Byron, Shelley or Keats?

[JBI]

I wonder this thread will remain dead until you have a change or heart again ?

Yeah, eventually I'll just abandon English Romantic Poetry in general - I'm such a modernist in that regard. Either way though, each poet only has a handful of good poems each. The amount of doggerel written by Keats and Byron, and even Shelley is enormous, rendering really only a "selected works" somewhat readable. I think Keats is the most enduring of these, given that he at least wrote the perfect poem once in a while, but with Byron he seems to have wrote a million popular junk poems, that attract of a little bit, and then are forgotten. Shelley I still have problems with - for some reason I find him unnatural, as if his philosophy were a little out of place, and he seems to not really fit in anywhere. Also his poems flop more often than not, even some of the beloved ones. I think the form of Adonias is unsuitable, and the poem suffers greatly for it (the only poet I have ever seen to handle the Spenserian well other than Spenser was Keats), and experiments like the prized "To a Skylark" to me feel like metrical flops as well (which lead one of my professors once to exclaim, "Oh, I wish the Skylark had pooped on his head, then he would realize it is actually a bird.").

I don't know - in many ways I think English Romantic poetry is a childish, a sort of naive poetry. Wordsworth more so than the others (come on, how naive is "We Are Seven"! the girl's siblings are clearly dead), and requires a sort of naivety in order to work.

I much prefer at this point symbolism and modernism, and my specialized post-modernism.

[wessexgirl]

Yeah, eventually I'll just abandon English Romantic Poetry in general - I'm such a modernist in that regard. Either way though, each poet only has a handful of good poems each. The amount of doggerel written by Keats and Byron, and even Shelley is enormous, rendering really only a "selected works" somewhat readable. I think Keats is the most enduring of these, given that he at least wrote the perfect poem once in a while, but with Byron he seems to have wrote a million popular junk poems, that attract of a little bit, and then are forgotten. Shelley I still have problems with - for some reason I find him unnatural, as if his philosophy were a little out of place, and he seems to not really fit in anywhere. Also his poems flop more often than not, even some of the beloved ones. I think the form of Adonias is unsuitable, and the poem suffers greatly for it (the only poet I have ever seen to handle the Spenserian well other than Spenser was Keats), and experiments like the prized "To a Skylark" to me feel like metrical flops as well (which lead one of my professors once to exclaim, "Oh, I wish the Skylark had pooped on his head, then he would realize it is actually a bird.").

I don't know - in many ways I think English Romantic poetry is a childish, a sort of naive poetry. Wordsworth more so than the others (come on, how naive is "We Are Seven"! the girl's siblings are clearly dead), and requires a sort of naivety in order to work.

I much prefer at this point symbolism and modernism, and my specialized post-modernism.

I can't believe you are being so dismissive of these greats. Perhaps you will have another change of heart. Only a handful of great poems!!!

[JCamilo]

maybe he is more bitter than not, but seriously, great poems in the sense that answer for their status (the trio, plus wordsworth, blake and colerIdge were supposed to be on pair with shakespeare or milton) are no more than a handful. Blake was probally the more consistent of them, but since they did not left a great epic poem like Paradise Lost, it is hard to not consider that a lot of their poems could be done by any good english poet, and not those who are supposed to be masters.
But the thing is that they have done, even in flawed long poems like Hyperion there is stanzas that would make any sonnet great. I would say those guys are also far more inteligent than many, with a keen sense of criticism... we have biographia literaria, defense of poetry, keats letters, wordsworth preface for lyricall ballads... without them romanticism would probally be empty of soul and a political experiment for the germans.

[JBI]

maybe he is more bitter than not, but seriously, great poems in the sense that answer for their status (the trio, plus wordsworth, blake and colerIdge were supposed to be on pair with shakespeare or milton) are no more than a handful. Blake was probally the more consistent of them, but since they did not left a great epic poem like Paradise Lost, it is hard to not consider that a lot of their poems could be done by any good english poet, and not those who are supposed to be masters.
But the thing is that they have done, even in flawed long poems like Hyperion there is stanzas that would make any sonnet great. I would say those guys are also far more inteligent than many, with a keen sense of criticism... we have biographia literaria, defense of poetry, keats letters, wordsworth preface for lyricall ballads... without them romanticism would probally be empty of soul and a political experiment for the germans.

