The Keats

So this time, loyal fans (read: people obligated to read this blog for class), I decided for this blog I was going to look more into this "Keats" fellow we've been reading.

From John Keats poems I can tell two things: one, this guy likes nature and nature-y things. This probably has some sort of deep seated urge to become one with the forest or some other poet-problem. Two, this is one seriously depressed dude. "Ode to the Mockingbird" is one long death-wish. A pretty death-wish, but still a death wish. Heck, when I think about it that's probably twenty percent of poems anyway, so maybe he's simply an"ahr-teest."

Well! That's what I'm aiming to find out! To wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats

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Hmm, he was born on Halloween and he died a day after my birthday, that's weird.

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Odes, eh? That sounds right, our two poems were odes.....

Okay, so maybe I should become an expert before enlightening my humble readers with the vastness of my John Keats knowledge. Be right back!

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I'm back! And this time I have several more sources.

BAM!

http://www.john-keats.com/ (Bet you didn't expect that one!)

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_keats.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/26/doctors-mistakes-keats

So from this I learned a great deal about his life, and I feel like I understand Keats quite a bit more.

Keat's early life seems to be an equal mixture of sadness and fortune: his parents were well-off and he was taught literature from a young age, yet his father died when he was only eight. Furthermore, after moving to his grandmother's, his mother died of "consumption," or tuberculosis. Then, his grandmother handed him and his siblings to two friends, yet she kept them well-off.

Keat's...middle....life? Middle life started in his search to be in the medical profession. He had a "bit of a row" with his instructor, though, so pursued his studies at a college instead. After awhile he said, and I quote directly, "Nah, screw this," and went into literary pursuits, quickly befriending as many other writers as he could. However, his work wasn't widely appreciated, so he moved off to the Isle of Wight, presumably for inspiration. He wrote a poem up hiking in Ireland and Scotland, but it was widely rejected, again.

Later in Keat's life, he found what was probably his greatest muse in the form of a girl (go figure) named Fanny. Judging by his many quotes and poems on love around this period, he was a bit enamored. It was not to be, however, because he started showing signs of the same disease that took both his mother and brother. He grew quite depressed at this time (who could blame him?) and moved to Italy for his health. His doctor did not treat him well, refusing him pain killers and bleeding him to starvation, and he died in agony. His tombstone reads, per his request, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." (http://www.john-keats.com/)


Six more words are written here.








.....Nah, just kidding, I'm not that bad a word-counter!

So, John Keats had a pretty miserable life, but with some shining moments of happiness, I suppose like us all. He was certainly a romantic poet, and his love for nature is obvious throughout his poetic works. He was a great poet and certainly worth a read. I mean even his last request, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water..." that's pretty.