Customer Reviews

The Great Poets John Keats

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I discovered Keats and have loved him since about the age of 20. I'd only heard him read once before. A friend I made in London reluctantly read "Welcome Joy & Welcome Sorrow". He liked the last line.

According to a friend of Keats, he read his poems with a heavy sing-song accent. These readers don't go that far (though I wouldn't have objected it they had), but they have a lilt. The readers are English and every word is clear and understandable.

Hearing his poems read aloud made me stop liking Keats. His poems are flowery and vapid, the very epitome of what poetry is said to be by philistines who don't like poetry. F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed he cried reading the Odes because of the musical language. I heard no music in the Odes (or in any of the other poems), the ideas are sophomoric and Fitzgerald must cry easily. Blackwood's and The Quarterly weren't nice about it, but they were right.

There are 2 versions of "La Belle Dame", one of my favorite poems. I prefer the revision ("wretched wight"). However it is the original ("knight at arms") that is usually anthologized, and that is the one that is done here. Those who claim to be authorities on poetry (and couldn't write a line at gunpoint) must think they know better than Keats (who made the revision) what is best in Keats. The English Oxford Keats prints "knights" as does Auden (some authority!) in his collection. Random House's poems and selected letters prints both, and Modern Library prints just "wight".

"The Eve Of St. Agnes" is done like a play. Two different readers take different characters/voices in the poem. There is no rhythm at all. Because it is in fact not a play, it's a poem.

When I put this CD on, the first few poems swept over me like a wonderful, beautiful wave. The water receded.