I've been immersing myself in all things Keats for the last few weeks in prep for Bright Star. Currently reading Stanley Plumly's Posthumous Keats: a personal biography, which is gorgeously written, one poet to another, with such an abiding love of author for subject one cannot but marvel at the word, the written word and how it reaches through time, altering forever how we see, feel and move in the world. Currently only available in hardback, a paperback version is coming soon. Highly recommended to all lovers of biography; and if you love Keats too, well, you're going to smile a lot.Official movie site with a trailer I've watched more times than I care to admit:
14 comments:
Here's a cheesy little way to make contact, sorry. I did a post that didn't propagate to everyone else's blogs, but there's a little visual gift on it for you. Dated yesterday.
Tree-I really need to do an extensive study of Keats. Thanks for the recommendations. Take care~rick
The more you read Keats, the better he gets. To think of what he accomplished in one year, his "year of living" is mind boggling. I find it difficult to find an analogy to put those twelve months into perspective, the genius, the production, as if for just a short period, he was given angel wings and told to fly with his pen as far as he could, because shortly thereafter, he would be among them. Imagine hitting a hole in one. Then imagine hitting a hole in one six times within the same year. And doing it all before the age of 24. This was Keats. In perhaps the most remarkable single year, of any poet's life.
A flame burning brightly! For just a short while in extreme youth. Thank you for the tip. I just ordered on Amazon.
Limes, let me know what you think. Plumly's passion for Keats is evident on every page. Perhaps the most beautiful academic writing I've seen in some time. And I love the non-linear approach he took. Refreshing and engaging. It's a book I just don't want to finish. Hope you like it as much as I have.
You'll absolutely get a book review from me. When the author is passionate about the subject, a superior piece is the result. Funny, I have enjoyed bios of some people I wasn't even really interested in before. For me, it's that checking out who the human being WAS. We have a buzz phrase: "Say Hemingway. The Badger wants to read Hemingway. Limes wants to read ABOUT Hemingway." I paid for speedy delivery, too!
I love reading about authors as much as I love reading them. I like to know, to the extent they share, how they think and see and process and work. Any writing is much like an iceberg. What we see in the text is only the tip. For example, I loved The English Patient, both book and movie, so much, I've read the book twice and watched the movie four times, the last two times were the two different director narratives and I watched them back to back--and the movie is a three hour movie. :-D Still, with each reading and each watching, I see something I didn't see before. Just as a river, one never steps into the same book twice. :-D
And this is when I wish I didn't have brain defects. Really. If I were to have a scan it would reveal some tangled fish guts and broken robin's eggshells. But if I were to have a perfectly functioning brain, I'd love to take it on. Is there not a patch, yet, for Keats? Someone should develop this, a reader's patch. I would be the first in line.
Erin, I've seen your writing. There is nothing wrong with your brain. :-)
{clink} to The English Patient, both forms of media. I think one could peel layers away until the center of the earth was reached. And at that point, only the very beginning layers would have been removed. FILLED with stuff. Every moment of it.
Limes, I'll {clink} to that. :-)
LimesNow made mention of the English Patient, and I'm remembering that the author (Michael Ondaatje) also
wrote one of my favorite pieces of poetry, "The Cinnamon Peeler" -
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...
When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.
You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.
I'm currently reading (and have been all summer, if not longer) "Passionate Lives: D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath...in love" by John Tytell. It's a good read, but I like to absorb the lives of each before moving on to the other, and often read other books before moving on to the next.
This morning, I came across this by Keats and saved it as I liked it very much:
O BLUSH not so! O blush not so!
Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
Then maidenheads are going.
There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't,
And a blush for having done it:
There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught,
And a blush for just begun it.
O sigh not so! O sigh not so!
For it sounds of Eve's sweet pippin;
By these loosen'd lips you have tasted the pips
And fought in an amorous nipping.
Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,
For it only will last our youth out,
And we have the prime of the kissing time,
We have not one sweet tooth out.
There's a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,
And a sigh for I can't bear it!
O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
O cut the sweet apple and share it!
I'm more aware of Keats now than I was before, thanks to you, and am looking forward to both the movie and paperback.
S., thanks for sharing both poems. Michael's prose in The English Patient is sublimely poetic, so wonderfully rendered. I will probably read it a third time, one page a day, like a soft rain such to let the ground of my mind absorb it all. I want no run-off. The man has a beautiful mind.
As for Keats, I'd like to hold your hand and read some together. I want to feel your heart in your fingers as his words live within you. And your pulse, within me.
Trée, I want no run-off either.
Extends hand...
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