…

First snow, then silence
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

Okay, not everyone is into techie humor, but for the lit-crit crowd, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival last year held a Hamlet-Themed Haiku Contest. One of the top vote getters:

To be? Not to be?
Who cares! Am I fat in tights?
That is the question.

Humor, of course, is our earliest introduction to poetry. It is there at the beginning with a gurgle and giggle. The earliest poem I learned (maybe yours too) was, “Hickory, dickory, dock, a mouse ran up the clock. . . . ” This magical bit of verse has been introducing children to rhyme and meter since it was published in 1744. And, you know what? It is a limerick. Ah, the limerick. “There once was a man from Nantucket…” Okay, we can stop there. But, wait a sec. Here is a version I can print:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all of his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

The limerick flows so smoothly you might never have paid attention to it structure. So, just to set the record: the 1st, 2nd, and 5th lines rhyme and have the same number of syllables, usually eight or nine. The 3rd and 4th also rhyme and have the same syllable count, typically five or six. Ogden Nash wrote mostly humorous verse and was a master of the limerick, for example,

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “let us flee!”
“Let us fly!” said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

On the other hand, a more serious poet, Conrad Aiken, also wrote limericks, including this one about itself!

The limerick’s, admitted, a verse form:
a terse form: a curse form: a hearse form.
It may not be lyric.
and at best it’s Satyric,
and a whale of a tail in perverse form.

One of my favorite poets of short humor was David McCord and I always have been fond of his “Waiter’s Epitaph,”

By and by
God caught his eye.

A short poem, yes. How about an even shorter one by Anonymous? “Fleas,”

Adam
Had em.

An even shorter one? One word title. One word text.

“I”
Why?

Its author, Charles Ghinga was known as “Father Goose,” and also wrote a large body of work for adults. I find it funny, though Christopher McTeague, a writer and book collector of some renown, commented that, “Along with its title, the poem creates a haunting, understated little couplet that continues to beg the most poignant, timeless, rhetorical question of our existence.”

There are many brands of humor poetry. One in growing popularity is cowboy poetry. We just attended the Monterey Music & Poetry Festival and loved the humorous verse served up by Doris Daley who had just won the 2009 Western Music Association Best Female Cowboy Poet of the Year and Best Cowboy Poetry CD of the year [http://www.dorisdaley.com/]. Just to share a taste, here is the last couplet in her “The Awards Show” poem in which she demonstrates the self-effacing nature of this genre.

He’s the Poet of the Year –– you can’t pile it on too deep
Cause for sure he has the outfit – and best of all –– he works for cheap.

Last month, we dove into the deep end of the pool, asking, “Is haiku poetry?” One could say, “Of course,” meaning that it is a poetical form. Those who say, “No,” fall into two camps: those who, perhaps due to its brevity, see it as less than a “real” or “regular” poem and those who, precisely because of its concision, view it as a more difficult, and, hence, higher art.

This month, though we wade in shallow water, humorous verse also invites definitional divides. Is “light verse,” with rhyme and meter, charming, not really poetry? In eye of the beholder, yes? What is doggerel for one reader is transcendent to another. As our editors here at Getting Something Read declaim, Readers Rule. The last word goes to David McCord. God caught his eye on April 13, 1997 (born December 15, 1897): “But if humor and wit are treacherous and volatile goods, they are issued in no standard package.” I will add this: tears are easy; it takes a brave poet to be a clown.

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The New Year 2010

January 1, 2010

by Neal Whitman

The New Year

For those of you who have been on this site for a full year, you already know that there are five seasons in the Japanese calendar. So, here is our New Year haiku. This feature is not the time, nor the place, for Politics. But, please forgive me if I share that I feel in sympathy with those who think the old decade was the worst since World War II. This haiku is looking back. Not to worry: soon enough spring rain will prepare the ground for new growth.

housebound
solitaire played out
the year ends

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Winter Haiku

December 21, 2009

Winter — the season of cold. Solstice — an instant in time. A tilt. Isn’t that just like a haiku? phrase • breath • fragment

I invite you on the Winter Solstice to take a breath and read this one aloud, perhaps at 5:47 p.m. to be exact.

atop a lone pine
a shrike in silhouette —
winter solstice

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Poetry or Not

December 1, 2009

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

“My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.” Twelfth Night,  Act II, Scene 3

Olivia’s servant, Maria, plots to humilate Malvolio by forging a love letter to him from Olivia. That may be where we get the saying, “That is a horse of another color,” to mean that one thing is another matter. In my October 1 Poetry Prof, I agreed with the belief that vis-a-vis prose,  poetry is a horse of another color; it is not just another way to use language, it is another language. I agree with Mary Schmirch, who wrote in the September 2009 issue of Poetry, “Poetry is not just another way of writing, it’s a way of thinking.”

