In my opinion 'A kumquat for John Keats' is a beautiful poem exploring life's struggles and how to find meaning in everything through the medium of the perfect fruit. The poem is narrated from the 1st person viewpoint of Harrison himself giving the reader a very intimate glimpse into his life and the point he has reached in it. The poem is also informal in tone allowing the reader to relate to the imagery and questions raised. The title is crucial to this poem for both introducing the leitmotif of kumquats and Harrison's inspiration: John Keats. This also links as the reader is told Harrison is currently on holiday in the kumquat capitol of the world Micanopy. Kumquats are scattered throughout the text and could be be a constant metaphor …show more content…
This gives the poem a sense of achievement (he's finally found what he's looking for), chaos (he's been looking for something perfect and exotic) and struggle (not being able to find the right fruit to sum up life). The idea of searching and finding purpose in fruit is also eluded to in Harrison's biblical references for instance he mentions the fall of mankind in the line 'fruit before the fall', in this instance the purpose of fruit was the downfall of Eve, being tempted to take a bite of this perfect fruit and then being cast out of Eden for doing so has resulted in the whole of humanity forever being born with 'original sin'. This could suggest that the search for the perfect fruit is blasphemous and dangerous and is done with entirely selfish purposes. The biblical references could also link to the confusion and misidentification of this perfect fruit. Harrison writes 'Eves apple' despite the fact that in both the creation stories in the bible the fruit that Eve bites is only ever referred to as the fruit, never to be clarified as what fruit. In western civilisation however we have come to know it as an apple due to many stages of translation from the original texts and the fact that apples are commonplace in our society. The leitmotif of fruit is a clever example of Harrison's uses of gustatory imagery allowing the reader to both envision and taste the fruit in question through his beautiful and vivid descriptions. Another subject that Harrison touches upon in his introductory stanza is the idea of depression and struggle he has faced in his life, the parenthesised quote 'though last year full of bile and self-defeat I wanted to believe no life was sweet' tells the reader that Harrison has a negative history with his view on life and perhaps gives them an idea