Quietly

I recently read Susan Cain’s new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I found it both validating and thought-provoking. One direction my thoughts went was toward John Keats (what creature is the epitome of Introvert, if not the Poet?), and a passage I had read (and underlined!) in one of his letters.

A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity–he is continually in for–and filling some other Body–The Sun, the Moon, the Sea…It is a wretched thing to confess; but is a very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature–how can it, when I have no nature?…But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself; but from some character in whose soul I now live.

My thoughts went back to this passage–first, because I found it so striking (and sympathetic) when I first read it; and second, because Cain discusses how introverts often “take on” an extrovert persona to get through certain aspects of life. (Vastly simplified–I highly recommend reading her book! And Keats!) How many faces do I have, and which one is the “real” me?

On another front, my husband is traveling for a few weeks, and I turn once again to My Dearest Friend, the letters of John and Abigail Adams to each other during their many and looooong separations. I can’t feel too sorry for myself, with my ability to telephone or email my beloved, when remembering how those two amazing people often went weeks or even months at a time without any word from each other.

Finally, to complete this little web of contemplation, Cain happens to mention that John Quincy Adams was in fact that rare creature, a U.S. President who was also an introvert.

If you need a good cry…

…rent the Jane Campion film Bright Star, about the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Yes, we all know that Keats and Brawne were engaged but never married, and that he died of tuberculosis in Italy at the age of 25. What the film does is humanize the relationship in a way that the literature texts never could. Of course I’m a sucker for anything with Regency-era costume and sun-mist shots of the English countryside. And call me shallow, but I particularly enjoyed Miss Brawne’s many, many gorgeous outfits. (The film portrays her as a fashion designer and seamstress of extraordinary talent, so the frocks were not incidental to the plot.)

The good of all this, if you will: in addition to a cathartic cry and sudden urge to sew a pile of Empire-waisted, lawn and linen dresses, I also needed to read some Keats. Here is the “title” poem, from 1819-20.

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Poetry Friday

This morning I’ve been surfing around and viewing everyone’s lovely contributions to Poetry Friday. (My friend Jim D. turned me on to this—thanks, Jim!) What a fabulous idea, and long may it thrive! I did want to post an original poem, but on re-reading it this morning felt it was a bit of a downer (though in fact it was a great catharsis for me). It doesn’t seem quite right to be posting a poem about death and cemeteries when the sun is shining so heroically and a huge, lethargic bumblebee is sunning himself right at the bottom edge of my library window (which incidentally overlooks the cemetery in question). So, maybe another time.

Instead I give you John Keats, because a day like this calls for Romanticism and their Sublime (and there’s still enough melancholy and cemeteries called up in my mind by going with Keats).

To Autumn

1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.

2
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3
Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

—John Keats, 1819