Poets Who Matter: More Keats

cont'd from Poets Who Matter: John Keats (1795-1821)

Keats in his letters speaks of poetry so often and with such fervor we might take him to be one of those people who are caught up in the idea of being a poet, or an artist of any stripe, like to think of themselves that way and broadcast it about, but who have not the talent, drive, discipline, whatever it takes, to do the work it takes to produce much of anything.

Of course we would be wrong. Any doubt about Keats's dedication to the work is dissolved by the output and quality of poems and letters written in a tragically brief span of years. This precocity is almost intimidating, enough to give pause to any of us with the temerity to put pen to paper. Yet no less might we find in Keats's evocation of the restorative and redemptive power of art a poetry that makes us want to make poems of our own, to trace "upon vellum or wild Indian leaf / The shadows of melodious utterance."

To J.H. Reynolds, in April 1817 at the age of 21, he writes in a gush of enthusiasm:

I find that I cannot exist without poetry — without eternal poetry — half the day will not do — the whole of it — I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan — I had become all in a Tremble from not having written any thing of late — the Sonnet over leaf did me some good. I slept the better last night for it — this morning, however, I am nearly as bad again — (18 April 1817)

To John Taylor, some ten months later, he laid out his axioms of poetry:

In Poetry I have a few Axioms, and you will see how far I am from their Centre. 1st I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity — it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance — 2nd Its touches of Beauty should never be half way therby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural too him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. (27 February 1818)

Poetry "should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance." My first thought is that this might be an echo of Plato's idea of learning as remembrance. The passage suggests the poet not as a mightier intellect or stronger being than the ordinary run of bozo on this bus, a fount of knowledge, whose art is to reveal things of which I the reader am ignorant, but rather the poet is something of a kindred spirit, whose power is to evoke the response, "Yes, that is how things are, that is how the world is, and the poem is how I would like to have put it."

And again to Reynolds, he says "Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject."

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us — and if we do not agree, seems to puts its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. — How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, 'admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose! (3 February 1818)

The famous negative capability passage comes in a letter to his brothers on 22 December 1818.

I spent Friday evening with Wells, & went the next morning to see Death on the Pale horse [a painting by Benjamin West]. It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered; But there is nothing to be intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss; no face swelling into reality. the excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth — Examine King Lear & you will find this exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness …several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason — …This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

The conjugation of intensity and art, the mild criticism of West's painting for its want of intensity given marvelous expression in "no women one feels mad to kiss," is perhaps a young man's sentiment, yet one to which I am drawn even today, when youth is at best a blur receding at dizzying speed in the rear-view mirror, when my sense of just what counts as intensity might be a bit more nuanced, and more encompassing, than it was when I was in my twenties.

to be continued