Love Letters: Keats & Brawne

It's February and love certainly seems to be in the air. I'm conveniently reading Romantic poets in an English course, snow flakes are fair and frosty on lashes, and coffee shops are playing affectionate tunes. So, dear readers, I invite you to read some of the sweetest love letters ever penned. The lovely John Keats (one of my favorite poets) wrote the most heartbreakingly beautiful letters to his "sweet girl," "fair Star," Fanny Brawne. One of my favorite passages:

I am almost astonished that any absent one should have that luxurious power over my senses which I feel. Even when I am not thinking of you I receive your influence and a tender nature stealing upon me. All my thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights have I find not at all cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am miserable that you are not with me.

 More of the letters can be found here. Read them and your heart will glow, your eyes will sparkle. I am now inclined to read this poem and re-watch the delicate romance film based on John Keats and Fanny Brawne's romance, Bright Star. Swoon.

Photo still of Bright Star film via

Moving Cards!

Yesterday we talked about friends moving, and how it is difficult to stay in touch. When my old friend David moved to Texas, I wanted to show him how much we would miss him, since he left when things were a little hectic and we didn't have a full out goodbye. Instead of buying a generic card (which are great if you need a quick card!), I decided to put my free time to some use and make a moving card. This way, when he got to his new apartment, there would be mail waiting for him. And who doesn't love getting mail?!

YOU WILL NEED:

1 pad water-color paper (8 X 12 in)

Set of watercolors

Package of greeting card envelopes (approx. 4 X 5 in)

Sharpie Fine Point permanent marker in black

Pencil

Extra strong eraser

Ruler

I traced a square that was 4 inches by 5 inches. Within the bottom left section, I free-handed a generously rough outline of a U.S. map. (By no means is this exact!) Using a black fine point Sharpie, I retraced lightly to ensure no bleed-through, and then erased over the entire square to get rid of any lurking pencil marks.

 I then watercolored Texas (the state to which David is moving) and also watercolored Wisconsin (the state he is leaving). David has always said he is going to live all over the place; he wants to see more. This way, as he travels, he can fill in every state. Kind of a color by number of where he has lived.

 The final product is pretty cute, with Hawaii and Alaska on the back. Now, I won't be doing this every week, but it's a great little gift that shows you care. Bonus, it's pretty low on time commitment, and you'll have plenty of leftover materials for future cards!

Letters of Knowledge

As the semester is wrapping up, I wanted to share a little something with you readers. . . My English professor read this to us and I thought it was delightful. Kurt Vonnegut wrote his assignments to students as letters, for them to be both person, instructive, etc. Below is the final assignment for his class "Form of Fiction". The second paragraph and the second-to-last paragraph are wonderful; notice, also, that he calls his students beloved. I find that endearing, quirky, and a tribute to his teaching. Enjoy!

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FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

November 30, 1965

Beloved:

This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all ...”

I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children ...”

Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.

Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.

Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

poloniøus

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Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield. Delacorte Press.

Letter text via

Photo via