This month I am asking whether haiku is or is not poetry.

This was prompted by a poet-pal last month, who, when I told her I had gotten an acceptance, asked, “Was that for a regular poem or one of your haiku?” I took a long, deep breath and told her it was for a “regular” poem and added that some haiku purists would say that haiku was not regular poetry –– in fact, it was superior.

A little background: Beginning with Imagist poets Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell among others, 20th century Western poets became intrigued with the three-line concision of haiku and its focus on concrete rather than abstract thinking. Today there is a worldwide haiku community and, within it, there is a strong voice in favor of citing haiku as not poetry, but its own thing. For example, haiku teacher David Coomler tells students, “Do not think of it as poetry… It is just too different from what we ordinarily think of as poetry.” On the other hand, the Haiku Society of America does not divorce haiku from poetry: “Haiku is a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience or nature of the season intuitively linked to the human condition.”

What the “is not ” and the “is too” camps do agree upon is the tradition of a two-line phrase and a one-line fragment structure. We will leave for another day whether the editor of Bear Creek Haiku was wise to publish my submission (the editor of another journal refuses to review two-line haiku):

still

still

I submit for your consideration a Declaration! Our inalienable rights include Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Haiku… but haiku as you define it. Consider:

1. On one hand, do you find it not limiting, but liberating, to write haiku only in its own season? Since it is now autumn, the haiku purist writes only autumnal haiku. This “not poetry” camp embraces haiku as “making a living” that is enhanced when you live in the season. This means not living in past –– writing now about last summer –– or looking ahead and writing about next winter. Poets writing in Western forms feel no such constriction, and writing haiku you might not either. If haiku is poetry, then you are free to live in any time zone.

2. So, on the other hand, do you embrace “poetic license” and feel free to make things up? In my Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the a-definition of license is “permission granted by a competent authority.” The b-defintion is “a document, plate, or tag evidencing of a license granted.” [note: my personalized auto plate, PG POET, is in a customized frame inscribed "Poetic License"]. You might give yourself permission to make up images for your haiku. But, beware. Should you submit your work to a haiku journal, you should know that some editors in the “not poetry” camp have a nose for what is made up and will reject it. They are looking at the c-definition in my dictionary: “freedom that is used irresponsibly.”

If you choose to write haiku only in its season and convey only what you actually experience, then haiku is not just another form of poetry — it is a horse of another color. May I offer a way out of this “one or the other” dilemma?

Could we agree that haiku is not, not poetry?

How can I have it both ways? Well consider this link. In writing a haiku, the challenge is to find two things that do not go together, yet do go together. I am suggesting that the same can be said of haiku. It is and is not poetry. Why do I embrace this “less filling” and “more taste” notion of simultuneity?

• I do like the notion of haiku as its own way of life. As an idealist, I see that haiku could be a gateway into living in the present and experiencing in each season the deep emotions that recycle each year and shadow the stages of my life. Yet, as a pragmatist, I welcome the license to make things up, as in my haiku published in Ink, Sweat, & Tears.

snow in July

rare as unicorn

alone on a beach

• And, I do like the notion that haiku is part of the rich imaginative traditon of saying what cannot be said in prose. Listen to what Stanley Plumly said of lyric poetry in the November-December 2009 American Poetry Review:

… spacing is as important as timing; piecing as valuable as joining. This is as vital to the tripartite structure of haiku as to the stationing and development of a sonnet.

Ah–– the sonnet’s last two-line envoi like the fragment rejoiner to the haiku’s phrase! Well, couldn’t we re-write and reverse Plumly?

… spacing and timing, piecing and joining … as vital to the sonnet as to haiku…

Well, that is it this month.

