Romantic Poets?

[leynabituin]

We're doing a section on Romantic poetry in class so I thought it might be interesting to get your thoughts on the classics. Which of the Romantic poets is your fav?

I like Keats because I think his view of poetry fits in with mine the most closely. Shelley is also fun to read. Wordsworth is probably my least favorite, since he seems too cerebral if that makes sense. Any other takers?

[Dark Muse]

I am quite the oppisite of you acutally, in my case I would say Wordsworth is one of my faveorites, along with William Blake, but I do not care so much for Keats really.

[mayneverhave]

I'd agree with the OP: Keats is probably my favorite. It's his style; it just drips with sensual imagery. Shelley is up there as well.

While I appreciate Blake's influence and his contribution to literature as a whole, I'd probably count him as my least favorite romantic, followed by Coleridge.

Then again, I don't really dislike any of them. I just like like them in varying degrees.

[stlukesguild]

The Romantic poets are certainly among my all-time favorites: Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, Novalis, Hölderlin, Hugo, Robert Burns, John Clare, etc... Not a bad one in the bunch. I probably favor Blake, Keats, Goethe, and Shelley the most... but there are poems by Hugo, Hölderlin, and Coleridge that are equal if not superior to almost anything... not to mention Novalis' Hymns of the Night.

[Dark Star]

Are you sure you'd classify Goethe as a Romantic poet?

He lived in the era of burgeoning Romanticism, however, he was stylistically quite different from the Romantic poets and also quite openly detested Romanticism (referring to is as 'indulgent' and even 'unhealthy').

[JCamilo]

Keats is my favorite poet and the Six Great are certainly one of the most interesting bunch of literature history.
My favorite brazilian poet, Gonçalves Dias is also a romantic poet and depending how we define romantic... Poe, Baudelaire, Yeats, Whitman are all there...

[IrishMark]

Keats is my favorite poet and the Six Great are certainly one of the most interesting bunch of literature history.
My favorite brazilian poet, Gonçalves Dias is also a romantic poet and depending how we define romantic... Poe, Baudelaire, Yeats, Whitman are all there...

out of interest I would like to hear your definition of Romanticism if you are able to include yeats, Poe and Whitman in as they seem to me to be three fairly different poets in terms of their approach...

[ReynardtheFox]

Hmmmm

The Rime of the Ancient Marinier - Coleridge. I love that poem

"Hold off! Unhand me greybeard loon!". I just don't get that into conversation enough.

[JCamilo]

out of interest I would like to hear your definition of Romanticism if you are able to include yeats, Poe and Whitman in as they seem to me to be three fairly different poets in terms of their approach...

If we go for the genre definition (Romanticism, realism, etc), Poe and Whitman fall there just because and Yeats because he rhymes with Keats :p
Joking of course, Poe is often classificated as Romantic (Death and dark approach), Whitman also (democratic approach, democracy is something romantic, breaking with classical boundaries)...
Yeats is of course out of time, but he liked to call himself the last romantic poet because his themes (popular folk stories, faerie ballads) are all common during the romantic english time...

Anyways, There is plenty of romantic/romanticism definitions, I do not exactly follow one, all of them are acceptable in a way or another and I do not put much trust in genres anyways but since my list was broad, it was probally the definition that goes against non classicism in their poetry.

[IrishMark]

If we go for the genre definition (Romanticism, realism, etc), Poe and Whitman fall there just because and Yeats because he rhymes with Keats :p
Joking of course, Poe is often classificated as Romantic (Death and dark approach), Whitman also (democratic approach, democracy is something romantic, breaking with classical boundaries)...
Yeats is of course out of time, but he liked to call himself the last romantic poet because his themes (popular folk stories, faerie ballads) are all common during the romantic english time...

