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Tag Archives: stanzas

To Autumn by John Keats

26 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

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Tags

Keats, nature, romanticism, season, spirituality, stanzas

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.

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,
Drows’d 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 cyder-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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies”

Often considered to be one of the greatest poems in the English language, the title and the first few lines of the poem show that Keats’ poem is actually addressed to the season of Autumn itself, as if Autumn were a person.  Denny Bradbury, in her poems “Kingcup and Friends “ and “Winter Soul” from her new collection’De~versify’, does a similar thing, referring to the season of winter and numerous flowers as though they are people who have the answers themselves:

“Kingcup, forget-me-not,dead-nettle white:
Struggling, reaching, searching for the light.
Clover, daisy, dead-nettle pink.
Look at us,
Hear us,
Let us make you think.”..   ~ ‘Kingcup and Friends’

“Crisp, clear air of deepest winter,
Sky streaked so with pastel hue
Dig into my soul with icy finger,
Make my heart with leaden blue…” ~ ‘Winter Soul’.

Each of Keats’ three eleven line stanzas consist almost entirely of descriptions of Autumn: “close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”; “sitting careless on the granary floor” ; “thou hast thy music too” with the first and third stanzas describing some of Autumn’s perceptible features  whilst the second stanza takes the idea of Autumn being a person one step further, describing  how Autumn can be found sitting in the barn, sleeping out in the fields and watching patiently as cider oozes out of a cider press. Is Keats actually addressing Autumn as a person or is he in fact addressing the readers themselves?

As Denny Bradbury does in her poem “Wisdom of Trees” with the final stanza being:

“Yet trees will reach their searching branches
Up into the wind and rain –
They live and die as nature dances.
Net year they grow and live again…”

So too does “To Autumn” both evoke a sensual awareness and pleasure at the beauty that exists in the natural world  whilst at the same time expressing a sadness that that beauty is not lasting – “the soft-dying day”.

Just as Denny Bradbury‘s poems reflect the need for balance between nature and people and a sometime-forgotten spirituality,  it is characteristic of Keats’ poetry as a whole to also blend an optimistic romanticism with the reality of a world that any enchantment provided by myth is in contrast to the way life really is.

If You Forget Me – Pablo Neruda

24 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Chile, exile, new regime, Spanish civil war, stanzas

Chile

Chile

Translated from Neruda’s native Spanish, and originally entitled “Si Tu Me Olvidas”, the poem is from Neruda’s “The Captain’s Verses” collection.  Although often thought to be dedicated to his wife, Matilde Urrutia, it is in actual fact about Neruda’s exile from his homeland, Chile.  The poem consists of seven stanzas, all of unequal length, just as Denny Bradbury’s poem “So Grey the Sea” from her new collection “De-Versify”in which she talks of journeying back home, consists of thirteen stanzas of very differing length:

“…They’re dead and gone
But me, I’m here
No one will take
What’s mine
D’you hear?

I won’t go back to
Where I’m from
It’s in the city
I belong…”

In the first stanza of Neruda’s poem, he states “I want you to know one thing”, indicating that whatever he has to relay in the rest of the poem is something of importance and encourages the reader to continue reading.

The second stanza explains how he feels about his native Chile and in the first line “You know how this is” he is stating that he knows the situation will be understood.

He writes:

“..if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you”…

Neruda is explaining to the reader how, whether he lives in danger or in peace, whenever he is abroad he is always thinking of his homeland.  Neruda lived in Spain during the Spanish civil war and adopted an active role that meant he suffered as a result. From 1927-1935 he conducted many important government tasks that required him to travel around the world but, whenever he was recalled to Chile he went back to where he belonged with no hesitation. Just as Denny Bradbury in her poem “Belonging” talks of how “Belonging is cocooning, it makes us feel alive “Neruda felt he belonged in Chile.

Unfortunately, the situation turned sour and when Neruda actively opposed President Gonzalez Videla in his capacity as a member of the Chilean Communist party, he was forced into hiding, which, as he tells his reader in the third stanza, meant his affection for his country waned, the greater the hostility he endured:

“Well now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.”

A warrant was put out for his arrest and in the fifth stanza he describes his period of exile, when he escaped from Chile in 1949:

“..and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.”

Neruda felt his country was too dangerous, that his roots were planted in old Chile, not in the new regime, that he was no longer appreciated and the hostility was too great for him to do anything but begin again elsewhere.

He finally returned three years later in 1952, the year the poem was written and by his words in the final stanza, he shows true forgiveness:

“..in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine”

Neruda remained in Chile for the rest of his life until he died of heart failure in 1973, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature two years prior.

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