Keats for breakfast

I’ve nicknamed the latest additions to my a.m. routine the “morning meds.” I spend one to two minutes on a guided meditation from an app on my phone, and then I read a poem. A little later, weather permitting, I do a walk-and-think. Most of April I’ve been working through John Keats’s Poems, in order, as well as my town’s  connector streets.

Poems was published in 1817. Most of the poems are short. Critics reacted relatively positively, though most noted the unevenness of the work. This is an accurate assessment: some of these verses made me wince. Many deal with Keats psyching himself up for the profession. He wants to be a poet, but he’s not sure he’s good enough.

When I first imagined myself as a writer, Keats’ progression from a mediocre poet with promising flashes to a genius in control of his art over the course of four or five years was reassuring and inspirational. The critics were sometimes vicious about his work, but, as they say, nevertheless he persisted. As it turned out, I never managed to follow the same trajectory. I was easily deterred by criticism and (this may have been the deciding factor) not a genius. Still, there was the bond of insecurity. Mornings being one of the most insecure parts of my day, I find Keats’ worries strangely comforting as I get my headphones and jacket and head outdoors.

Connector streets are the ones you take when you’re trying to get from one end of town to another, biggish streets with a fair amount of traffic. I’m saving the side streets for later in the spring, when the trees and flowers are in full bloom. The morning’s connector streets are Main, which runs north-south, and Chestnut, which runs east-west.

I’m eager to see the progress on the new house near the intersection of Chestnut and Main. For years there’d been a stone house on the site. Whoever lived there held “garage sales” every weekend. A few months ago the lot had been razed to the dirt. Then appeared a foundation. Today there’s a frame and some walls. A contractor’s pickup truck blocks the sidewalk. I edge around it  and peek inside the skeleton. Two-car garage, central staircase. It’ll probably turn out to be yet another colonial with a statement window over the front door.

I wonder how Keats would feel about the scenery I’m passing on Main Street. There’s some green around—trees, some lawns, flowers in planters outside some of the stores—but maybe not enough to please him. I enjoy it, though: the teens waiting for the bus, a pizza shop, a gas station—finally regular is less than $4/gallon, hooray—the fire station, our dentist’s office, the rectory of St. Bernadette’s, a lawn with a sculpture of a Native American with a headdress in silver and bronze, a store that makes gravestones, and, on the corner, the best bar and grill in town.

This morning’s sonnet was the strongest so far in these April readings. Number XI, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” It’s the Stout Cortez one, in which Keats and a friend flip through George Chapman’s translation of the Iliad, done in a wilder, less refined style than the versions in vogue in England at the time. On reading Chapman, Keats feels as though he finally “gets” Homer. He compares the experience to a scientist finding a new planet (Uranus had been discovered in 1781) and then to the explorer Cortez’s first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean from a peak in Darien. These are curious choices. Darien, a region in Central America that was intended to be Scotland’s big foothold in the New World in the late 1600s, turned out to be a failure that nearly bankrupted the country. Also the conquistador who encountered the Pacific was Balboa, not Cortez. Facts and history aside, it’s a beautiful poem.

The Iliad’s been on my mind this week, even before Sonnet XI. I’ve read translations, long ago, and recently finished Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles for book club. Miller’s novel focuses on two characters from the epic, Achilles and his lover Patroclus. At one point Achilles and Patroclus have been dragged into the Trojan war and they have a big meeting with Agamemnon and the other generals and I realize that these characters are just a little part of Homer’s enormous story.

I retrace my steps, again passing the new house. Will the statement window will be rectangular or arched? The exterior gray, white, or blue? Maybe the builders will add a wraparound porch. Maybe some Helen will live here and relax on that porch in the evenings, and some Paris will see her and spark a war…The Iliad is so damn big—vast as space, deep as the ocean. My mind spins towards heaven at the thought of it. I feel like a watcher of the skies/when a new planet swims into her ken.

At my leisure

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.” I ran across this line, from one of John Keats’ letters (to his sister, in August of 1819), a week ago. I was trying but failing to write that day’s blog. Maybe you’re familiar with the Keats saying—the quote’s on a variety of merch, tee-shirts and tote bags, key rings, decorative plaques, journal covers–pretty much anything that can be inscribed.