I am the eggman. They are the eggmen. I am the walrus.

__________

p.s. Jane Campion’s Keats bio-flic, Bright Star, is simply awful. But, Stanley Plumly’s Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography is cinematic splendor in prose.

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What is a good poem?

November 1, 2009

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

Last month I professed the belief that it is good to read bad poems in order to learn how to write good ones. Journal editors are less patient out of necessity. The late John Ciardi, when editing poetry for The Saturday Review, said he knew in one line when a submission was not good enough for his magazine. David Wagoner at Northwest Review said that his agony was not over until the third line. How do the rest of us, who perhaps have more time and gut it out until the last syllable, decide when a poem is good or not?

Every year since 1988, guest editors for the Scribner Poetry Series pick the best 75 poems of the year. The aforementioned Mr. Wagoner just edited the 2009 edition. In his Introduction, he admitted that he could have chosen a different set of 75 poems and they would have been just as good [The Best American Poetry 2009]. Since this series, year in, year out, identifies “the best,” it follows then that there must be “the good” and “the better.”

So, who can say what makes a good poem?

Dare me. Double dare me.

I can.

Here goes.

Yes, I am presumptuous. No apology. All writing is a presumption. One puts pen to paper, or nowadays, perhaps opens a WordPerfect document, with the presumption of having something to say worth reading. The one exception I can think of is the diary. So, when it comes to poetry, what is worth people’s time to read (other than reading bad ones to learn what not to do if you presume to write poetry)? I believe that “worthies” make good on two intentions fulfilled.

Intention #1:

The poet has written words that, when heard, offer a bonus over what is read silently. Moving your lips does not count. Speechwriters and lyricists share this intention, of course. I might add that the type of poetry we call lyric poetry has its origins in the human voice accompanied by stringed instrument, the lyre. My point here is that a good poem is one worth listening to. If listening to a poem adds nothing to the written word, then it is not a good poem. Poets have many tools available to making sound add value to the poem. Not my topic here and not my intention to repeat the “how to” available in textbook form.

This criterion excludes what is called “concrete” poetry when the typographical arrangement of words is more important than its meaning, never mind its sound. Of course, how a poem “looks” can add to its “goodness,” as is the case with 17th century poet’s George Herbert’s, “Easter Wings,” a poem that sounds and looks good, as well as one that speaks to me. This leads us to my second criterion.

Intention #2:

A good poem is written to one individual at a time. That is so, of course, with personal correspondence, for example a letter sent to a friend. But a good poem is one written to readers one at a time –– of course, as poet I hope that many individuals read my poem. Even with what we call the “occasional” poem written for a special event such as a birthday, wedding, or funeral, the poet can write a really good one by thinking of the audience as a collection of individuals and aiming at each one at a time.

A good poem, then, is the most intimate of writing. It is one heart speaking to another. Dare I call it a “heart to heart” conversation? I speak to you and imagine how you might respond. The reader, of course, gets the last word. If you read a poem and cannot “hear’” this conversation, it is not a good poem.

Let’s hear from two readers:

1. Stanley Kunitz: Ur Reader

Ur Reader? Mr. Kunitz was a good –– a very good –– poet. He also wrote movingly about reading poetry. Kunitz, who made it to the century mark, at age 95 recalled reading the Gerard Stanley Hopkins poem, “God’s Grandeur,” 70 years earlier. “I knew he was speaking directly to me and giving me a hint of the kind of poetry that I would be dedicated to for the rest of my life.”

2. Me: Common Reader

Common Reader? Well, as a poet, I write for what I call the “common reader,” of which I consider myself one. Before I began reading poems (good and bad ones) to learn how write poems, I read poetry on a regular basis for pleasure without benefit of an M.F.A. Dip and dive into Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. No, I am not related to him. Oh, if only I were. In 1855, he opens Leaves of Grass, in the first person: “I celebrate myself and what I assume you shall assume.” Six editions and 37 years later he concludes, “Good-Bye my Fancy! Farewell dear mate, dear love.” He wrote and spoke to me and to you and you and you.