And Italians, and French, we seem to forget that it probably would have happened anyway, it simply wouldn't conform to this Rousseauian concept of the English Peasantry as noble savages, or to a reestablishment of the silly British Pastoral, the Merry ol' England myth which still corsets their literature.

Of all of these, I think Keats the strongest today, or perhaps the most enduring (my professors probably would disagree) and the one who seems to have had the greatest vision. But we must keep in mind he actually was reacting against the older generation of Wordsworth and Coleridge - he found fault heavily in many of their works.

AS a movement, I can think of about 20 poems + the prelude worth remembering of Wordsworth's, which are truly fantastic. A little more than a half dozen for Coleridge, about the same for Shelley, and actually quite a few for Keats, especially the stuff he wrote right at the end of his life, like the Odes, the long poems, and both Hyperion poems. Byron is trickier, because his influence has been for some reason so profound, but even so, he is so silly to me today, so unartist like, that I can't help but think him a bit of a joke. But even so, a few of his poems, and some of his long poems seem to be going strong.


But even so, when you compare that to what was going on in Germany, it is almost silly. English romanticism these days is given so much credit, and perhaps why so many students don't like poetry, or simply cannot read poetry. Really, people aught to have more exposure to more contemporary trends, but as it is, merry ol' England persists, wandering lonely as a cloud.

[wessexgirl]

maybe he is more bitter than not, but seriously, great poems in the sense that answer for their status (the trio, plus wordsworth, blake and colerIdge were supposed to be on pair with shakespeare or milton) are no more than a handful. Blake was probally the more consistent of them, but since they did not left a great epic poem like Paradise Lost, it is hard to not consider that a lot of their poems could be done by any good english poet, and not those who are supposed to be masters.
But the thing is that they have done, even in flawed long poems like Hyperion there is stanzas that would make any sonnet great. I would say those guys are also far more inteligent than many, with a keen sense of criticism... we have biographia literaria, defense of poetry, keats letters, wordsworth preface for lyricall ballads... without them romanticism would probally be empty of soul and a political experiment for the germans.

They were poetic pioneers, particularly the 3 older ones, Wordsworth, Coleriidge and Blake. You have shown in your last sentence how important they were. They can't be dismissed so easily. Blake was an original, a one-off, very much an individual, so in one sense he was possibly the most consistent, ploughing his own furrow, and going his own sweet (and odd) way. The 3 younger ones all died early, so we don't know how well they would have continued to create. So every poem they wrote is not considered great. That can be said of the majority of writers. Whether they are personally liked, (or not, as is the case with JBI), they shouldn't be so easily dismissed.

[wessexgirl]

[QUOTE=JBI;659651]And Italians, and French, we seem to forget that it probably would have happened anyway, it simply wouldn't conform to this Rousseauian concept of the English Peasantry as noble savages, or to a reestablishment of the silly British Pastoral, the Merry ol' England myth which still corsets their literature.

Of all of these, I think Keats the strongest today, or perhaps the most enduring (my professors probably would disagree) and the one who seems to have had the greatest vision. But we must keep in mind he actually was reacting against the older generation of Wordsworth and Coleridge - he found fault heavily in many of their works.

AS a movement, I can think of about 20 poems + the prelude worth remembering of Wordsworth's, which are truly fantastic. A little more than a half dozen for Coleridge, about the same for Shelley, and actually quite a few for Keats, especially the stuff he wrote right at the end of his life, like the Odes, the long poems, and both Hyperion poems. Byron is trickier, because his influence has been for some reason so profound, but even so, he is so silly to me today, so unartist like, that I can't help but think him a bit of a joke. But even so, a few of his poems, and some of his long poems seem to be going strong.


But even so, when you compare that to what was going on in Germany, it is almost silly. English romanticism these days is given so much credit, and perhaps why so many students don't like poetry, or simply cannot read poetry. Really, people aught to have more exposure to more contemporary trends, but as it is, merry ol' England persists, wandering lonely as a cloud.[/QUOTE]


"Merry old England" as you put it is far from what the English Romantics were about. That phrase summons up an image of "ye olde worlde England" of times gone by. The English Romantics were revolutionary in outlook, at least to start with, Wordsworth grew more reactionary as he got older. But they most certainly were not backward-looking. They were innovative pioneers, both in language and poetry, and in their political outlook.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive...."

