BS: Anyone for Keats?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Will Fly
Date: 16 Jul 18 - 04:03 AM

English for me at school as well - with lots of learning poetry by heart. Sixth form (17 and 18 year olds for US readers) reading included Chaucer (the Nun's Priest's Tale) in parallel translation by Neville Coghill), Yeats, inevitably Shakespeare and that pretentious putz, Gerard Manley Hopkins, with his "sprung rhythm".

Being 17 meant, of course, that we all read Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" and the "Reeve's Tale" as well, but not in class...

"And, privily, he caught her by the quim" - irresistible!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 09:23 PM

I should state, in the interest of transparency and all that, that I have a BA in English Literature and 1/2 a Master's degree in the same (they cancelled the program when I was halfway through). In grade school and high school I was made to memorize poems by such as W. Shakespeare (also dramatic lines), Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Robert Frost, Thomas S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Walter Whitman Jr., William Cullen Bryant, Thomas Hardy, Al Tennyson, Longfellow, Johnny Whittier, Robert Service, Percy B. Shelley, Jack Keats, Johnny Milton, Matt Arnold, Joyce "I'm MALE, dammit!" Kilmer, and a host of others. The night before my Graduate Record Examination (Literature in English) I drank Scotch and capped lines with a friend and scored in the 95th percentile even with a hangover. I was also made to memorize the value of pi to 8 decimal places (my nephew won a "personal size" pizza by memorizing it to 300).

Like all poettry, I like some of Keats more than others. Shelley (who cremated Keats, or tried to), nah, not so much. Of the Romantic Poets I suppose I most dislike Robert Southey, author of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (a/k/a "The Tale of the Three Bears").

This is only some of the Romantic Poets who wrote in English, of course. And yes, I know that Pope is a Neoclassicist or whatever you want to call him.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: olddude
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 08:28 PM

I.
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! oh, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.
Dry your eyes! oh, dry your eyes!
For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies,–
Shed no tear.

Overhead! look overhead!
‘Mong the blossoms white and red–
Look up, look up! I flutter now
On this fresh pomegranate bough.
See me! ’tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man’s ill.
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu — I fly — adieu!
I vanish in the heaven’s blue,–
Adieu, adieu!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Senoufou
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 05:21 PM

Pwaaaahaaahaaagh! 'Ode to a Little Stick of Blackpool Rock'!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Will Fly
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 05:13 PM

Now - did John Keats ever play the ukulele?

Not to my knowledge - what a shame! Just imagine: "Ode to a Little Stick of Blackpool Rock"...

One of my university final year courses was a bibliographic study of Keats which, involved, among other things, doing some research in his Hampstead house - which was the Hampstead Public Library in my time there - and looking at first editions of his works in the British Museum Library. Fascinating stuff.

Now for a beaker of Hippocrene, with beaded bubbles winking at the brim. Cheers!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Raedwulf
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 04:42 PM

Yem! Them! Thearroorrts! Thems wot duzznt fit inter the normal (*snortle bwuhahaha*) skeem of wotsit when you be thingummy. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 04:35 PM

Keats? Them things that you fly in the weand on a piece of streang?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Raedwulf
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 04:15 PM

'Zigackly! :D

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Senoufou
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 03:24 PM

When I was about five, my mother would recite the whole of Keats' 'Meg Merrilies' to me (she knew it off by heart) and I soon learnt to do the same. I was entranced.
Also, 'Tewkesbury Road' by John Masefield. When she got to the final line "...the dear wild cry of the birds" I'd be sobbing with emotion!

I've never forgotten a single word of these poems recited by my mother, and I think it's because they were delivered orally with great expression.

Being Irish, she had a great feeling for words, songs and oral traditions/culture.
She could 'do' any accent, and acted in an amateur dramatics club. Her sister was a drama college tutor, and also recited dozens of funny things for me. Yet another sister was a major book buyer for a Canadian store in Ontario. So the whole family were similar, involved in language, literature and oral treasures.

I like to think I've inherited some of this, and can heartily recommend reading poetry aloud in order to savour it the more.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Raedwulf
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 02:25 PM

Jos - I can understand Sen's point of view. Question - what's the difference between a poem 'read in your head', and one you read out loud to yourself? I'm not much of a poet (I'm a wordsmith & a storyteller), nor a poetry lover, but reading aloud does allow you to play with it for your own pleasure. More so, it seems to me, than keeping it inside your head... If you see what I mean!

Al - I can offer no better than Sen's advice (which is not to imply that her's is not jolly good advice!). Try reading Keats (or whoever) out to yourself.. and don't forget to play with it! ;-) There's as many different sorts of poets as there are stories & storytellers. Not all appeal to all. And not everyone gets the same thing from any particular poem or poet!

The one that always get me (& I've posted it here at least 3 or 4 times) is "In Memoriam" by Ewart Alan Mackintosh...

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 10:34 AM

Now I consider Al Pope a Romantic Poet! Just read this excerpt from "The Epistle to Arbuthnot" and tell me that the language doesn't conjure up a wish to be able to do the same!

Let Sporus tremble—"What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?"
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'r enjoys,
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
His wit all see-saw, between that and this ,
Now high, now low, now Master up, now Miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have express'd,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Not fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool,
Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile, be one poet's praise,
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways;
That flatt'ry, even to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same:
That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to truth, and moraliz'd his song:
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown;
Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;
The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape;
The libell'd person, and the pictur'd shape;
Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father, dead;
The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear:—
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev'n the last!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Jos
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 10:06 AM

I prefer poems read in my head. If I hear them read I am always getting really irritated by the reader's stresses and intonations (and especially that pious wishy-washy voice some people use, such as in the 'Poetry Please' programme.
On the other hand, Ian McMillan gets it right - down to earth, no affectation.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 09:41 AM

I went to the website cataloguing classical song/lieder,
which places a high priority on authors and texts,
and looked up Keats, John.

Guess which of Keats's verses has been set to music by the greatest number of composers?
I tried to guess, and I missed it completely.
Like Senoufou/Eliza, I thought of Odes. No, it is:

the Ballade of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which begins,
"O, what can ail thee, knight at arms ... "
something like twenty-five composers set it to music,
and most of 'em you never heard of a day in your life.
A few big names, though, like the German Paul Hindemith.


For the very site I just mentioned, I recently had to look up
a nineteenth-century Englishman whose last name was Milnes,
although he was also Lord Somebody. Wrote poetry himself.
Mostly he was a Character, though, with literary pretensions.

As it turns out, Milnes championed Keats posthumously,
and it is said by scholars that Keats would have fallen into obscurity
if Milnes had not been around to defend him.
He's Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton,
better remembered as a literary patron than as a writer himself.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Senoufou
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 09:31 AM

I used to find that reading poems aloud, with as much expression as one could muster, helped with understanding the meaning. My old sixth-form teacher encouraged this, and made us take part too, and it's not a bad idea.
I had to study all sorts of literature at Uni, but I'm afraid I found the Romantic Poets irritatingly twee. Ode to This, Ode to That - very affected.
There are paperback books available on Amazon (used books, very cheap) with commentaries by erudite Uni bods, which may help with appreciation of the chap.
I'd much prefer the ukelele Al!

Subject: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Jul 18 - 08:46 AM

Along with playing the ukulele, one of the things on my bucket list is to really dig the poems of John Keats. Anyone got any smart ideas for getting a surefire grip on what the buggers on about?