Whitman speaks to Everyone and to Anyone successfully because we do not feel he is shouting to a crowd; he is talking to me and also to you, but to each of us personally. I can see his beckoning hand:

Come closer to me… and take the best I possess…
Yield closer and closer and give me the best you possess…

Last year, the editors of Getting Something Read sent me a ball cap with the logo Readers Rule. You rule. And, you can post here your own rules. I dare you. I doube dare you.

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Autumn Haiku

October 13, 2009

by Neal Whitman

I lay awake cold.
My left thumb rests on my chin
below chestnut moon.

Neal Whitman is a member of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society of San Jose and the Haiku Poets of Northern California. Though contemporaries vary the syllable count, he likes to stick to the traditional Japanese 5-7-5 structure.

Kingyo are Japanese words associated with each of the five seasons (New Years is considered its own season). In English, we call these words “kigo.” One autumn kigo is “chestnut moon.” The moon, not quite full, holds particular beauty.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Originally posted 2008-10-24 13:16:49.

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Is It Good To Be Bad?

October 1, 2009

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

My friend, Susan, brought me a copy of a Slightly Foxed journal. No, the journal was not slightly foxed, that is, one with pages spotted with age. That was its name. Slightly Foxed. This is a British quarterly journal that promises “96 pages of personal recommendations for books of lasting interest, old and new, both fiction and non-fiction – books that have inspired, amused, and sometimes even changed the lives of the people who write about them.” [www.foxedquarterly.com]

I loved my gift. Truth in Advertising: my friend’s husband, Richard, who could not make the visit, had an article in this issue [Autumn 2009]: a wonderful review of Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country (in 1863) by Alexander Smith. But, what really caught my attention was Ashley Harrold’s article on why he loves to read the work of 18th century British poet Robert Herrick, some of which, Harrold admits, is pedestrian and even, at times, “third rate.”

[short excursion: I rate Herrick's "Saint Distaff Day or the morrow after Twelth Day" at least "second rate," and I love to read it to guests during the Holiday Season. Saint Distaff? No, there is no saint so named. It refers to the day women returned to work the day after the twelve days of Christmas. The "distaff" is the staff loaded with flax or tow that feeds into the spinning wheel. Distaff evolved to be a pejorative word for woman's work and the distaff side of the family refers to its female branch. By the way, men did not return to work until the Monday after the twelth day of Christmas, known as Plough Day.]

Mr. Harrold’s piece prompted a question for this month’s Poetry Prof column: Is there value in reading bad poetry?

“Wait a sec,” you might be wondering. “Who can say if a poem is good or bad?” Well, in a future month, we could take up the question of who’s to say what is a good or bad poem. But, for now, let’s consider whether it is worth your time to read a poem you think is bad.

When it’s not good, you know it. Your doubts might begin as early as the title. But, you press forward and, in not too many lines, you know this poem is not for you. Perhaps you scan to the last line… or not. We all have our own breaking point. One of mine is gyno-urinary anatomy. Other enemies of good poetry are sentimentality and cynicism. But, that’s just me.

May I encourage you (and remind myself): Go back and read the whole poem. It can be time well spent. Why? The answer in one word is connoisseurship.

You can be a connoisseur of about anything – wine or beer, antiquarian (even slightly foxed) books, Southwest Indian pueblo pottery… you name it. What makes a connoisseur a connoisseur? In a nutshell, it is knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm. So, for example, wine and beer connoisseurs are people who learn a lot about their libations, open a lot of bottles, and love to imbibe. So, how about poetry? There a lot to learn and a ton to read –– and also embracing it makes you a connoisseur. Connoisseurs appreciate that poetry is not just another use of language, it is another language. It is a way of saying the unsayable.

I write poetry for those I call “common readers,” and I use that term with respect. But, if you are that uncommon reader –– a connoisseur of poetry –– every poem, The Good, Bad, & Ugly, is an opportunity. When it is not good, maybe only mediocre, the connoisseur will be more disappointed than the common reader, but can get more from it by figuring out where the poet went wrong. You becomes its Secret Editor: “Can this poem be saved?”

The upside of being a connoisseur is that, when a poem is really good, you will appreciate it even more than the common reader. Oh, others may “know” is it a good poem. But, you fathom the depths of its “goodness.” Good poems make good teachers. But remember: so do bad ones.

All this, I profess.

