Connect with us

Culture

Will You Fall in Love With This Poem? I Did.

Published

on

Will You Fall in Love With This Poem? I Did.

Let’s talk about love. That’s what the people in this poem seem to be doing. The author and her friend, a scholar, are debating the crushworthiness of a certain “Romantic Poet.”

Keats was one of the pillars of British Romanticism, and a romantic figure in other ways as well. He was only 25 when he died, in 1821, of tuberculosis and also — according to legend — of the side effects of a brutally negative review.

Advertisement

A portrait of John Keats on his deathbed.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

He is remembered as a paragon of suffering and sensitive creativity, a fragile hothouse flower whose poems are marvels of exquisite lyricism. He wrote intoxicatingly beautiful poems about the intoxicating power of beauty, which was one of his favorite words. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” he wrote. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

“Ode to a Nightingale,” which Keats wrote in 1819, gets at the strange, uncanny effect that art (especially music or poetry) can have on us, deranging our senses and disordering our consciousness. This is how it starts:

Advertisement

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

Advertisement

But being too happy in thine happiness, —

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Advertisement

What’s going on here? The song of the bird induces in the listener a pleasurable, painful, narcotic reverie. The full-throated music of the poem might have a similar effect on the reader. The cascading rhymes and trippy images conjure a kind of aesthetic rapture that’s not so different from falling in love.

With the poem or the poet? Is it always so easy to tell? Diane Seuss’s crush on the actual John Keats is a matter of poetic record. In another of her poems, the similarly titled “Romantic Poetry,” she writes about visiting the house in Rome where Keats died and making out with his death mask, imagining how “auspicious, / rare, lush, / bizarre, kinky, transcendent” it would be “to cradle him / in my arms.”

Keats isn’t the only romantic poet in “Romantic Poet.” The title fits Seuss too.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Culture

Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

Published

on

Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights thrillers first published as novels (or graphic novels) that were adapted into popular films. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen versions.

Continue Reading

Culture

Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

Published

on

Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. In honor of Gen. George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 22, this week’s super-size challenge is focused on the literature and history related to the American Revolution. In the 10 multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to exhibits, books and other materials related to this intense chapter in the country’s story, including an award-winning biography of the general and first U.S. president.

Continue Reading

Culture

Video: How Much Do You Know About Romance Books?

Published

on

Video: How Much Do You Know About Romance Books?

Let’s play romance roulette. No genre has dominated the books world in the last few years. Like romance, it accounts for the biggest percentage of book sales, their avid fan bases. Everyone has been talking about romance as a Book Review editor and as a fan of the genre myself, I put together a to z glossary of 101 terms that you should know if you want to understand the world of romance are cinnamon roll. You may think a cinnamon roll is a delicious breakfast treat, but in a romance novel, this refers to a typically male character who is so sweet and tender and precious that you just want to protect him and his beautiful heart from the world. Ooh, a rake. This is basically the Playboy of historical romance. He defies societal rules. He drinks, he gambles. He’s out on the town all night and is a very prolific lover with a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man. FEI these are super strong, super sexy, super powerful, immortal, fairy like creatures. One of my favorite discoveries in terms that I learned was stern brunch daddy. A lot of daddy’s usually a male love interest who seems very intimidating and alpha, but then turns out to be a total softie who just wants to make his love interest brunch. I think there’s a misconception that because these books can follow these typical patterns, that they can be predictable and boring. But I think what makes a really great romance novel is the way that these writers use the tropes in interesting ways, or subvert them. If you can think of it, there’s probably a romance novel about it. Oops, there’s only one bed. This is one of my personal favorite tropes is a twist on forced proximity. Characters find themselves in very close quarters, where inevitably sparks start to fly. Why choose is the porkulus dose of the romance world. Sometimes the best way to resolve a love triangle is by turning it into a circle, where everyone is invited to play. Oops, we lost one spice level. There’s a really wide spectrum. You can range from really low heat or no spice, what might also be called kisses. Only then you start to get into what we call closed door or fade to Black. These books go right up to the moment of intimacy, and then you get into what we call open door, which is more explicit. And sometimes these can get very high heat or spicy and even start verging into kink. There’s one thing that almost every romance novel has in common. It’s that no matter what the characters get up to in the end, it ends with a happily ever after. I say almost every romance novel. Sometimes you’re just happy for now.

Continue Reading

Trending