#if you're a non native speaker of english and have Feelings about keats or his language

[lesamis]

I remember loving the phrase “winnowing wind” when I first came across 'To Autumn' in secondary school, in particular because I had mistaken the word “winnow” for “minnow” and thus conjured up this lovely image of the wind meandering like a tiny fish. The poem also made me feel less alone. The lines “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too” were a source of comfort to my 16-year-old closeted self, who felt inadequate and ashamed in a heteronormative world.

Mary Jean Chan, on ‘To Autumn’ in Five Poets on Keats’s Best Poems

[certifiedceraunophile]

I can see that you're not a native English speaker but your grasp on the language is applaudable how long have you been learning?

Your writing (both tumblr posts and fanfiction) have a classical elegance to it and it's hard for even native speakers to communicate their thoughts as beautifully as you do 💙 Have you taken some special training for it?

Oh my god angel anon this is so sweet, and lmao you're right I'm not a native speaker like at all, tbvvh I struggle a lot w english, always have like I'd score the lowest in it out of all my subjects in high school, ugh my total percentage always took a hit bc of it -_- wont ever stop being salty about it ngl, so no I've had no real training whatsoever beyond like the general compulsory learning in school, and also anybody who chats w me for like more than a minute will immediately know that idgaf about spellings or sentence structure or general coherency in my day to day english, Lmao which reminds me the other day I literally told someone I ~idealize~ I look up to in every way possible when it comes to writing *cough* Jenn @cbk1000 *cough* that “……blah something blah…..I teached...blah blah” while talking and I didnt notice it for like a hot second and Jenn is too sweet (sort of) to point it out but oh my god I was mortified by it when I realized what I had said, but honestly what throws me is that I didn't really notice it was wrong for a long time and like I thought it was a-ok until it hit me that it’s taught.

So in all honesty my english is as good as any non-native speaker who had to learn the language growing up strictly for school purposes.

That being said in my ff writing I just try really really pathetically hard when I write, like the pretension leaps out and tries to reproduce whatever I myself have consumed so far in terms of writing and recycle it as my own crap, I just have this ability (it's not a special thing everyone does it lmao) to subsume what I read and I mostly just take sentences, metaphors and other writerly things sometimes even just the mood/setting of the writing that strike me and rewrite it w an added touch of pretension and it's actually really tangible how much I allow what I read to drastically affect how I write and since I read a weird eclectic mix of really….just a lot of different things that shouldn't really go together lol, my writing style/ narrator voice/ mood setting for my ff also varies a lot, like one day I write Klaus w a satire and critical wit that’s not exactly Voltaire but close, where he’s pretty much just disgusted by everything and decides to mock it all with a straight face and the next day I write him as a lil pining shit with saccharine levels of romanticism in my writing to appeal to his artist-soul mostly bc I sat my ass down and read a poem or two by Keats prior to writing, other days he’s cute and murderous, wears human teeth as jewelry and is just a tiny bit poignant bc I had a date with Poe….so yeah basically what I’m trying to say is that the only "training" I've ever had is what I've already read all these years and what I write is just all the text I've kept w myself and can recollect and re-arrange into my own writing, which is why I would never consider my work to be something that’s completely and originally mine bc I have this personal saying that goes, 

“Everything I see is an image of an image.”

Which to me means a lot of things but in this particular context means that nothing I create belongs to me and only me, it belongs to every writer I’ve read before writing it and will be reminisced by every author who I’ll read after it, that everything I create is just what creators before me have done but have allowed me to take their creations and make it mine before I too pass it on with love and history to the next person.

I also have another quote I feel in every inch of my heart and that’s

"I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women and men that I have loved; all the cities I have visited."

-Jorge Luis Borges

So really this is just my personal...philosophy?? Belief, that I owe my creativity to the world and everything it creates *through* me because I don't own the beauty, I’m only a lens through which it passes through, that my creativity refracts the world's beauty into my life and my creations, and I am glad, blessed to have been the lens through which such beauty passes through.

And that I am more than happy to just be another image who is someone else’s reflection or the very object someone else will reflect, I love how much that connects every human being and every object of beauty, of creation in existence inescapably.

Now I’ve rambled on a lot like a LOT, definitely wayyyyyy more than that simple ask warranted lmao so I’ll shut up and just say you’re the sweetest lovely anon this message made me feel so very flattered and I genuinely think I blushed (and trust me brown girls cannot blush mostly bc the melanin wont let the pink filter through lmao) and I am honoured to know that you thought I took some professional coaching for this because I literally am the most amateur absolutely clueless bullshit your way through everything writer you will find out there and I am ngl proud of that.

(like seriously dude the other day I learnt for the first time how to use a semi colon and I s2g I wanted to dig a hole and bellyflop into it after realizing how many bloody times I’ve used a semi colon wrong like jfc someone kill me before I do it myself it’s mortifying)

eenyways *tackle hugs* thank you for making me smile and for your kind words youre absolutely precious 💖 and I dont deserve the compliments but I am never gonna let them go bc they make my heart warm.