P.S. Please go in search of a used (perhaps slightly foxed) copy of Alexander Smith’s Dreamthorp. As my friend, Richard, writes, “It is less like reading than like holding a conversation with an old friend.” A Peter Pauper Press (1950) edition can be found easily on Internet used book sites.

Editor’s note: Dreamthorp can also be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

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Autumn Haiku

September 23, 2009

by Neal Whitman

Here we start our second cycle of seasonal haiku. I wrote this haiku on September 19 to commemorate the 190th anniversary of the day John Keats wrote To Autumn following his daily constitutional. I went on walk in a pine grove, sat on a log, and this is what came to me. Should you ever visit me in Pacific Grove, California, come with me to our Farmers Market. Our town slogan is “America’s Last Hometown.”

appleful for home
swinging a tote in each hand
fall Farmers Market

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Making Hay

September 1, 2009

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

“Take a chance,” implores
the lotto ticket seller,
“create luck with faith.”

Numerology is a belief in the relationship between numbers and the lives we lead. Numerology is to Mathematics as Astrology is to Astronomy. I am an Aries so, of course we do not believe in such things. But, on the 19th of this month, I plan to buy a California lottery ticket with the numbers 9191819. It was on September 19, 1819, that John Keats went on a walk and wrote what some believe to be a perfect poem, if there could possibly be such a thing: “To Autumn”

I do not encourage gambling. But, might I invite you to go on a walk that day? I plan to walk and to begin a new poem that evening. Here is what I plan to do to get ready to write:

• Take a hot bath.

• Dress in pressed black jeans and a white shirt, both freshly laundered at the dry cleaner.

• Peel and slice an apple

• Pour a glass of red wine, in my case a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon –– when Robert Louis Stevenson honeymooned in Napa Valley in the summer of 1880, he wrote, “Wine is bottled poetry.”

• Uncap my Waterman fountain pen.

• Open up my Moleskine notebook and let’s see what flows.

This ritual will be inspired by John Keats who indeed did prepare to write poetry by taking a bath, dressing in his best clothes, and setting sliced apple and red wine on his desk. It was then he felt ready to dip his pen in an ink pot and begin to write.

John Keats was true to his writing habits when he sat down to write “To Autumn,” the last of his six odes. The previous ones were written in May of 1819. But, he wrote this one on September 19, two days before the autumnal equinox. Keats traveled to Winchester on September 15, and, as soon as he settled in his lodgings, took up all his old habits, including walking by day and writing by late afternoon and early evening. Getting dressed to write was a key element in his routine:

I rouse myself, wash and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoestrings neatly and in fact adornize as if I were going out — then all clean and comfortable I sit down to write.

Winchester is the county seat of Hampshire in South East England. Its best known landmarks are a statue of Alfred the Great, the 9th century King of Wessex, and Winchester Cathedral, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe. The town was fictionalized as Wintoncester in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and, in part, as Barchester in the Barsetshire novels of Anthony Trollope. Jane Austen spent her last six months in Winchester where she died on July 18, 1817. Today a visitor can follow the footsteps of Keats, walking up St. Giles Hill for a view ovelooking the city and onto footpaths along Weirs Walk, the river that meanders through the countryside. For those of us traveling via imagination, we can “see” …

… barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
and touch the stubble-plains in rosy-hue

This is what Keats saw and then put to pen at the end of the day. What will I see on my walk this day? What will you see? Out two days before the fall equinox, perhaps we will experience the essence of this season: Keats’ “season of mists and mellow fruitfullness,” a season Immanuel Kant had described as sublime, not beautiful. In the fields outside Winchester, Keats imagined Autumn as lazy as the gleaner asleep on a half-reaped furrow, the haying not yet over.

Where you live, and I hope out walking on September 19, is the summer falling slowly into a more quiet season? Summer had its bursts, Winter soon its blasts. Autumn offers burrs, those seeds with hooks that return home with you. When you change clothing for the evening (and perhaps to write a poem), will you need to brush off these pesky passengers as Keats likely did?

marigold, ragweed, enchanters’s nightshade, goosegrass, stickseed, cicely, burdock

All seasonal burrs. Prickly. The stuff of poetry, eh?

Listen: To Autumn by John Keats

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