In this installment, Wesley McNair reads “When I have fears that I may cease to be” by John Keats. McNair has received fellowships from the Rockefeller, Fulbright and Guggenheim foundations, an NEH Fellowship in literature, and two NEA fellowships. Other honors include the Jane Kenyon Award, the Robert Frost Award, the Theodore Roethke Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal, an Emmy Award, and two honorary degrees for literary distinction. His work has appeared in the Pushcart Prize annual, two editions of The Best American Poetry, over fifty anthologies, and fourteen books, including volumes of poetry and essays, and three anthologies. His new collection of poetry, The Ghosts of You & Me, will be out early in 2006. Samples of his work may be found at wesleymcnair.com.

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John Keats, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I may never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

DougGuerra Uncategorized john keats, sonnets, wesley mcnair, when I have fears that I may cease to be

In this installment, Carey Salerno reads “When I have fears that I may cease to be” by John Keats. Salerno is the Director of Alice James Books. Her first book, Shelter, won the 2007 Kinereth Gensler Award and was published in 2009. Carey has an MFA from New England College. Her work has appeared in such journals as Rattle and Natural Bridge. She lives in Farmington, Maine.

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John Keats, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
When I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

DougGuerra Uncategorized carey salerno, john keats, sonnets, when I have fears that I may cease to be

In this installment, Ravi Shankar reads “When I have fears that I may cease to be” by John Keats. Shankar is poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University. His first book of poems, Instrumentality, was published in 2004 by Word Press. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in such places as The Paris Review, Poets & Writers, Time Out New York, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, Descant, LIT, Crowd, The Cortland Review, Catamaran, The Indiana Review, Western Humanities Review, The Iowa Review, and The AWP Writer’s Chronicle, among other publications. He has been a commentator on NPR, Wesleyan Radio, and KKUP’s Out of Our Minds. He has read at such venues as The National Arts Club, Columbia University, KGB, and the Cornelia Street Café, has held residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, reviews poetry for the Contemporary Poetry Review and recently edited, with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton 2009).

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John Keats, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

DougGuerra Uncategorized john keats, ravi shankar, sonnets, when I have fears that I may cease to be

In this installment, Chris Dombrowski reads “To Autumn” by John Keats. Dombrowski’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Orion, and others. His chapbook, Fragments with Dusk in Them, was published by Punctilious Press in 2008, and his first full-length collection, By Cold Water, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2009. He has taught creative writing at the University of Montana and Interlochen Center for the Arts, where he was Writer-in-Residence. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his family.

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John Keats, “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 ground, 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.

DougGuerra Uncategorized chris dombrowski, john keats, to autumn

In this installment, Stefanie Wortman reads “The Chimney Sweeper” [from Songs of Experience] by William Blake. Wortman’s poems have appeared in the Yale Review, New Orleans Review, and Subtropics. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing from the University of Missouri.

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William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”

A little black thing among the snow:
Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!
Where are thy father & mother? say?
They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil’d among the winters snow:
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

And because I am happy & dance & sing,
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.

DougGuerra Uncategorized songs of experience, stefanie wortman, the chimney sweeper, william blake