This paper, after introducing a group-based method of a university poetry-analysis, presents a noteworthy seminar-interpretation of Daniel Berzsenyi’s poem with the title ’A közelítő tél’ (“As Winter Approaches”). The point is that the work is not read as a poem of death, but as a poem of aging, and the first version of the history of its morphosis (with the title ‘Az ősz’, “The Autumn”) is highlighted, in contrast to the final transcript, which is actually known only. It is obvious from the naturally non-exclusive interpretation that the poem – and Berzsenyi’s entire poetry – has much more to do with the popularity of community poetry than we usually think, and the stakes of that poem, in the light of our reading, are quite different from what we have learned and thought so far. All of this also has a significant message for contemporary literary education.

This paper, after introducing a group-based method of a university poetry-analysis, presents a noteworthy seminar-interpretation of Daniel Berzsenyi’s poem with the title ’A közelítő tél’ (“As Winter Approaches”). The point is that the work is not read as a poem of death, but as a poem of aging, and the first version of the history of its morphosis (with the title ‘Az ősz’, “The Autumn”) is highlighted, in contrast to the final transcript, which is actually known only. It is obvious from the naturally non-exclusive interpretation that the poem – and Berzsenyi’s entire poetry – has much more to do with the popularity of community poetry than we usually think, and the stakes of that poem, in the light of our reading, are quite different from what we have learned and thought so far. All of this also has a significant message for contemporary literary education.