| John Keats loved words and understood a key factor in poetry--its music. Recite one of his poems and your tongue will dance. Alliteration, assonance, and beautiful rhyme abound in his works. Nonetheless John Keats remains a curious one for me: Even as I love these poems, they lack one other important factor: Depth. We know of Keats primarily because of his early death--at 25. Would we enjoy, say, �To Autumn� half as much had he died at 85? Both Keats and Amy Lowell make up my �beauty with no brains� category, which I note because Amy Lowell loved Keats--so much so that she devoted many hours to writing his biography. John Keats is not strictly an art for art�s sake guy, but he comes awfully close. |
