Four for John Keats (Stripped to the Waist for Poetry)

 

John Keats (1795-1821)

—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

FOUR FOR JOHN KEATS (in his Bicentenary Year)
 
            Young “Junkets”
 
Standing rebukes to prejudice of class,
You first: with idealism and with humor,
By more aristocratic wits and crass
Denounced as low-born—innuendo, rumor—
Next, your verse: for Blackwood’s, too lusciously,
Too sensuously fruited, scented for
Its bustling, bristling questions—viciously
Demeaned—to be perceived; at its true core
Not so much Beautiful as Medicinal.
You and your work had to be scorned at first;
Negative Capability was your call
On openness now; on last reserves at worst.
You fell ill climbing the steep marmoreal stair
—With nervous glances back down at John Clare?

 

 

 

 

 
            Virtual Keats
 
Your posthumous fame requires an effigy,
Chiseled in pixels, clothed in CGI:
Your “crispéd locks,” young frame from nose to knee,
In white shirt and beige trousers airily clad;
Your Joseph Severn rapture-gaze at sky,
The inn-and-stable-keeper’s son to speak,
Your vocal resonance, half man, half lad,
Rebuilt by linguists to the precisest tweak.
An inner-city accent, no dropped aitch,
No syllable-ending swallowed tee; yet on
That voice, a digital chip applied or patch
On what didn’t and did attract Fanny Brawne.
If painted in oils, your subtle shade of Cockney,
Your canvases would out-auction David Hockney.

 
[See Anna Russell's "Bringing John Keats Back to Life," The New Yorker, 3/24/21.]

 

 

 

            The Inner Keats
 
All poets who read your letters react with awe
On your firm, forthright way of meeting grief;
Or meeting Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth. Flaws,
You clearly see in them—and in yourself: chief,
Your prickly standoffishness with women. Soft
You will not be, for Woman signifies Loss,
Your mother more gone than Hamlet’s Ghost is. Oft
The aloof mood and suspect euphoria cross.
Yours is an age of “sensible” (feeling) tears
You fight and write to fend off with more vital,
Tongue-juicy indulgences, grapes, apples, pears.
But over the one fruit, Fame, you battle for title,
A pugilist, stripped to the waist, for Poetry,
Trading haymakers with Mortality.

 

 

 

 

            Name, Writ in Water
 
You worked to be defined, not by a cough
—The saturation of your lungs by fluid,
The flaking of pulmonary tissue off
Till the autopsy doctor wondered you could
Breathe, at the end, with near no lungs at all.
You stayed in bed near Spanish Steps, indoors
When breeze more spring than winter, long past fall,
Scudding with budded scents across your floors,
Would rake your skin with goosebump chill and ice.
Your superstitious neighbors would evict
You, burn out the rooms’ interiors in a trice.
You, disallowed all verse, left derelict,
Barred full foreknowledge of your legacy,
Breathed grace into your last words, helplessly.

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s LittleNip(s):

—John Keats

Poetry… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

* * *

I am however young writing at random—straining at particles of light in the midst of great darkness.

* * *

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children… I do not live in this world alone but on a thousand worlds.

___________________

Today Tom Goff sends us a sonnet sequence in tribute to John Keats in this, the bicentenary year of Keats’ death. Tom writes, “I must have been sleep-walking through the news that this year is the bicentenary of Keats's death, and the Keats-Shelley Memorial [Association] has been commemorating the milestone date (keats-shelley.org/about; Shelley's to come next year). Whereupon this little sonnet sequence…” Thanks, Tom, for a worthy tribute!

 

For Anna Russell's article in The New Yorker, go to www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/bringing-keats-back-to-life/.

____________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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