Bright Star ... Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art.

[Jett Black]

I first became interested in the English Romantic poets when I was in high school. My English teacher, a Miss Chapman, was fresh out of college and read the works of Byron, Shelley and especially Keats in a very special way. To me, fifteen years young and with hormones jumping every which way, it almost sounded as if she was making love to every line she read! Whether it was Miss Chapman or the Romantics I’ll never know for sure, but I was quickly seduced by the sheer brilliance of their poetry.

In the end it was John Keats who interested me the most. Yes Lord Byron had been a dashing, handsome womaniser who had lusted after and most likely had an incestuous relationship with his cousin. Yes Percy Shelley was an idol of his time and his untimely death has still not been adequately explained. But neither of them gripped my imagination in anything like the way in which John Keats did.

I read everything I could lay my hands on about his tragic short life and the more I read, the more I marvelled at the incredible amount of poetry he wrote in six short years. Keats was able to use the twenty six letters of our alphabet in a way that took my breath away. The Eve of St. Agnes, To Autumn, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, To Sleep, Ode to a Nightingale to name a few of his works, filled my mind with images I had not imagined could be formed by the written word.

As I matured and became interested in creative writing I dreamed of writing a fictional account of his life and calling it “Bright Star.” Alas, a lady called Jane Campion beat me to it by writing a screen play of the same name in 2009. I have watched the movie three times and think it fully deserves it 83% Rotten Tomatoes rating!

Later I felt that I owed Mr Keats, if only because he had been responsible for allowing me the privilege of hearing Miss Chapman. No, what I owed him was much more than that.

In all I think he wrote about a hundred and sixty poems and sonnets. I think I have read every one except Endymion and Otho the Great. So decided that out of respect for the man I would try to correct this grave oversight. However, try as I might I could not finish reading the former.

To me this “poetic romance” of Greek mythology is probably the most boring poem I have ever not finished reading. Its writing would have likely proved a daunting task for any poet twice John Keats’ twenty two years, so I guess that the mere fact that he managed to finish it should be loudly applauded. Were it not for the opening line, in my humble opinion its only redeeming feature, it would have been still born. Keats himself panned it in the preface.

So I managed to repay most of my debt to Mr Keats who will forever remain my most
favourite Romantic poet.

[cafolini]

Keats was a good poet. I got turned off when he said that the beast was going from the west into the east, which I cleary saw coming from the east pushed by the Roman Catholics and adopted by Musolinni and Hitler.
I loved most of his stuff.

[Jett Black]

Keats was a good poet. I got turned off when he said that the beast was going from the west into the east, which I cleary saw coming from the east pushed by the Roman Catholics and adopted by Musolinni and Hitler.
I loved most of his stuff.

Yeah ... I so love his work.

[MorpheusSandman]

It's hard to better Keats for poetic perfection in his best works. It's startling how far he advanced in how short a time. I remember reading once (don't remember where) that he was the second most anthologizes poet after Shakespeare, which is incredible given his limited output... but how many poets have ever written as many poets that are mandatory inclusions in any anthology like his Great Odes and St. Agnus, and Bright Star? As for Endymion, it's basically a very young Keats imitating Milton, and it shows. All of the romantics failed when they tried to imitate Milton, and all of them except Byron did at some point. I think Keats failed the least, and Endymion is still an interesting piece, but I think it's dismissed because it's not the "Late Keats" of the Odes that we love, but it's still a remarkably good Milton imitation... probably as good as anyone has ever managed. FWIW, I haven't seen Bright Star (the film), though I'm generally not a fan of Campion (I hated The Piano).

As for my favorite romantic poet... it's really hard to say because, despite their numerous similarities, they were all quite different. Nobody can match Wordsworth's best pieces for their philosophical and emotional profundity. I can't read Intimations of Immortality or Tintern Abbey without tearing up, and his The Prelude is really the only legitimate epic written by a romantic. Coleridge has two modes he was equally great at; the lyrical ballad (Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Kahn) and conversation poem (Frost at Midnight, The Eolian Harp, Dejection: An Ode), and those works have as much reread value as any poems ever written. Byron was insanely prolific and versatile, so much that it's hard to pin him down. He wrote a handful of great lyrics, a handful of great narrative poems, a handful of great verse dramas, and undoubtedly the finest long-narrative satire since The Dunciad in Don Juan. Shelley seemed to combine Byron's versatility with Coleridge's visionary bent and Keats' craftsmanship, and probably wrote the best elegy of the century in Adonais and the best drama in Prometheus Unbound.

Whom I listed as my favorite would probably depend on the day, my mood, and who I had been reading recently. Lately I've been heavily reading Byron, so I might say him. Don Juan may be his sprawling masterpiece, but regular readers tend to miss out on "lesser" masterpieces like Manfred, Cain, Prometheus, Darkness, and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Both Cain and Manfred are just riveting, stunning dramas, and something like Prometheus shows that Byron could be a great, careful craftsman when he wanted. The thing that strikes me about Byron is that, even in his worst works, there are almost always superb passages that I want to read and reread over again... those moments are just spread out more in comparison with his contemporaries. Right now, I think why I'm less enthused on Keats is because I was quite obsessed with his work about a year ago--so much so that I even wrote an Ode on Keats that borrowed his To Autumn stanza form--and I think I just got burnt out. In comparison, Byron and Shelley are fresher in my mind. I probably couldn't give a definitive answer until at least another year down the road when I've had time to fully digest all of the romantics and evaluate how well they've done in my memory.