by phillipw | Mar 1, 2020 | BR, FA, JO, KE, ST
The Hard Truth: Keats The myth rides gently on that wasting death. Consumption weakened him as if a spell Were cast by Tories hating lines with breath For weaker ones among us. He was well In brain and soul, this little giant filled With all nobilities, this...
by phillipw | Feb 25, 2020 | JO, KE, SE
Abandoned by All but Two: Joseph Severn & Immortality The man who sailed to Italy with Keats Was chosen just because he was the one Available. Deaf circumstance defeats Our friends. Concerns about the family stun Some men who otherwise might offer us Their...
by phillipw | Feb 17, 2020 | JO, KE
Firm Fluidity The sunlight wavers from the ripples down Below. The surface of the fountain in The square beneath his deathbed cannot drown Keats’ poetry. The wavelets’ discipline Had killed his writing earlier, before He saw their wavering refractions on...
by phillipw | Feb 17, 2020 | BR, FA, JO, KE
The Jewel a Bright Star Gave Him . The lover holds carnelian between His thumb and finger (far too late to write More poetry), then palms it there to lean Against his lifeline. If the stone is white Or red like blood that turns away from life Is well beyond God’s...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | DI, EM, JO, KE
Unfinished Symphonies All lives are incomplete, not just the life Of Keats—or Emily in Amherst locked In circumstance. Chance wields the palette knife And even genius finds its choices balked By limitations of the oil paints That fate provides. The colors on...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | JO, KE, SE
The Final Leg of John Keats’ Journey to Death [John Keats, in case you didn’t know already, died of TB when he was very young. In a desperate attempt to save his life, his friends subscribed money to send him to live in Italy. This ploy failed and he died...
