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Poetry Appreciation - 'To Autumn’ by John Keats (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-24 20:09:46
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun..."

Today we're appreciating one of the most beautiful poems in the English language, which we assigned at the end of our last poetry session: 'To Autumn' by John Keats.

We're discussing ripeness, maturity, mortality, autumnal music, literature as labyrinth, allusions, memorisation, Shakespearean fruit, how new meaning gets started, and much more.

Timestamps

  • 0:00 learning great poetry by heart
  • 4:00 mindset for memorisation
  • 6:00 the allusive nature of literature
  • 8:00 the pleasure of working on a poem
  • 10:00 poetic tradition as palace of tropes
  • 12:00 how new meaning gets started
  • 15:00 literature as labyrinth of linkages
  • 17:00 greatest ode in the English language
  • 19:00 on the composition of ‘To Autumn’
  • 21:00 the structure of Keats’ great poem
  • 25:00 the effect of living a great poem
  • 27:00 reading ‘To Autumn’ together
  • 28:00 appreciating the poem’s first line
  • 29:00 meditation on painful maturity
  • 31:00 conspiring to load and bless
  • 32:00 style conveys sense in poetry
  • 34:00 ‘fill all fruit with ripeness to the core’
  • 35:00 Keats’ poetic relation to Shakespeare
  • 37:00 thinking warm days will never cease
  • 38:00 gather ye rosebuds while ye may
  • 39:00 the personification of the season
  • 41:00 watching the hours oozing away
  • 42:00 ‘where are the songs of spring?’
  • 44:00 the bittersweet autumnal songs
  • 47:00 what do you make of this poem?
  • 50:00 next poem recommendation

Resources:

  • The Poem: You can read the poem whilst following along with the discussion here. If you would like a great paperback anthology that contains the poem, I'm working from this one: The Nation's Favourite Poems.
  • Readings: There are some splendid readings of this great poem available online. Here is Ben Whishaw. Ralph Richardson's reading is here. And Arthur L. Wood's reading is here.
  • Books: Helen Vendler's close analyses of the odes of Keats here is a marvellous companion for those who love the poet. And Lucasta Miller did a beautiful job with her book of analyses of Keats' poems here.
  • Film Recommendation: If you're in the mood for a great film that has inspired many to read and write poetry, then you may like to have a screening of the 1989 Dead Poets Society. I personally like to watch this film every year during the autumn season.

Questions for You:

1) What feelings does this poem inspire in you?

2) How does the autumn season influence your thoughts and mood?

3) What do your personal favourite lines tell you about yourself?

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

Comments

Kaushi

I am sorry my comments are such text blocks. Am on the web on an older iPhone, and Patreon doesn't allow me to use the Return tab except to post.

Paul Servini

I'm writing this not having finished listening to the lecture yet, but I wanted to share my experience right now. I heard the first part of the lecture this morning and to be honest I found it depressing. I've always struggled with poetry, finding it more like an incomprehensible foreign language. Ben's enthusiasm made me give it another go. I am enjoying Paradise lost and spent two weeks reading precisely this poem every day. But the different notions and tropes Ben talked about this morning made me feel like to understand the poem, I really did need special, perhaps even hidden knowledge to have any any chance of understanding it. Simply reading and grappling with the text would not suffice, so why bother. Then, this evening I went over the beginning of the poem which I am learning by heart and thanks to what I heard this morning I slowly started to see things I hadn't grasped before. A couple of examples: why does Keats speak of "mellow fruitfulness" until I noticed the connection to "maturing sun" in the next line; and what about "thatch-eves" in l.4. Obviously a reference to the rim of a roof but I can't help wondering whether Keats is also pointing at the eve(ning) being the mature part of the day? Maybe, this is going too far, I don't know. But what I'm trying to say is once we really start reading and wrestling with the text, we do start seeing things.

Paul Servini

The main thing I take away from this poem is the desire to learn to see like a poet. I've never seen autimn the way Keats does. For me autimn is a precurser to a long bleak of darkness. I struggle with autumn. Yes, Keats sees the mists but quickly passes on from there to the mellow fruitfulness, to the blessing of fruit, the kernel which unseen by rhe eye is plumping the hazel shell. He even takes into the very heart of the matter where we become eye witness to autumn and the sun conspring to bless us.

Ms P
>>119999227

It’s exactly the opposite for me. Spring and summer fill me with dread, and when autumn finally arrives I actually feel like I’m being brought back from the dead!

Karen

Poetry has always stymied me so I am very happy to be a part of these new poetry lectures. I bought both books - the Bloom and Favourite Poems and I look forward to the new reveal at the end of each lecture. I just listened to the Autumn lecture today and even though I thought I understood the poem, so much more was revealed by Ben and in all of the well thought out comments above. At nearly 70, this is such a huge hole in my life - I'm really so grateful for these lectures.