Remember the era they were living in. Revolution was in the air. Agitation for political reform was important to them. Look at Shelley's angry riposte to the Peterloo Massacre in The Mask of Anarchy. Silly comments about "ye merry old England", conjuring up images of ruddy-faced peasants dancing around a village maypole is the very antithesis to their meaning. I think they've been given just credit for their achievements. I can't see why you blame them for students not liking poetry. That's another silly statement. I love poetry, and I can say that I was turned on to it pretty much by the English Romantic Poets.

[JBI]

They were poetic pioneers, particularly the 3 older ones, Wordsworth, Coleriidge and Blake. You have shown in your last sentence how important they were. They can't be dismissed so easily. Blake was an original, a one-off, very much an individual, so in one sense he was possibly the most consistent, ploughing his own furrow, and going his own sweet (and odd) way. The 3 younger ones all died early, so we don't know how well they would have continued to create. So every poem they wrote is not considered great. That can be said of the majority of writers. Whether they are personally liked, (or not, as is the case with JBI), they shouldn't be so easily dismissed.

You would know that the vast majority of good Wordsworth poems were published before 1808, and in fact the only really great poem after that date, by a general critical consensus, seems to be The Prelude. Coleridge too exhausted himself early, but even still he seems remembered for less than a half dozen poems, and mainly 3.

[JBI]

[QUOTE=wessexgirl;659671]

And Italians, and French, we seem to forget that it probably would have happened anyway, it simply wouldn't conform to this Rousseauian concept of the English Peasantry as noble savages, or to a reestablishment of the silly British Pastoral, the Merry ol' England myth which still corsets their literature.

Of all of these, I think Keats the strongest today, or perhaps the most enduring (my professors probably would disagree) and the one who seems to have had the greatest vision. But we must keep in mind he actually was reacting against the older generation of Wordsworth and Coleridge - he found fault heavily in many of their works.

AS a movement, I can think of about 20 poems + the prelude worth remembering of Wordsworth's, which are truly fantastic. A little more than a half dozen for Coleridge, about the same for Shelley, and actually quite a few for Keats, especially the stuff he wrote right at the end of his life, like the Odes, the long poems, and both Hyperion poems. Byron is trickier, because his influence has been for some reason so profound, but even so, he is so silly to me today, so unartist like, that I can't help but think him a bit of a joke. But even so, a few of his poems, and some of his long poems seem to be going strong.


But even so, when you compare that to what was going on in Germany, it is almost silly. English romanticism these days is given so much credit, and perhaps why so many students don't like poetry, or simply cannot read poetry. Really, people aught to have more exposure to more contemporary trends, but as it is, merry ol' England persists, wandering lonely as a cloud.[/QUOTE]


"Merry old England" as you put it is far from what the English Romantics were about. That phrase summons up an image of "ye olde worlde England" of times gone by. The English Romantics were revolutionary in outlook, at least to start with, Wordsworth grew more reactionary as he got older. But they most certainly were not backward-looking. They were innovative pioneers, both in language and poetry, and in their political outlook.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive...."

Remember the era they were living in. Revolution was in the air. Agitation for political reform was important to them. Look at Shelley's angry riposte to the Peterloo Massacre in The Mask of Anarchy. Silly comments about "ye merry old England", conjuring up images of ruddy-faced peasants dancing around a village maypole is the very antithesis to their meaning. I think they've been given just credit for their achievements. I can't see why you blame them for students not liking poetry. That's another silly statement. I love poetry, and I can say that I was turned on to it pretty much by the English Romantic Poets.

Again, you romanticize the past yourself, retreating back into that moment of nostalgia. Wordsworth's poetry is rooted in him reflecting on the past. Coleridge's is rooted in accident more than anything else. Read Westminster Bridge, and tell me there is no nostalgia in those words. What the hell do you think Smokeless skies is said to mean? That they are clear, and blue? Yes, then why not cloudless? There is a clear rejection of the future, and a retreat into the pastoral past, and into the simple, which is just quite childish.

One doesn't need to wonder why Wordsworth stopped writing good poetry - he merely realized that his vision was unrealistic, a losing one, and failed to break away from it like Yeats would later do, and merely churned out the same old same old, same old nostalgia this time.

