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...
by phillipw | Feb 7, 2020 | JO, KE
The Entry into the City of English Poets We see him heated, agitated, full Of passion as a poem fills a page, As stern as Christ with money changers; skull Not visible but there as if a rage Resents the hair and flesh and skin And mouth, the opening between the bones,...
by phillipw | Feb 6, 2020 | KE
Misogyny and Class Warfare We took Keats’ life to be a taller ship Of Poetry, Romance, and High Ideals, But now we know through Motion’s scholarship Keats danced to rather boorish, common reels, Not only rules for minuets and verse. He hated women when he...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2020 | JO, KE, KI
March 1819 John strolls alone along spring’s English streets. He sees a kitten being tortured by A boy, a butcher’s boy, and fights and beats Him, thrashes him. Just over five feet high, John intervenes when others might have left The beef-slab bully to...
