Talk:To Autumn

Font
Must you have that beautiful poem in typewriter font? Unindent it and use "< / b r >" (without the spaces). Rintrah 14:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Poem source
Generally source documents are stored at Wikisource. However since the poem is so short it arguably could be included here, although it really should be at Wikisource. If you must include it in the article, look at some other articles on how to do it, such as Ode to a Nightingale (although I think that example is poor also).. don't just cut and paste text into the article it doesn't work. -- Stbalbach 02:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)\

YOU ARE ALL WRONG(non-signed)

The text of the peom doesn't belong on this page. The wikisource at the bottom more than covers that, and the style guide suggests that only short poems should be in the text, and by short, they mean much shorter than this. If it were a haiku, things would be different, but a plain text version of an ode would not appear in an encyclopedia article. The text can appear in an analysis, but it needs to be modified with a non-origional-research commentary on the work. Recently, I have been working on Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode on Indolence, and I plan to help with editing this article when I get more free time around the Holidays. If you would like to get a head start on this poem, I would love to see it. Feel free to edit at will or post suggestions here.Mrathel (talk) 03:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

question
I found this syntax in the article and I think it is a mistake, but I wasn't sure how to fix it: "His syntax incorporates lacks hiatus " Karanacs (talk) 18:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed - removed "incorporates". I think it was two sentences chopped together. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:44, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent point. This is a terrible article and should not be a 'Featured article'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.182.65 (talk) 00:55, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Feel free pointing what is wrong instead of give a bad review. Tb hotch Ta lk C. 00:58, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

image changes
Hey! I modified the image to a larger file, and replaced it with another: a pretty crude attempt to drop out the background. Change it back if it doesn't suit everyone. I fixed up the versions of the poems elsewhere, and the link here. cygnis insignis 06:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The creator of the illustrations was William James Neatby (1860-1910). cygnis insignis 07:30, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

line numbers
Will someone please explain why the line numbers at the end of each stanza are necessary. The article already says that there are three stanzas of eleven lines each. To put line numbers at the end of each stanza seems to me distracting and unnecessary. Rick Norwood (talk) 23:05, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

structure %
what's up with these gratuitous percentages? if they refer to occurrence within the poem, as the previous sentence suggests, why bother at all? if they are in reference to his overall output ok, but really these numbers are meaningless and slightly insulting without context - a form of analysis that comes off as pseudoscience at best. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.170.15 (talk) 08:49, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Painting
One thing to consider: Amandajm added: 'It has parallels in the rural landscapes of the English painter John Constable, [1] with Keats himself describing the fields of stubble that he saw on his walk as being "like a painting".' The source cited, by Boey Kim Cheng, states: "The poem inhabit[s] fully its autumnal canvas, richer than any Constable painting." That is not the same as claiming a parallel to the landscapes of Constable specifically. If no other source can be found to support a direct connection to Constable, I think this sentence will need, if not deletion, serious modification, or else it will amount to WP:OR. While I don't think the source is quite a "fringe item", as is claimed on the review page in the transmission of Ottava Rima's comments, the important thing to note here is that it never claims any direct connection of this poem to Constable, only to landscapes "richer than any Constable painting". There is something painterly in the scene as depicted by Keats, and I think we can use Cheng (Boey?) to support that, but that is probably as far as we should go. --Alan W (talk) 06:37, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, where is the source for the quoted words "like a painting"? I see that a letter of Keats's does suggest he saw something painting-like in the scene, but not in those words. Ottava made a good point here, though I think we might still be able to use Cheng at least for additional support to what Keats himself said. But, again, what is the source of the quote? --Alan W (talk) 06:58, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, in the absence of any response, I have taken a stab at this. --Alan W (talk) 03:47, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Byron and Shelley
Similar problem in the last paragraph of the lead. "It may be seen as the poet's response to the many English poems, such as Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, written in praise of the natural beauties of other countries, or as a direct contrast to Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, published the previous year." No doubt that Keats had a different idea of what good poetry was, and I believe he was critical of much of what Byron and Shelley did. That doesn't mean, however, that this poem is a specific response to anything in Byron's or Shelley's output. There are two problems here: the lead shouldn't really introduce anything that is not covered in greater detail in the body of the article; and this needs to be sourced. If anyone has really unearthed some specific response to the above poets in "To Autumn", then put something into the body of the article and cite the source. And then it will be legitimate to leave this sentence in the lead.