[stlukesguild]

Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge... and we could throw John Clare and Robert Burns (among others) into the mix. In no way are these minor figures that can be dismissed as naive or childish. Certainly... with few exceptions... they only produced a limited number or works that could be considered unquestionable masterworks... but few, outside of the very greatest, can be thought to have produced a large oeuvre of consistent masterworks. I somewhat suspect, JBI, that your admiration of Modernism (T.S. Eliot would probably concur with your judgments) and your disgust with the Anglo-centrism of many literary curricula... ignoring the contributions of the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Italians (including your beloved Leopardi)... to say nothing of non-Western literature, has turned you against the English Romantics.

I remember sharing a similar feeling with regard to my education in art history... sensing a prejudice in favor of the Italian Renaissance and later the French Modernists over the artists of the medieval period and the Northern Renaissance... and later the Austro-German Modernists... I found myself rejecting Piero della Francesca and Bellini and Monet and Degas and Matisse in favor of the artists of the Book of Kells, Bosch and Breughel, Albrecht Durer, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, and Egon Schiele. With time, I came around and realized that my own personal preference of the moment was just as prejudiced as the preferences I was rebelling against... and that (more importantly) they hurt no one but myself... keeping me from appreciating both... rather than either/or.

You have spoken in the past of the constant desire to seek out the new artistic experience. Of course, we all relish new discoveries. There is nothing like uncovering a master poet or artist or composer that was heretofore unknown to us. Perhaps... such sparks in us an excitement not unlike that of a new love. But I cannot agree with your notion... previously expressed... of growing bored with Mozart or Puccini or Shakespeare, etc... Certainly I enjoy a broad array of artistic diversions... but returning to the love analogy, I find that with time the relationship grows ever deeper and more profound. I also find that the adage, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," also applies. Returning to a favorite artist such as Monet or Degas after not having seriously looked at him for some time... or turning again to a writer such as Spenser, Blake, Keats, Baudelaire, etc... I find myself recognizing aspects of brilliance I never appreciated before.

Certainly there are great Romantics outside England: Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Holderlin, Moricke, Heine, and more in Germany... Hugo in France... Leopardi and Foscolo in Italy... and perhaps we may even include Pushkin in Russia. Indeed... I'm somewhat surprised at your sudden dismissal of Byron considering your recent championing of Pushkin... who was undeniably deeply influenced by Byron.

I'm still waiting for your shift over to the 18th century poets: Swift, Johnson, Gay, Poe, etc... Actually, I quite like Christopher Smart, myself... and I must concur with Mortal Terror, that Pope is quite marvelous... taken in small doses.

[Virgil]

One doesn't need to wonder why Wordsworth stopped writing good poetry - he merely realized that his vision was unrealistic, a losing one, and failed to break away from it like Yeats would later do, and merely churned out the same old same old, same old nostalgia this time.

I'm not sure that's accurate. Wordsworth wrote poems way into his life with basically the same ideas as when he was on the top of his skills. The poems just came out hackneyed. And on top of that, he continued to revise The Prelude, his epic masterpiece all the way to his death. And philosophically it didn't change. I haven't read a good biography but I don't get the sense he lost faith in his vision at all. What poem is a loss of faith in Romanticism? What he does later in life is try to integrate Romanticism and Christianity, though not successfully. The Romantic ideal was prevelant throughout the 19th century and even into the 20th. In fact it still hasn't left us. If you ask me all this environmental worship is still at its heart Romanticism as well as a belief that spontaneous emotions superceed rationality.

[stlukesguild]

Read Westminster Bridge, and tell me there is no nostalgia in those words. What the hell do you think Smokeless skies is said to mean? That they are clear, and blue? Yes, then why not cloudless? There is a clear rejection of the future, and a retreat into the pastoral past, and into the simple, which is just quite childish.

Certainly, a great deal of Romanticism is owed to the worship of nature as opposed to culture... or civilization. This takes many forms. Much is owed to a rejection of the artifice that preceded it in art and society. Much echoes Rousseau's notion of "natural" man... as opposed...? Much also owes to a rejection of what "civilization" had wrought: war, political oppression... and the industrial revolution. Personally, I find the Modernist's embrace of all that is Modern... the faith in the future... in "better living through technology"... the mad rush toward a brave new mechanized world to be just as... if not far more naive... especially considering all that the progress delivered by the Modern world: two world wars with the wholesale destruction of cities and slaughter of civilians, the Holocaust, the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, Mao and the Cultural Revolution that led to the virtual destruction of one of the greatest cultures in the whole of history, the atom bomb, etc... But do we expect artists not to mirror the tenor of the time?

