Not so unlikely a connection to make

I was heading into town a few weeks back, one of those instances when I'm bussing it there and thus leaving extra early. It was a bit of a rainy day and I found myself the only at the the bus stop.

I was staring at the ground, littered with the sticky dark brown seed pods of these trees found all over the island. They're annoying, and cling to the bottom of your shoe partly because they build up on the ground fairly quickly.

I was listening to "Almost Alice," the 'inspired by' soundtrack for Tim Burton's recent remake, staring at the concrete sidewalk and occasionally glancing up to see if the bus was coming. The sky was a pale blue, edging around gray, and from time to time, rain would sprinkle over then dissipate, then return.

Out of the blue, I started thinking of Keats. But I suppose it makes sense. Ode to Autumn was one of the first Keats poems I ever read, and is also one of my favorites. I couldn't help but imagine Keats in the modern world, staring up at a sky like that and still writing a poem that sounded about the same.


And before typing the above, I started thinking about the original purpose of this blog, showing Keats iterations and appearances in the present day, and how differently he comes through with the advent of the internet (well, "advent" since the 1800s). Most blogs have their oldest post as the one furthest down, so technically, if this had been truly reflective of its form, I should've typed the first past as post one. Instead, I organized it so the first post my professor would read, i.e. the one at the top, would be Page 1 of the printed copy. It was a deliberate choice, but now I wonder if I couldn't have had another layer of analysis, by simply offering the pages as one would've if they'd started out as blog posts, rather than converted from a paper. Just pondering.

Thinking about Poetry, which inevitably turns to Keats

Having found out a while back that a professor of mine has a blog, I've been visiting it every once in a while (couple times a week). This past week, she had a post about poetry classes and how many students are afraid of poetry. Which made me think of when I took her class, wherein I created this blog, which made me think of Keats and well, this blog.

I posted about it on my "writer" blogspot, but in forming that haphazard post (I can only hope it makes sense to others, because to me, the sound of it and the poetics let the meaning slip away, much like Virginia Woolf's thought-fish (assuming I remember -that- correctly).

But anyway. In writing that post, I thought of this one and said when Keats jumped out at me, I'd update. Then I wondered if he was on facebook. And he is! Not that I was really surprised.

The facebook search for "John Keats" gave me 265 results, although I'm sure some of them must be living breathing Keats' who just happened to share the name. Some of whom may in fact -not- be poetically inclined! I know, gasp, right? (I'm getting silly, I know, been a long day.)

What I like are the fan pages with titles such as "John Keats is a sexy mofo," or "John Keats: An Emo?!" Because, of course he was emo. Even without the guyliner, although that particular page has added it to the proile picture, along with a single emo tear.

"I'd put out for John Keats" is listed as Entertainment & Arts--Celebrity. 304 members currently. I love that. Keats, dead since the 1820s, is a modern-day celebrity. That tickles me.

Obviously, as soon as I saw this, I became a fan, admittedly of a "regular" fan page, within which members post videos and talk about theses and studying done about Keats.

In the pro-Keats, we have "I love Keats, more than I probably should" with 52 members, while anti-Keats has "The People who hate John Keats poetry" with only 11 members.

There are student groups, "Just for Fun" groups, and personal facebooks that look like they may be school projects. (I think it'd be to see a John Keats fb with someone acting as Keats. Hard to tell though, with so many that have no pictures, and others with little information in the search results.) ...I don't really have a proper conclusion to this post. Mostly I was just excited to share the information. Go out, junketians! Keats is out there, roaming cyber-space.

A Brief Introduction before the Introduction

Welcome all one of you. (Well, I'm making this public, so maybe more than one now.)

Although a hard copy has already been provided, here's a new new way to look at Keats. (It's like a new new car, much better than just a new car.) (Of course, the rest of you don't have hard copies, this is part of a graduate English class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. It's my version of an anarcho-scholastic approach to Keats.)

