Octobers

Interesting that October can be sere and wilting or fruitful, sensual and pixelated depending on how you look. A Sunday walk anyone?

Send us some #October photos.

Or try the guided poetry walk next Saturday 10th October at Traquair part of the Curved Stream project. Poet Ken Cockburn who is well-known for his translations and collaborations with visual artists, writes a response to an 18th century painting of Diana and Actaeon which survives in the ceiling of a Garden Pavilion.You can find out more here http://www.traquair.co.uk/curved-stream

Twittering

The whole Venn Diagram thing struck a few people on Twitter yesterday making it our fastest most popular post ever (although not our most popular post that is still for many of you the inimitable http://poetandgeek.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/auction-chant-as-poetic-form.html).

Anyway here is an autumnal garnering of the Twitter fields this morning:

And in answer to this question,

Obviously the answer is yes.

We liked this one best though:

Analysis of Keat's To Autumn

We have chosen to use a Venn Diagram.

You can make up your own mind below.

To Autumn

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-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd 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-brimm'd their clammy cells.

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-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd 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 cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

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.

John Keats 1819

For the record, robins at this time of year are often in breeding plumage and quite loud. But perhaps they fell quiet in homage to Keats...