Poetry and Mindfulness by Bryan Walpert

Author:Bryan Walpert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

I ask students to notice the use of sensual imagery, the attention paid to the details of the present moment, the quality of the light on the water (like polished glass) and the babble of the stream. Such sensual pleasure in the natural world can be traced forward to John Keats, who took a Horatian approach in his ode “To Autumn,” a season he describes through a similar use of natural imagery.1 Here is the famous final stanza:  Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, 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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. (Keats 1909, 138–139)

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