Saturday, October 31, 2009

Happy Birthday Keats, Happy Halloween

Later today, in my ongoing effort to learn to work the family digital camera, I plan to post a photo essay that uses Halloween themes (haunted houses and pumpkins) with thoughts of doing things differently, mixing things up.

But first, over on The Writer's Almanac website, I saw this post, with the following juxtaposition of history:

Today is not only Halloween, not only the true Reformation Day (the actual day when Luther nailed those theses to the Wittenberg door), but also Keats' birthday.

If Keats' birthday was a national holiday, how would we celebrate? With wine, so we'd have "purple stained mouths"? Would we sing in "full throated ease"? Would we engage in "wild ecstasy"? Or would we meet dreamy lovers, to recreate the Eve of St. Agnes?

Alas, I must sing the songs of autumn, down here in continued record breaking heat, where candy melts and pumpkins rot before we can carve them if we don't keep them cold.

In the meantime, there are great websites, where we can see the poems of Keats and get some background information and even "see" the original manuscripts if we click on the links (if the originals still exist). Here are links to my favorite Keats poems:

"Ode to a Nightingale"

"Ode on a Grecian Urn"

"To Autumn"

"The Eve of St. Agnes"

No comments: