Today, you get Keats's Shakespearean sonnet - a love poem that is entirely swoon-worthy.

Bright Star
by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art ( Read more... )

As John Keats wrote in the opening lines of his lengthy narrative poem, Endymion,


( Read more... )

In reading today's Writer's Almanac, I learned that today is the 190th anniversary of John Keats's death. The Writer's Almanac also includes some absolutely swoon-worthy excerpts from some of Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne. And it occurred to me to mark the day with a reprise of one of his Shakespearian sonnets - a love poem that is entirely swoon ( Read more... )

All that talk of the Greek and Roman gods yesterday in the post about "The Garden" by Andrew Marvell called to mind one of the most famous of famous Keats poems, which I've not yet posted here. It seemed high time to remedy that situation, and so it is that today's selection is one of the five famous Odes written by Keats in 1819: "Ode on a Grecian ( Read more... )

Yesterday's post about Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", which used a form of hymn metre (three lines of more-or-less iambic tetrameter followed by a line of trimeter). Although it is indeed a nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky" is also a narrative poem, meaning one that tells a story. And all that talk of slaying monsters made me think of knights, making ( Read more... )

Today's poem is "To Autumn" by John Keats, whose life is currently onscreen in the movie Bright Star, which I've not yet seen but will get to this week (by hook or by crook). (Check out the New York Times review if you've not yet heard about this film.)

I first posted this poem earlier this year during my National Poetry Month series on "Building ( Read more... )

Yesterday's post was "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost, which, while written to evoke spring, works in many ways as an Autumn poem as well. Autumn seemed like the obvious next choice, and what better poem to represent Autumn than this lovely piece by Keats:

To Autumn
by John Keats

I ( Read more... )

Last Friday, the ladies at the Merry Sisters of Fate issued a call for submissions. That's right, it was a "Watcher's Prompt Contest". The task: Write a story based on the following picture, post it no later than Thursday, February 26th, and leave a link over there. Not one to pass up a challenge based on such a lovely picture (based on a lovely ( Read more... )

Believe me when I say that the title of this post is 100% accurate as to content today, as is the Eddie Izzard quote in the icon. The long story version is that I've just read an interview (from which I will be quoteskimming come Sunday), in which Keats was mentioned. And I thought (as I so often do) "F*ck me, I love Keats", which happens to be a ( Read more... )

Here in New Jersey, where I live, it is still summer. But lately, in the evenings or the early mornings, I can catch a whiff of Autumn in the air. Nights have been cooler lately, and the trees have been filling with their various fruits - maple helicopters and seed pods, crabapples and apples, ripening nuts. I got to thinking about the change of ( Read more... )