[JBI]

Still though, I think after Elegiac stanzas, and the realization of the bitterness of the world, not to mention he having achieved household status, and becoming a "name" seem to have created a lack of spirit in Wordsworth, that for some reason choked his poetry after 1807. The death of his daughter and brother I am certain helped fuel this, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there wasn't the sense of avant gaurde about him - he simply settled for routine, and wrote mediocre sonnets, and crappy lyrics for the now accepting upper classes - he became what he rebelled against in Lyrical Ballads.

[jon1jt]

I think much of what the Romantic triumvirute wrote is out of touch with literature and poetry today. Let's say they wrote some nice poems and take down their books from that inviolable academic pedestal and return them to the basements of college libraries where old literature professors dress as corn dogs and wear big buttons and hood ornaments (out of their ars) that say, "Save the Classics"

[JBI]

Read Westminster Bridge, and tell me there is no nostalgia in those words. What the hell do you think Smokeless skies is said to mean? That they are clear, and blue? Yes, then why not cloudless? There is a clear rejection of the future, and a retreat into the pastoral past, and into the simple, which is just quite childish.

Certainly, a great deal of Romanticism is owed to the worship of nature as opposed to culture... or civilization. This takes many forms. Much is owed to a rejection of the artifice that preceded it in art and society. Much echoes Rousseau's notion of "natural" man... as opposed...? Much also owes to a rejection of what "civilization" had wrought: war, political oppression... and the industrial revolution. Personally, I find the Modernist's embrace of all that is Modern... the faith in the future... in "better living through technology"... the mad rush toward a brave new mechanized world to be just as... if not far more naive... especially considering all that the progress delivered by the Modern world: two world wars with the wholesale destruction of cities and slaughter of civilians, the Holocaust, the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, Mao and the Cultural Revolution that led to the virtual destruction of one of the greatest cultures in the whole of history, the atom bomb, etc... But do we expect artists not to mirror the tenor of the time?

It eventually will come down to Yeats's notion of himself and his contemporaries as the last romantics. In truth, the realization was from Yeats, and the rest, that this vision, this romantic ideal, this past - which had been fading for some time, though perhaps not in Ireland like it had in England, and certainly not until the symbolist movement in France, they being a little slower, and it wasn't reclaimable, one couldn't go back - the vision failed - nature failed, - and this obsession with nature as the imagination failed with it, as poetry can exist without natural images, or outside of the Lake district of England.

After World War One I think it became impossible to be a romantic of that sort - who could want to be one? The Four Quartets offer a greater insight into the spiritual, into the "Overwhelming question" as Prufrock put it, or quite simply, "What does it mean to be human, and to have these human emotions - to be imaginative, to be creative, to be living, to be slowly dying, to be part of this universe," than anything Wordsworth seemed to touch on. Wordsworth had moments, and had some insights, but I think he failed when Merry Ol' England failed, when the empire disintegrated, when European "reason" essentially was put to the test.

If artists are to mirror the tenor of the time, than readers are supposed to as well. So rather than blatantly praise without reading, or read naively as this board is so fond of, let us actually question the place of this vision - those daffodils - in today's society. Let us ask what every poet means a) to the tradition, as is fitting, and b) to our time period, and our audience.

The tradition itself seems to be crumbling and being reborn, and though I doubt any of the six will ever fall, I think a severe reassessment is at hand, again, after the structuralists reestablished them in our classrooms from the Modernist reading.



As for Pushkin and Byron - I don't know - Pushkin has character, whereas all Byron's heroes all happen to be Byron himself, just recast as some other wandering seducer, or melodramatic misfit. I can see why Pushkin liked him, but as such, I don't think he has the same spirit as Pushkin did when he wrote Onegin - that same distinctly Russian feel for society - that same bitterness. Byron's hero, mind you, would have accepted Tatyana, then killed Lenski, then, run away, and then come back to seduce her again - I think Pushkin, though higly influenced by Byron, broke well away from there, by letting himself become absorbed into other works. The book reads more as a commentary on German Romanticism, and French Novels than it does as a Byronic text.

[Silas Thorne]

Jon, I think poetry is never out of touch. Just needs a new coat.