The pages are in order, first page being the most recent. (I'd like to continue this actually, as I find new links online or come across interesting references. I never did get to examine Negative Capability as much as I wanted.)

I hope it gives you a new way of reading what you've already got. (Anarcho-scholasticism was coined by Stephen Collis, as a way to describe, basically, a new way to study academic topics with a creative eye. For this project, we had to pick a poet we were obsessed with. Everyone seemed surprised that I'd pick a Britsh Romantic. Go figure.)

Does the blogger version make a difference in the message? (Which the rest of you can't answer without the hard copy for comparison, but still, does the variation n layout make a difference?)

John Keats, alias Junkets, Welcome

Encountering the Poet Behind the Text Curtain








By Sabrina Favors






Eng 716C
S. Schultz
May 2008

Wouldn't it be nice to have a drink at Manoa Gardens with Shakespeare, Keats, and Mary Shelley?

Songs of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Lines on the Mermaid Tavern, 1818[1]



Struggling to make a living through his passion, John Keats never forgot the influences of the past. From the medieval writers to Shakespeare to Spenser to his own contemporaries like Wordsworth and Shelley, Keats’ influences threaded their way through his writing.

“To the Romantics, the stories of days gone by were vastly preferable to the uninspiring intellect of the neoclassical age in which they were living,” (Egendorf, 14).

The spiral turns again. Writers of today look at the medieval writers (Bede or the troubadours), Shakespeare, Spenser and his fairy queen, on to Keats and the other Romantic poets, and then to later writers—C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Neil Gaiman (who wrote his own Sandman version of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream) and Charles de Lint. Every writer whose work we read bears an imprint on our writing, whether we know it or not.



[1] From “Representative Poetry Online.” Viewed May 4, 2008.

Enter teh Intarweb, stage right

At first glance, Keats’ influence on my own writing doesn’t strike me as apparent, and one might wonder how a British Romantic writer has any bearing on the younger generations of the 21st century. Then one might visit Google, or YouTube. In the hallowed halls of the internet, Keats is alive and well, even though he died one hundred and eighty-seven years ago.

Over four million results when searching for five little letters.


According to Heather Coombs, in English Romanticism by Laura Egendorf, “Keats’ way of ‘benefitting’ the world, then, is to concentrate upon what he calls ‘the principle of beauty in all things’,” (19). Perhaps, given how pervasive Keats seems to be, he benefitted the world in a different way. The question, then, is what way?

“For what has made the sage or poet write…But the fair paradise of Nature’s light,” (Egendorf 27).

“…If Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all,” (Coombs 46).

“When I have fears that I may cease to be/before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain…”[1]


[1] Unless otherwise stated, all poems by Keats are from The Selected Poetry of Keats, edited by Paul de Man. A full citing can be found on the Bibliography page.

If you were stuck on a deserted island, what would you bring?

Keats said all these things. It’s as if writing was everything for him. One may talk of his love for Fanny Brawne, or for his siblings, or the tragedy of his life—all the occasions where he may have given up the pen for more worldy concerns—but still he wrote. I can only speak for myself, one voice among thousands, millions, but more than any stirring turn of phrase, more than any one line that brings tears to my eyes or grips my attention relentlessly, it is Keats’ unending passion for writing that draws me to him. The stirring turns of phrases may have introduced me, and still find ways to captivate me, but I am a writer. If I could do anything, it would be to write. If I could only do one thing, it would be to write. If I was stuck on a deserted island with only three things, they items would be a pen that would never run out of ink, paper that had no end, and my library.

(I should like to say, as a third item, my volume of poetry by Keats, but as a lover of books, I could no more chose a single favorite than I could pick one food to eat for eternity—I’d rather starve than risk gorging myself on one writer only to become sick of it and regurgitate their words.)

My first memory of Keats comes from high school, although I suspect he lurked within anthologies of earlier school years without my noticing.