I just noticed that the debate between Amandajm and Ottava Rima on the FAR page really ends up concluding the same thing: [OR] "The statement about Byron is original research and not in the body of the text" [Amandajm] "The contrast with Byron is pertinent, and needs to be in the body of the text as well. Yes, it requires appropriate referencing. But noone who knows anything about Romantic poetry would consider a comparison between Byron and Keats as OR." Still, you should come up with a source, and in this case it should be very easy, since as you say, Amanda, the fact that Byron and Keats wrote very different kinds of poetry is obvious to anyone who knows the Romantic poets. And if we talk of any specific responses, then I agree with Ottava that it really is OR and needs the source all the more.

So who is going to do this? As I said, I am not now in a position to do all that much work on this article. If no one else is, then some of what was recently added, will, I hate to say it, have to come out, or the article will be judged unsuitable for Wikipedia altogether, not just of sub-FA quality. --Alan W (talk) 03:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)


 * As above, I have seen no further comments from anyone, so, without having access to any but my one good source, I did what I thought the minimum to avoid coming under fire for WP:OR. If anyone can find a reliable source arguing convincingly that the poem was a "response" to anything by Byron or Shelley, this can be edited further. --Alan W (talk) 03:51, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Another Comment
Read some more of the newest version. Amandajm, your reorganization of the material that describes the themes and structure of the poem is for the most part very good. Much clearer now. The only point I can think of raising at this time is that the word "destitution" somehow does not seem quite right in this context. Can't (yet) think of a single word that would be better, though. Decline, death, decay? --Alan W (talk) 04:52, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Colonialist sentiment?
Having now read Alan Bewell's Romanticism and Colonial Disease and some of the other secondary sources, I see very clearly that "To Autumn" is not at all an "expression of colonialist sentiment", nor does Bewell make that claim. Keats nowhere justifies colonial expansion, here or in any of his other writings. Bewell shows that Keats was aware of the detrimental effects of diseases that ran rampant in the colonies and believes that Keats was expressing in this poem a "nationalist" sentiment of appreciation for the more healthful character of the climate of rural England. (Geoffrey Hartman also interprets the poem as including this "political" element.)

I have removed the other Bewell source from the References, having determined that it is simply an extract from Bewell's 1999 book and is therefore entirely redundant and possibly confusing, with its 2008 date. --Alan W (talk) 03:00, 14 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Very good! What I read of that book online seemed very interesting. Amandajm (talk) 11:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Ubi sunt?
.... and echoing the "Who hast not..." of the previous stanza. Can you include something to this effect? Amandajm (talk) 04:46, 17 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not so sure about that one. It's a rhetorical question, but that it's a question is the only thing I see in common with "Ubi sunt?". (And yes, "oo bee or not oo bee"--I just got it, if the pun is intended. :^)


 * Looking back, also, I see that someone (maybe it was you) already, in the following paragraph, pointed out the two questions, suggesting some structural tie. But Ubi sunt is something else in itself. I'll think about this some more, but for now I feel I'd mess things up if I said any more about that. --Alan W (talk) 05:30, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's the structural tie. The first question does not have that melancholic feel. It actually has a somewhat voyeristic quality, given that these personifications are all in a state of drowsiness or abstraction.
 * Well, my experience of the harvesting process is quite different! Going round a 90 acre paddock on an old harvester with an open cabin in 100 degree heat, with the blazing sun turning the dust to a golden haze and the farmer loudly singing along with the Christmas Carol service recorded in Kings College Cambridge ten thousand miles away and broadcast over ABC FM. Amandajm (talk) 06:59, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not sure if you mean this just happened (I can't quite piece it together--they would be playing Christmas music now, but isn't it late spring, almost summer down there now? I wouldn't think harvest would be for a few more months, at least). In any case, you could write your own poem, you know. You must have a very different view of "autumn" from that of most English-speaking people. :-) Regards, Alan W (talk) 03:46, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Summer begins on December 1st. The wheat harvest starts in November and goes through to January. The harvest starts in Queensland and moves south. We have had seven years acute drought. This year it has rained and rained and rained. There is a poem about it called "Said Hanrahan". I believe its here but i can't check because my computer is running so slow. Amandajm (talk) 06:31, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not it exactly, but that one was good too, and I found another video with a performance of "Said Hanrahan". Enjoyed both. Thanks for introducing me to the background of rural life in Australia. I had no idea. My background is apparently entirely different from yours, far more urban. We have, however, had our own unwanted meteorological events in recent years, about the most notable of which see 2007_Brooklyn_tornadoes. --Alan W (talk) 06:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Gallery
That pic, which is the frontispiece of a book about Keats and therefore highly relevant, says very little about the poem. I suggest the inclusion of a few pics which illustrate the stanzas. They are all from Hampshire. I looked through dozens to find three that worked together. Sorry the farmhouse isn't thatched. A lot of the thatches have been replaced. A lot of nice pics were of the wrong time of year, particularlt spring, with the green haze beginning on the fields and a pink haze on the bare trees.