I must have read this sentence at some point in the past, since I’m a big fan of Keats, but it hadn’t stuck in my memory. However, on this snowstormy day his words set off giant-gong-sized sympathetic vibrations. It was a typical New England March, and I was typically sick and tired of bad weather. Everybody in layers with their heads down and shoulders hunched against the cold. I needed green grass and flowers and people eating their lunches outside, a downtown stroll with no destination, in no hurry.

That is, I wanted to go flâneuring. Flâneur is a new-to-me word. As usual, after I first noticed it, in a book about crimes of upperclass Londoners in the 1930s, it popped up everywhere, like dandelions. It means, according to  Dictionary.com, “a person who lounges or strolls around in a seemingly aimless way,” usually in an urban environment. The French poet Baudelaire, writing in the 1800s, called the flâneur a “passionate spectator” of city life. More resonating words, another hit with the big gong. I was vibrating like Wile E. Coyote after he boinged off the wall.

I think of walking generally—whether flâneuring in the city or hiking in the countryside or circling an indoor track—as something like George MacDonald’s “sacred idleness” rather than a way to get from point A to point B. When the roads are covered with snow and ice, I perambulate inside, my favorite route being living room, kitchen, dining room, sunroom, although it’s not as fun as being out in nature. Walking’s better when the weather is fine. All things are better with good weather.

Keats would seem to agree. The sentence preceding the quote above is “I adore fine weather as the greatest blessing I can have.” One of the world’s greatest poets and letter writers, writing about the weather! The opening quote is not the full thought, as he has 36 words to go in the sentence. Of course that’s harder to fit on a keyring. He gets more specific about what kind of music he wants—“not pay the price of one’s time for a jig—but a little chance music” and the desired effect: “and I can pass a summer very quietly without caring much about Fat Louis, fat Regent or the Duke of Wellington.” 

Detachment from the hamster wheel of worry. Otherwise the world overwhelms us all. Letting the cares fall away for a bit is good, although there’s a limit. One of the chief criticisms of the flâneur is the quality of being too detached, too aimless. The implication is that there’s a misuse of leisure time with all that loafing around.  But leisure time needs to be protected (I agree with Emerson: “Guard well your spare moments”) and needs to make sense only to yourself.

Perhaps more of the disapproval of the flâneur centers around the amount of leisure time he seems to have, rather than how the time’s used. We’re jealous, or nervous. Near the close of the letter, Keats admits to the drawbacks of too much free time: “I admire lolling on a lawn by a water lillied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish, and go to the Fair in the evening if I’m good. There is not hope for that: one is sure to get into some mess before evening.”

The mess before evening can’t be avoided. The snow will be back soon. Stroll while the weather is fine.

‘Tis a Season

The morns are meeker than they were —

The nuts are getting brown — 

The berry’s cheek is plumper — 

The Rose is out of town. 

The Maple wears a gayer scarf — 

The field a scarlet gown —

Lest I should be old fashioned 

I’ll put a trinket on. 

                                       Emily Dickinson

At a quarter past six this morning I pull up the shades on the bedroom windows–five windows on three walls, almost a panorama. We’re still on Daylight Saving Time, so it’s dark. The glow from the streetlights outlines the shapes of trees and houses. I drink coffee, watch the news, list to-dos, and wonder if the season is eluding me again. At some point the sun rises, and I don’t notice.

Emily Dickinson didn’t use titles on her poems, so they’re identified either by the first line, or number, or by a title assigned by an editor. The poem above is often listed as “Autumn.” I like poems about seasons, autumn especially. The fall has been different this year because of so many days of above-normal temperatures (probably, sadly, “new-normal” temperatures). The light has behaved as expected, but the nuts and berries and leaves have been a little late to the party.

 The cultural signifiers have appeared bang on time. Bright bags of candy at the market, pumpkins on stoops, pumpkin spice in coffee, ghosties hanging from tree branches, ghoulies and witches and bats everywhere, along with an occasional blow-up Tyrannosaurus Rex, apple cider donuts, and Oktoberfests.

Dickinson spent her life almost entirely in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is about 75 miles west of here. Close enough that fall looks similar. I use her poem this morning to pull myself into the present. How does the view from my bedroom stack up against her images?

Weak light: check. Nuts: yes, everywhere, on the grass, on the patio bricks, on the back steps. Never am I so happy to see squirrels about as at this time of year.  A carpet of acorns is beautiful, but bumpy and bothersome, even in the most sensible of shoes. Go, squirrels. Gather those nuts! Plump berries: check. The cherry tree is packed with fruit. The cherries look deceptively light, like tiny  birthday balloons, but the branches bearing them droop and lean. Roses: check. It was just a few days ago that the rosebush at the back door still had a couple of blooms. This morning they’re gone. All that’s left are a couple of petals in the mulch. I hadn’t noticed. Maple and field: check-minus. The leaves are mostly on the trees, and still mostly green, but going gold and red on the edges.

