I love Shelley; he uses such great imagery. I just can't get over how great his imagery is. Keats definitely had a lot of talent, since he died so young but was able to produce works that lasted so long. I haven't read enough of Byron to comment on him... but I'll try to read some soon... any suggestions?
"We who believe, what can we fear?" ~ Victor Hugo
From Byron I recommend "She walks in beauty", "Don Juan", "Darkness" and "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". He has many but these are the first that come to my mind.Originally Posted by Shya
I love Shelley -and I agree with a fellow member who mentioned his great imagery- but I must confess that sometimes it's hard to separate his poetry from the fascination exerted by his life...
I like William Wordsworth and of course he was words-worth, and of course he composed so many poems and he looked to postural and rural settings, and he thought man can be closer to the maker of him through being in touch with nature.
In fact I like all romantic poets and their poems were written so beautifully as if they have streamed from the well of their hearts.
I do not tag them with a label of romanticism, for they are really much deeper and intenser poe
They chose folks or rustics and simplicity is what they really tried to present through their beautiful verses.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
Keats I love, but mustn't forget Coleridge! The dear drunk... =]
Keats is a personal favorite of mine, but Byron entwines my heart with silvery strings of understanding
Where art thou?
Keats, Shelley then Byron.
Keats for me was the better poet, not by far over Shelley, but his poems are more controlled in a sense that I can't really explain, Shelley is sometimes too rhetorically overblown in comparison. Byron blows hot and cold and for me stands a little further back from Shelley, though is still strong of course.
I like Wordsworth too, I like his simple pastoral pieces, I don't think he had the same power as Keats or Shelley though.
Shelley is the only one I've read much, of and I love him, one of my favourites.
Byron, for his language often amuses me.
There is no polite way
of being happy
But I like Shelley's thoughts in his defence of poetry.
Last edited by white camellia; 12-29-2008 at 10:32 AM.
There is no polite way
of being happy
Keats, Byron, Shelley. Love 'em all, though.
Shelley served as an idol for Lord Byron, as well as to Tennyson, Yeats, and Browning.
Though I agree, Byron is also my favorite, I don't think that Shelley "got what he deserved dying young." And I still have a deep love for the works he produced.
"Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded in lies will not understand this book either. So be it."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle.
I agree with you. I think that is an incredibly brutal and gratuitous comment to make --- and remarkably lacking in perception. Shelley may have been deeply flawed (who isn't?), but his generosity and sincerity are well-documented. Besides, even if he had been a monster, that would not and should not detract from the enjoyment of his works. All people, even writers whose works we love and admire, have flaws --- sometimes serious ones. Tolstoy (who, BTW, lived into his eighties) sexually exploited his female serfs, producing at least one illegitimate child whom he never acknowledged. Byron was perhaps the archetypal sexual exploiter --- servants, preteens, young boys, prostitutes, his own half-sister, he went for them all. O. Henry was a swindler. Ben Jonson murdered a man. Does that mean they should have died younger, or ---just think about it--- that we shouldn't read their works?
I often think about all the poets who died young (not just the Romantics, but the murdered Federico García Lorca, or Miguel Hernández, who died in a Falangist prison) and the wonderful work they could have produced had they lived to a ripe age. Even those who lived into their forties, like Oscar Wilde, had achieved a level of quality that should make us regret that they didn't enjoy longer lives.
Ironically enough, looking back on it, I keep thinking to myself what the hell was I thinking when I wrote that out. Keats to me now is the best of them, and Byron the worst of them. Seriously, what possessed me then to value Byron of the three the highest. Now I see myself not really liking Shelley still, besides one or two poems, and not liking Byron at all, even Don Juan, which before I thought great.
Goes to show what this "rating of stuff" really means.
In general though I have stopped liking, for the most part, English Romantic Poetry. It doesn't quite do it for me anymore, the same way modernists, and post-modernists do. Perhaps then it may have been a lack of exposure, or perhaps a lack of range, but even so, how the hell could I have rated Byron over Keats?
Oh, and P.S., Keats was far more influential on Tennyson than Byron. Tennyson admitted it himself more than once, especially in agreeing in his friend A. H. Hallam's assessment of he as a Keatsian poet.
Last edited by JBI; 01-16-2009 at 02:23 PM.
I wonder this thread will remain dead until you have a change or heart again ?
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