[Gregory Palmerino]

Yesterday was the anniversary of Keats' death. PBS Newshour had a short article recounting Keats' training as an apothecary. Poets take note:

"After the passage of an Act of Parliament in 1815, however, apothecaries were licensed to diagnose and treat patients as a “general practitioner,” upon completion of a compulsory apprenticeship and passing a set of formal examinations administered by the Society of Apothecaries."

Interestingly, this practice may be, and is in some ways, coming back to the United States because of the projected dearth of general practitioners.

For me, in my next life, I'm going to open a wineshop called "The Blushful Hippocrene" and perform as much wine-letting as possible.

Cheers,
Greg

[conny]

God bless John Keats.

[Gregory Dowling]

Here is the posting on the Keats-Shelley Museum Facebook page for 23rd February:

On 23rd February 1821, the young Romantic poet John Keats died in Rome.
On his grave he only wanted a lyre with four of its strings torn, and a line of verse, which was to be the very last piece of poetry he composed:
"Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water."
The Keats-Shelley House brings flowers to Keats's grave on this day each year - see photos of the grave from this morning - and keeps his memory alive, not only as an artist, but also as a man: a beautiful, sensitive, troubled young man, who was plagued by ill health and who left this world much too soon.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

I dragged my wife, aunt, uncle, and cousin with me to the Keats-Shelley Museum and the protestant cemetery on my (so far) only trip to Rome.

No writer has ever moved me more than he has--poet and letter-writer--and no one is more responsible for what I write than him. So, direct any complaints to Rome, but it always makes me quite sad how convinced he was on his deathbed that he was going to be forgotten, and makes me a little bitter at Byron for his casual dismissiveness of the great young man's work.

[Michael F]

Andrew -- I also love Keats, the poems, yes, but I think the letters even more.

[Gregory Dowling]

Byron realised he'd been unfair and paid tribute to Keats in "Don Juan", Canto 11:

John Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique,
Just as he really promis'd something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contriv'd to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been suppos'd to speak.
Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.

[Gregory Palmerino]

When I read this letter from Keats to J. H. Reynolds, I was roughly the same age as the author. Growing up in a household where literature was practically non-existent and poetry was as familiar as Adam, it blew me away (along with all of the other Romantic literature, which I went on to study in my master's degree).

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time: "We have read fine things, but never feel them to the full, until we have gone the same steps as the Author."

After graduating from college with my bachelor's degree, my wife and I took a trip to the UK, (where I proposed to her on that vacation many years ago) . The first place we visited was the Keats House in Hampstead. I remember taking a whole bunch of pictures only to realize later that I had forgotten to put film in the camera! Yikes. Remember all those rolls of films?

A few years later, when we finally got to visit Rome, the day we were at the foot of the Spanish Steps, we found that the Keats-Shelley museum was closed! He keeps alluding me. But the chase. Oh, the chase... continues.

Cheers,
Greg

[Michael F]

That is a splendid quote, Greg. I think good poetry often gives us the words for something we know, before we've found them ourselves.

The Keats quote reminded me of this from Walt, from "Song of Myself":

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

[Jim Moonan]

Keats was introduced to me by someone who said he possessed as pure a poet's mind as any there ever was. I didn't see it at the time. In my youth I had reserved that spot for Frost.
After reading many of Keats' letters I've discovered what it was that caused my mentor to make such a statement.

All worthwhile poetry points to the same spot, occupied sequentially by beauty, knowledge, sorrow and wisdom. I'm still searching.

[Michael F]

Jim, that's the perfect introduction to "Ode on Melancholy", maybe my favorite Keats poem. Now on re-reading it, it's striking how the themes dovetail with the recent Stevens thread.