I have thought about this about this a bit more, and have decided that these pictures may be useful to readers, particularly young ones, coming from outside the UK, as an aid to visualising the nature of the landscape which Keats is writing about, and which would be familiar to most of his immediate public. Amandajm (talk) 15:08, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I like the general direction in which your thoughts are tending, but, as you suggest, if we substitute or add any more illustrations to the article itself, we would want something closer to what the poem describes. Sounds like it would be hard to find thatched cottages these days. And, as you also intimate, settings in spring wouldn't be very appropriate either.


 * Meanwhile, I'm still reading more, and thinking about what has been said about the ideas expressed in the poem, so much of which has been about matters of life and death and the cycles of nature, etc. Good that you bring this up, actually, reminding me not to forget the richness of the surface of the poem, which is very much about specific impressions of a particular day in autumn at a particular place. It's not all deep symbolism about death and renewal, or Keats's attempt to cope with his own mortality, and that kind of thing, as much as that is in there too. :-) Some things currently said about the themes could be said better, and a few things can still be added and maybe should be. Working on it in my own slow way. Regards, Alan W (talk) 07:17, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * When I wrote the above, I had not yet looked at the article and hadn't realized you actually inserted new photos. They're lovely pictures, but I wonder just how appropriate they are here, for the reasons noted above. I don't know who else is paying attention now, but it would be good to have a third opinion. At this point, playing devil's advocate, I would urge you to remember that so much of this poem is a landscape of the mind. It's certainly not a pictorial survey of rural England. Maybe one such photo would be all right, but, excuse me for saying so, I think you have got a bit carried away here. Regards, Alan W (talk) 07:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah! I always get carried away with pictures. But I agree, let the words speak. Amandajm (talk) 07:56, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * But now I think you have been carried away in the other direction! I have tentatively restored one picture, which I think is most appropriate, since a stubble-field was the immediate inspiration for the poem, and that in that photo the season is clearly autumn, as it is not in the others.


 * You remind me how late it is here. Well, one advantage of staying up into what for me is the wee hours of the morning is that we can "speak" directly. :^) --Alan W (talk) 07:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, are you lurking there are you? There are several pics of the River Itchen, and some are October, but actually the February ones are the most interesting, except that they are obviously February because the grass looks as if it has been snowed on. Amandajm (talk) 08:00, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It's 7 pm here (daylight saving). A gloriously beautiful evening with long golden shadows and the sea as blue as a saphhire. I wanted to eat fish and chips on the beach but it's too windy. Amandajm (talk) 08:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The beach? From other things you've said, I would have thought you lived practically in the Outback. But what do I know of Australian geography? Here, the sea never looks that blue; I'd have to go down to Florida, I suppose. For fish and chips, English style, at least I don't have to travel too far, and I sometimes visit a place called the ChipShop that does it well. If it weren't so ridiculously late here, I would be tempted to go there right now!


 * And yes, here I am, "lurking". The photo of the harvested field in Hampshire (there was another of a stubble-field, but this fits better) seems appropriate to me, as it even shows autumn as it looked in England to Keats. It doesn't look that different where I am around that time, though not far away there are trees with leaves that turn a brilliant red (as one critic reminded me), and that is certainly not the autumn Keats would have seen. Nor would he have seen autumn as very likely you see it, though now I'm not sure about that either! Must get "down under" some day. It's just so terribly far (and expensive to get there). --Alan W (talk) 08:18, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I haven't lived "in the bush" for years! The vast majority of us huddle on the east coast because the mountain range, the Great Dividing Range separates the better-watered regions from the dryer regions. It runs all the way from far north Queensland to Victoria, and in most places is very rugged, even though not very high.
 * Autumn is probably the most beautiful time of year as the weather is mild but the days are sunny. The thing that is odd here is that all sorts of thing bloom at times that you wouldn't expect, without conforming to any proper notion of the seasons so that flowers that ought to bloom in the spring tra-la are just as likely to bloom in the autumn or all through the winter. If you want your bulbs to behave themselves, you have to dig them all up and stick them in the fridge. Amandajm (talk) 09:15, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

His
"Keats did not send "To Autumn" to Reynolds, but did include the poem within a letter to Richard Woodhouse, his publisher and friend, and dated it on the same day." Yes, there are three people mentioned in that sentence, two besides the publisher himself. But I don't see any confusion over the identity of "his". To change this to: "Keats did not send "To Autumn" to Reynolds, but did include the poem within a letter to Richard Woodhouse, Keats's publisher and friend, and dated it on the same day". seems to me unnecessarily awkward and clumsy. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:00, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
 * You know what? I agree. It's clear enough from the context, and if you consider that broader context, it does read better your way, Martinevans123. I just reverted my reversion. --Alan W (talk) 05:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)