Customer Reviews

John Keats: Complete Poems

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There are two editions of Keats's Complete Poems which I
admire very much. This one edited by Jack Stillinger
and published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University
(ISBN: 0674154312) and the Penguin Classics, 3rd
edition, edited by John Barnard (ISBN: 0140422102).
I very much like the fuller notes and 6 Appendices
and the blunt, full, but suggestive chronology in
the Penguin, along with the complete writing and
publishing information fully written out rather
than abbreviated into initials one might have to
look up.

The importance of Jack Stillinger to Keats studies is cited
by both John Barnard (Penguin classics edition of -The
Complete Poems-) and Elizabeth Cook (Oxford World's
Classics edition of -The Major Poems-, ISBN:
0192840630). John Barnard says in his "Introduction":
"Jack Stillinger's -The Poems of John Keats- (Cambridge,
Mass., 1978) and his -The Text of John Keats- (Cambridge,
Mass., 1974) now give the fullest available account of
Keats's text, and are based on a comparision of the
printed texts with the wealth of manuscript material,
now mainly in American libraries."
And this edition compiled and edited by Jack
Stillinger has it glories, too. The first of these
is the excellent "Introduction," which has meaningful
insights in it concerning Keats, but which can also
be related to one's own experiences in life, though
Stillinger does not himself so relate them. A few
of these I like very much are: "Obviously Keats had
an exceptionally keen sensitivity to the minute
particulars of objects, sounds (as well as various
shades of silence), and motions in the world around
him." *** "He nursed his brother Tom in a lengthy
illness that ended in death on December 1st of this
year [1818], and as an added complication he met and
fell in love with Fanny Brawne. More than anything
else, I think, it is this combined experience of
suffering, death, and love all at once, against a
background of serious conversation, reading, and
thinking, that accounts for Keats's sudden rise to
excellence in his poetry."
There is no way, of course, to share Keats's
poetry in a review of this sort. To read it,
experience it, think about it, and realize
the Beauty -- and also the Truth -- in it
is the reward.
-- Robert Kilgore.

Jack Stillinger devoted much of his professional life to establishing the definitive texts of Keats's poems. This painstaking work has resulted in a number of changes to the poems. As to the quality of the poetry itself, at his best Keats approaches Shakespeare, as in the Odes. Stillinger is also an excellent teacher; I had his course on Keats 26 years ago, and it was fascinating. While the other reviewers have done a very good job of describing the beauty of Keats's poetry, one point Stillinger made about Keats as a person is worth repeating: Keats was the one English romantic poet that you would want to ask for advice about a personal problem you had. All the rest, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley (especially!), and Byron would have given you advice that, if followed, would have been wildly impractical. Keats, as shown by his letters, was not pretentious and had a large degree of human decency and common sense. While these characteristics are not one usually associated with romantic poets, I think that they contribute to the strength of his poetry.

If you're sitting on a ledge overlooking a lush green valley on a gorgeous spring day, and you're reading Endymion, or Ode to a Nightingale, or The Eve of St Agnes, you could very well be so overwhelmed by the magnificence of creation that, without giving it a moment's thought, you would consign yourself to the breathtaking blue, to try to be one with it all, and because you've reached the absolute pinnacle of existence. How could you possibly top that?

*ahem*

This edition isn't annotated as well as it might be, but who cares? The poems are all there, and they're as heartbreakingly beautiful as ever. How can you--in all honesty--claim to have lived without having read Keats?

No personal library can be complete without at least a sampling of Keats, and this is the book that everyone should get. All the poems -- even the fragments -- are here, with line numbers included. The several appendices and letter excerpts make the collection even more valuable. If you are trying to decide which Keats collection to get, you have found the best.

There are three great editions of John Keats's complete poetry: Jack Stillinger's, John Barnard's (Penguin) and the beautiful hardcover edition of Everyman's Library. However, as far as scholarly accuracy goes, Professor Stillinger's edition is the definitive one. Professor Stillinger is a Keats expert who devoted much of his scholarly life in the textual compilation of John Keats's poetry based on printed editions as well as the mass of manuscript material. We can enjoy the fruits of his labor here.

This volume contains all of Keats's poems arranged chronologically, so the reader can trace Keats's dramatic development as a poet in his short life. The introduction offers balanced insights into Keats's style as well as ideas. The notes at the end attest to Professor Stillinger's status as a a fine critic.

...and he rivals Shakespeare as the most perfect lyrical poet, the most exquisite shaper of words. Passages in the Odes (Melancholy is my favorite) are about as good as this language can expect to get, at least from a descriptive and sensual standpoint. Keats doesn't achieve the meditative transcendence of Wordsworth, but he has his own meditations -- usually more modest in scope, but made noble by the perfection of their expression.

Keats not only rivals Shakespeare in the beauty of his verse and the enchanting pictures he conjures but he is a cut above Shakespeare in the value of his art. The two odes 'on a nightingale' and 'on a Grecian urn' surpasses any piece of English literature I have come across so far. In its conception and philosophy ,in its expression of the ephemeral and impermanent nature of human life,its exposition of the permanance of ideal art and in its realization of the principle of the identity of truth and beauty it takes poetic thought to a plane that has never been approached, before or hence in English literature.

All of the poems, each crisply annotated, and a fine introduction to Keats and the analysis of his works.

One of the most musical of the great poets, whose language has a richness next to Shakespeare's, a most romantic soul whose annus mirabilis 1819 brought forth the five great odes, the tremendous long lines still memorable, Beauty is truth/Truth is Beauty' That is all ye know on earth And all ye need to know/ the pain of beauty or the beauty in pain in the nightingale's song, the lyric of the Grecian urn, the dying at twenty-six ' his name writ in water', much had he travelled in realms of gold, the great letters of negative capability, the ostler's son in a surgeon's hospital , Fanny Brawne, the alien corn of Ruth, all the music which would one day be heard again in the lines of Wallace Stevens, the complexity of beauty dying , hearing more than one voice as the page echoes on, one of the poets' poets surely , upon a peak in Darien, like all the great masters he only gains in rereading.

There is no other poet who can capture the beauty in the world as wonderfully as Keats. Knowledge of his early death, and the noble grace with which he embraced his fate, only make his poetry more poignant.