What the heck, why not share what I wrote? TL;dr I didn't love the poem.
The poem Romantic Poet, recently highlighted by A. O. Scott, a New York Times critic, in his essay "Will You Fall in Love With This Poem? I Did," invites attention and interpretation. It contains moments of cleverness and an irreverent tone that aligns with contemporary sensibilities. However, upon closer examination, it also reveals layers of ambiguity and tension that merit a deeper reading. My intention here is to recognize how the poem works, explore the moving reading it appears to invite, and then articulate an alternative reading—one that highlights certain limitations and invites further consideration of its engagement with Romanticism, and more specifically, the poetry of John Keats.
A. O. Scott’s reading of the poem provides a useful starting point. He frames it as a debate about love, or more precisely, about the nature of attachment—to poets, their work, and the figures they become in our imagination. The speaker’s scholar friend critiques the "crushworthiness" of John Keats by listing his biographical flaws: his poor hygiene, dishonesty, and short stature. Scott highlights the poem’s irreverent humor and blunt language, noting how it demystifies Keats as a romantic figure. At the same time, he argues that the poem’s final line, "But the nightingale, I said," acts as a rebuttal to this critique, elevating Keats’s poetry above the “grubby, fact-based scholarship” of his friend. This, Scott suggests, is where the real romance lies: not in Keats the man, but in the art he created. By invoking the nightingale, Seuss draws attention to the enduring power of Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, a poem that, as Scott puts it, explores the “intoxicating power of beauty” and the strange, uncanny effect that art can have on us.
Scott’s interpretation is compelling, especially in its recognition of the poem’s jagged rhythm and scattered rhymes, which lend it a syncopated, subtly musical quality. He argues that these elements give the poem its own kind of romanticism, sneaking up on the reader and resolving in a tidy, clever conclusion. Yet, while this reading illuminates the poem’s charm and technical playfulness, it invites further consideration of additional layers and tensions that can complicate its reception.
For example, consider an alternative (and benign) reading in which the scholar’s voice represents the contemporary ethos of "romantic attachments." In this interpretation, the scholar’s critique of Keats—emphasizing his lack of hygiene, honesty, and conventional attractiveness—is not merely a takedown of Keats as a potential mate but an articulation of what "romantic" means in today’s world. Romantic attachments, in this view, are preoccupied with the functional and pragmatic aspects of relationships. In this context, Keats does not merely fail to meet modern standards; his flaws place him below the already disappointing pool of men available in contemporary dating, whose inadequacies are exaggerated in the scholar’s speech.
In this reading, "But the nightingale" becomes an intriguing and lovely expression of nostalgia for a different meaning of the word "romantic." Two forms of romanticism are placed in tension here: the romantic love of contemporary attachments between individuals and the lyrical romanticism embodied by Keats. This tension suggests that the poem is not merely about Keats’s poetry but also about the relationship between love and poetry.
But there is another tension that deserves attention. By contrasting the blunt, plainspoken critique of the scholar with the lyrical and evocative final line, the poem reflects on how poetry itself has changed since Keats’s time. It suggests that while contemporary poetry, unencumbered by the strictures of meter, is plainspoken, raw, and unromanticized, there remains a lingering nostalgia for the beauty and depth of that lost romanticism. In this way, the poem captures a longing for some redemptive quality of a bygone era.
However, in my reading of the poem, the line "But the nightingale" is not merely nostalgic but also a tacit and blank concession to the scholar’s critique. The speaker offers no counterpoint to the scholar’s list of Keats’s flaws; there is no "but was he a liar, really?" or similar defense. Instead, the speaker’s response pivots entirely on the nightingale, a gesture that shifts the focus from Keats’s character to his poetic images. Within the world of the poem, the phrase "he lied" gains significance in the tension between two contrasting approaches to poetry. The scholar’s speech embodies contemporary poetry’s values: directness, avoidance of adornment, and an emphasis on truth-telling. This perspective implicitly critiques Keats’s use of meter, rhyme, and lyricism as artifice, as lies.
In this reading, Keats "lied" not because he was dishonest in life but because his poetry prioritized craft over plain truth. He said what fit the lines, not necessarily what was most direct or literal. The nightingale, then, becomes a precise emblem of what the speaker loves about Keats—not only his gift for image but also his attention to sound. While meter appears to have been entirely abandoned, the poem retains a love for the musicality of rhyme. The final rhyme, in particular, is crucial: it bridges Romanticism and contemporary poetry, tying “deathbed” and “said” across stanzas and eras. Yet it is an off-rhyme, with the stress in “deathbed” falling on the first syllable, subtly unsettling the harmony and signaling the impossibility of fully reconciling these two poetic worlds.
And yet, I do not love the poem. I love Keats. Romantic Poet nods at his enduring resonance but cannot quite reach his depths. It gestures at nostalgia and admiration but falls short of embodying the fullness of what it seeks to evoke. Keats’s nightingale soars, while this poem, charming as it is, only glances upward.
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