John Keats

It sucks that Keats died at such a young age because if he had lived to be even just 40 years old or so I honestly believe that he could have composed some of the best poems ever because the few that we do have are great. His poems seem to deal a lot with death and I guess that is to be expected since his father, mother, and brother all died and he personally cared for 2 of them until their dying day.

I liked "To Autumn" because it made me feel calm as I was reading it. I'm personally a summer person but I liked how he described the wonderous things that the autumn season brings and what he is going to miss about it. When I read the the mini cliff note that was given for the word "autumn" it said that there was a double meaning to this poem, "The ode evokes two competing but related senses of autumn: the social context of harvest bounty; and the symbolic association with death" (pg. 443). I grasped the poem in the context of harvest and its social applications but I really didn't see how death was incorporated into this poem as well. The only thing I could think of was the changing seasons is like the changes that occur throughout life and maybe the cold that winter brings can somewhat correlate with death in some way I think. That part really did confuse me but other than that I really loved reading this.