Anyways, There is plenty of romantic/romanticism definitions, I do not exactly follow one, all of them are acceptable in a way or another and I do not put much trust in genres anyways but since my list was broad, it was probally the definition that goes against non classicism in their poetry.

ok well if we leave behind the stereotypical notion of what Romanticism is and forget about the dates and all the rest, and simply apply your definition of going against non-classicism, i can see how yeats, keats and, to a lesser extent, poe fit in, but Whitman strikes me as being the odd one out. He didnt lean toward classicism too much. I think your definition needs to be changed...

[JCamilo]

Well, that is why, he is a non-classicist like most of them (anyways, Genres definitions are not that perfect).
Whitman is inside the genre definition (Idealism, democracy, talking from the "people" point of view") etc that belongs to the romanticism, I think he is often classiciated by the period as such, just like Poe is (They do not fit in realism or symbolism either - but then I think they are flawed as hell)

[IrishMark]

i disagree that non-classicism is, at the very least, associated with romanticism. these people may be romantics but i cannot accept they are for this reason, or else romanticism could be said to have started far earlier than generally accepted, and could be said to have not ended yet...

[JCamilo]

Romanticism, the movement in the end of the XVIII century and first half XIX century had traits of anti-classicism, because that was the "style" they are modificating.
For example, Goethe, as asked here, is often a transitional writer and is behind the german movement that later illustrated classicism so well (Wagner, Hoffman, etc). Another case is Rousseau.
But anyways, this can be seen with the trasition of model, it is the Romanticism that shift Shakespeare as canonical center, something often occupied by Virgil and the more classic models. Anyways, of course there was other movements that are anti-classicists. (Of course, as all genres, this is a generalization, Colerdige was very classical in many aspects, and many of them still liked classic literature)

Romantic, because perhaps of the high quality of the Romanticism Period, was very lasting and the word started to have another meaning. (Just like Classic also had). Some started to simplify pointing that all art have been always only Romantic or Classic, so all arts with popular themes, appeals, emotion, revolution would be Romantic and all with appeal to Reason, balance, control or stability as Classic. Of course this view resumes all style and genres to just two, so Romanticism would happen before indeed (and perhaps alongside with Classsicism, as we could say Virgil vs.Ovid). It would be pretty much the old Colerdige saying "All man are either born Platonists or aristoteleans"...

But really, Poe and Whitman are Romantic as members of the Romanticism Movement Style, not just the broader definition.

[mortalterror]

Two of Keats' most famous poems are Ode on a Grecian Urn and On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer. Shelley wrote a play called Prometheus Unbound. Hardly anti-classical.

[AwayAloneAlast]

Keats Keats Keats Keats and Keats.

What a wonderful character he was, and what an incredible poet. The poor man died at only 25, yet produced some of the finest poetry in the language; one wonders what he would've done had he lived just a few years more.

Just read this, his last poetic fragment:

This living hand, now warm and capable
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would'st wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm'd--see here it is--
I hold it towards you.

Even as I type it now, this little fragment scrawled in a margin by Keats make me shiver. If that poem doesn't send chills down your spine-- my God, you are heartless! Consider that it was written by the twenty-five year old Keats, dying a slow and miserable death (so young!) from consumption in Rome... The last line makes me feel Keats's longing to remain alive, and really, really, terrifies me, in a way no other poem has ever nor likely ever will.



Blake is incredible too, but reading to much of him makes me go insane--the power of his verse is almost unbearable, as is his brilliance of vision and thought!

Wordsworth would have to be my third, unless you count Whitman (not one of the High Romantics, but certainly influenced by a blend of Romanticism and Naturalism).

Almost all my favourite poetry focuses around Romanticism. Its predecessors and primary influences, i.e. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, are among my favourites, as are its disciples, from Whitman to Yeats.

[JBI]

To teach with the exclusion of any of the big 6 is a mistake.

[johnlennon30]

John Keats is my favorite Romantic poet. I like the poems he wrote.

"I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild"

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" is my favorite Keats poem.

[aabbcc]

Lamartine.
Novalis.
Hugo.
Wordsworth.
Byron.
Mácha.
... :D

I love romanticism.

[Trekker114]

Keats is my favorite. Coleridge is a close second.

