In Chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby, Jordan Baker says, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
Fitzgerald does a lot in one line: offers another paradox to show the privileged are so out of touch that they don’t understand that fall is when everything dies. He also continues a weather/ seasons motif, and he sets up countless Canva-inspired Instagram captions.
As this quote creeps into my Pinterest feed more and more, I’ve started to think about poetry and short stories perfect for autumn and winter.
To help my students get in the sweater weather spirit, I’ve also put together these collections of autumn and winter writing prompts! These can be bell work, quick writes, or formative assessment.
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Poetry Recommendations
To my mind, there is no better poem than “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (also perfect for Insta). It’s just my absolute favorite poem, and it’s perfect for autumn. In this poem, Hopkins describes fall and the Fall of Humankind. His sprung rhythm and use of inscape creates the sound of tumbling leaves and slowly weakening innocence. I don’t have any tattoos, but if I were to get one, it would be the first two lines of this poem. Read it here.
As the weather grows colder, is there a more fitting poem than “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden? The language of this poem evokes cold in multiple ways: the blue of the season, the blue of flames, and the blue distance between father and son. It’s an intimate and cold poem all at once, and it’s perfect for this time of year. Read it here.
Finally, “December” by Jaquira Diaz evokes the kind of distance readers might associate with cold. However, it’s also a poem that touches on holiday nostalgia and the rhythms of growing up. The loss of innocence in this poem pairs well with the Hopkins’ story of Margaret or Hayden’s speaker’s eventual recognition of his father’s love. Read it here.
Short Story Recommendations
As the days grow shorter, my classroom time feels crunched. For this reason, poetry and short stories are often the perfect tools because they don’t take as much time as a longer text.
For a quick wintery read, “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty is a good fit. The story is short and fairly easy to follow. The symbols are always a great point of discussion for students. In particular, the Christmas setting in town is at such odds with Phoenix Jackson’s difficult trip. The symbolism in the time of the year is as important as any other symbol in the text, so it’s a perfect fit for this time of year. Read it here.
In a post that begins with a quote from The Great Gatsby, I’d be remiss not to include the seasonally appropriate “Winter Dreams.” As with all the poetry and short stories on this list, the season plays a large part in this text. As the seasons pass and Dexter ages, his “winter dreams” seem to haunt him. Read it here.
Honorable Mentions: Poetry and Short Stories
If you’re looking for something a little longer and a little less specifically seasonal, I have two recommendations.
First, the cold and ice play a significant and symbolic role in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This beastly long poem is such a staple in British literature classes, and its place in Romanticism cannot be discounted. However, the ice and cold symbolism is often overlooked because there’s so much else jam packed into this poem! Read it (with illustrations!) here.
Finally, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, more so than the other poetry and short stories on this list, gets lumped (perhaps unjustly) into the holiday book bin. Nevertheless, this is a classic and cherished book for a reason. As with some of the other poetry and short stories above, the holidays definitely tell part of the story. Read it here.
What other literature do you recommend for autumn and winter?