So many leaves on the trees. Also so many leaves on the grass and on the driveway. The wind  carves lines in the piles, making fantastical maps. There’s a lake, mountains, palace, and maybe a dragon or two. I think about Excalibur, and too many strands of hair on the comb this morning, chilly evenings, taverns and bonfires.

Dickinson finishes the poem with the narrator’s decision to harmonize with the season. Which starts with noticing. It seems like a good strategy for the day. I start hunting through my collection of trinkets for something that will fit the day…

Exit from the Sore Losers’ Club

Tonight I’ll play cribbage with Dave. Over the 25 years that we’ve been together, he’s taught me the game at least eight times. I’ve never been able to remember the rules or figure out the strategy. We’ve been mired in a cycle of teach-play-complain-abandon.

Dave learned the game as a kid; it’s one of his favorites. He’s wicked good and wicked fast at it. Until lately he’d satisfied his cribbage yen at the office; there’s usually a coworker or two up for a game. Six months into working from home, we have been trying to fill our time more with board and card games and other off-screen activities. Cribbage was bound to come up sooner or later.

As a writer of sorts, it would seem that I’d be attuned to the rules of a game developed by a poet. Specifically, the Cavalier poet Sir John Suckling, who lived a short (1609-1641 or maybe 1642) but extremely colorful life. Suckling’s prowess at bowls and cards was more renowned than his verse-making (maybe because of couplets like this? “Love is the fart/Of every heart”), but much of his work is still anthologized. His straightforward diction and man-about-town urbanity appeal to my inner city-girl. Eventually falling into disfavor with King Charles I, Sir John fled London for Paris. Shortly afterward, somewhere on the Continent, he perished. When, where, and how are uncertain. Did he commit suicide? Was he poisoned by his valet? Executed by the Spanish Inquisition? (I…didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition, but this is one of the theories about how Suckling’s life ended).

In earlier cycles, no matter how cheerfully I went into a game, my mood and energy would flag in direct proportion to how far behind my spilikens (pegs) lagged Dave’s on the streets (holes) around the paperclip-shaped track. At some point Dave would reference another random rule. My attention would drift. A to-do list would sneak into my thoughts.

I’ve never toppled a game board, stormed off mid game, or declared facts fake news, but passive-aggression still puts me in the sore loser club. My attitude is situation- and game-dependent, and I can notice it happening and readjust, most of the time. Readjusting is harder for me when it comes to cribbage, for some reason.

Sore loserdom being ego-protective, I have plenty of company in the clubhouse, both from home and abroad. Dave can cheerfully lose an occasional Scrabble, Monopoly, hearts, or cribbage match. With candlepin bowling or chess, though, doing poorly can make him furious. Of the three of us, Sonny seems to spend the least amount of time in the clubhouse–maybe because we put him in youth soccer for a couple of years? He didn’t take to the sport, but he seems to have internalized the good game/high fives at the end of play. On the other hand, I spent my childhood with my nose in a book, and the closest I came to a team sport was high school marching band.

There are many games I enjoy because I know that I’ll never be good at them in a million years. There are many games I enjoy because I’m relatively decent at them–win or lose, it’ll be a game without bone-headed mistakes on my part. I can live with that. As Suckling notes, “A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity.”

Then there are the games I feel I should be good at. If I fail at those games, it’s because I’m stupid (always one of the cardinal sins in my house, growing up). Cribbage had become one of those games. I was afraid that I wasn’t capable of understanding the rules.

In the latest attempt, I determined to shoot for a quiet mediocrity with maximal effort. I took notes during each game. Dave kindly reviewed all of my hands and talked through strategies; he slowed his play down while I laboriously counted my 15s. When random rules came up, I wrote them down rather than simply rolling my eyes. Things started to make sense. Getting out of the sore losers’ club took effort and awareness (and will again, the next time I repeat this lesson), but it was worth it. I achieved quiet mediocrity and reassured myself that my brain still worked okay. Best of all, it turned out the cribbage was…pretty fun, actually.

Therefore I am thankful to Sir John Suckling and give him the final word: “Joy never feasts so high as when the first course is of misery.”