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Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
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About This Book
A dazzling new look into the short but intense, tragic life and remarkable work of John Keats, one of the greatest lyric poets of the English language, seen in a whole new light, not as the mythologized Victorian guileless nature-lover, but as the subversive, bawdy complex cynic whose life and poetry were lived and created on the edge. In this brief life, acclaimed biographer Lucasta Miller takes nine of Keats's best-known poems—"Endymion"; "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"; "Ode to a Nightingale"; "To Autumn"; "Bright Star" among them—and excavates how they came to be and what in Keats's life led to their creation. She writes of aspects of Keats's life that have been overlooked, and explores his imagination in the context of his world and experience, paying tribute to the unique quality of his mind. Miller, through Keats's poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment. We see how Keats was regarded by his contemporaries (his writing was seen as smutty) and how the young poet's large and boisterous life—a man of the metropolis, who took drugs, was sexually reckless and afflicted with syphilis—went straight up against the Victorian moral grain; and Miller makes clear why his writing—considered marginal and avant-garde in his own day—retains its astonishing originality, sensuousness and power two centuries on.
Reviews
"A young man in a hurry is the figure whom Miller sets convincingly before us, too hasty to care about his spelling ..."
"Profligate, sexy, fond of a glass or two, and a little bit entitled, Ms."
"Elsewhere, the writer's own language is less attentive."
"Ultimately it challenges us to make up our own minds about the self-styled 'chamelion poet'."
"It is a pleasure to have the full text of a poem at the beginning of each chapter, followed by a personal essay combining Keats's story with the author's sensible, attentive understanding of each poem, in itself and as part of the poet's life story ..."
"Keats's admirers may jib at some of Miller's interpretations, especially her reading of 'The Eve of St Agnes' ..."
"A strange aspect of Lucasta Miller's new book on Keats is her idea that the poet is not only masculine, but perhaps toxically so ..."
"she amply demonstrates why the poet's 'voice, marginal and avant-garde in his own day, retains its vertiginous originality.' Subtly intertwining biographical detail with crisp readings of the poetry, Miller creates an insightful, vibrant portrait."
"Miller is empathetic, and relishes Keats's best phrases ..."
"This candor adds to rather than detracts from the affectionate picture she paints of a young man who alternated between ambition and insecurity ..."
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