[Paul Roe]

I was ready to write a post defying the notion that Wordsworth was cerebral, but, after a time, I began to see it truly.
His style is indeed more contemplated.
It doesn't just 'show' like Keats' best works.
[I knew this already, actually, but was clouded by defiance. ;) ]

There is more balance in his structure, perhaps because he was an early romantic and the conventions were not yet fully realized.
I can best describe it indirectly: It is so easy to discern structure in Haydn and Mozart but so difficult in Dvorak and Debussey.

I would suggest checking out 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', which I like to call 'Daffodils', to see Wordsworth at his least cerebral, though perhaps at his most contemplative. That is a paradox, isn't it? Oh well. I will let it stand! Does my post contradict itself? Very well then. Let it. ;)

This meandering junket arrives, breathless, at a door that opens to reveal that: Keats is the finest romantic!

antiaging4geeks.com

[marmlade]

I was ready to write a post defying the notion that Wordsworth was cerebral, but, after a time, I began to see it truly.
His style is indeed more contemplated.
It doesn't just 'show' like Keats' best works.
[I knew this already, actually, but was clouded by defiance. ;) ]

There is more balance in his structure, perhaps because he was an early romantic and the conventions were not yet fully realized.
I can best describe it indirectly: It is so easy to discern structure in Haydn and Mozart but so difficult in Dvorak and Debussey.



Wordsworth and Coleridge INVEVNTED the conventions of romanticism. Wordsworth's high period really only lasted 10 years, beginning with the obvious, Preleude to Lyrical Ballads.:)

[lakeside_girl]

there isn't a doubt that my favorite is mr. coleridge. of course, i've beat him to death over the years, and myself, too! symbiotic relationship, the life i choose! i worked and toiled, toiled and worked (and much lad....m it took, good grief!) on the lakeside boys for over a year in school, so if you have any specific questions about them, i can probably assist you. (can you see my albatross?) and in all fairness, though he's starting to feel like my porlok, he isn't really well represented for those that are reading an anthology or a brief study on the romantics. he was a mess and hystrionic if ever a man could be, but he wrote alot of very lucid, attached verse, the greatest at puns ( laugh if you want),, was without argument . he was high in the art of dream-living, he even did a few patriotic feeling ditties which was another idea of romanticism, though not as widely used. well, good luck and don't look for inspiration from him!

[JBI]

Strange, you chose the worst of the 6 English ones. He has what, 3 out-standing poems? Christabel, The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, and Kubla Kahn .

[JCamilo]

Well, if her favorite poem is The Rime of Ancyent Marinere, then picking Coleridge would just make sense, no ? Favorite poets is a romantic thing :P

[lakeside_girl]

coleridge is , without doubt, my favorite. actually, although mariner and kubla khan ( you might want to read freud's most fascinated and excited interpretation of kubla khan and dream-wake prophecy on coleridge) are not my favorite of his poems, it certainly is a matter of pure self-indulgence who appeals to a reader/observer most in something as confessional as poetry. perhaps i like poetry no more than the driving psychology that creates it, in which, even someone that is not an admirer of coleridge would have to concede. or maybe kant, de quincey, freud, wordsworth, and countless other intellects were simply mislead. well, i'm off to worship something that catches 'mine eye....

[blazeofglory]

William Blake is my favorite amongst the romantics.

[Pecksie]

Shelley!!!!!!

[wessexgirl]

Keats for the beauty of his work and Byron for his wit and sardonic tone, particularly in Don Juan. Much as I see Wordsworth as the daddy of them all, and the greatest pioneer of the movement, (after all without him the boundaries and conventions of poetry would not have been broken down as they were with The Prelude), his change from an iconoclast and supporter of the revolution to a reactionary older man hurts. Perhaps it's that thing of the others dying young before they could disappoint. The recklessness of youth, and the demise of Byron, Keats and Shelley at such early ages, with all that promise wasted, means they are forever remembered as great and unconventional poets.

[antonia1990]

Byron forever....followed by Keats