★★★☆☆ Lacking the common touch

100 Selected Poems: John Keats

John Keats

Well, that was disappointing. I am ready to admit that this is an "It's not you -- it's me," case. Since I suspect that some other readers, even readers who love poetry, may likewise find Keats disappointing, I will try to explain why he disappointed me. Thus you can judge whether you, too, might suffer the same fate.

First thing to say is that the young John Keats was not really that great a poet. (By "young", I mean up to and including Endymion.) That, of course, is a judgment many readers will disagree with, but don't discount it! It was Keats's own judgment. In his preface to Endymion, he says "I apologize for the lousy work, but I just had to get this out of my system." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.) You may dismiss that as false modesty, but I am more inclined to accept it as the judgment of a man who knew what he was talking about, especially because the quality of his poetry abruptly improves after Endymion.

Even then, however, there were two things about Keats's poetry that diminished my pleasure in it. The first is a simple cultural difference. Keats is immersed in Greek mythology, to the extent that it seems more real to him than his own England. I am not ignorant of Greek mythology. I know when Keats speaks of Cynthia, he means the Moon. It's a reference to Artemis, and for Keats it surely evoked many old, beautiful stories. For me, "Cynthia" is no more intrinsically poetic than "Moon", and less so than Francis of Assissi's "Sister Moon".

The second thing that bothered me is that a lot of Keats's poetry is about poetry and poets. OK, I get it -- I'm a scientist, and if I write poetry, my enthusiasm for science is going to come through. But Keats is so focused on poetry and poets, rather than the common world we all inhabit, that it feels like self-indulgent navel-gazing.

To summarize in a quick phrase, Keats lacks the common touch. In this he contrasts for instance with, say, Robert Browning and Shakespeare. Let me finish by saying that, even for me, there is some great stuff in here!

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