A Brighter Word Than Bright
Keats at Work
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- $23.99
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
The Romantic poet John Keats, considered by many as one of the greatest poets in the English language, has long been the subject of attention from scholars who seek to understand him and poets who seek to emulate him. Bridging these impulses, A Brighter Word Than Bright is neither historical biography nor scholarly study, but instead a biography of Keats’s poetic imagination. Here the noted poet Dan Beachy-Quick enters into Keats’s writing—both his letters and his poems—not to critique or judge, not to claim or argue, but to embrace the passion and quickness of his poetry and engage the aesthetic difficulties with which Keats grappled.
Combining a set of biographical portraits that place symbolic pressure on key moments in Keats’s life with a chronological examination of the development of Keats-as-poet through his poems and letters, Beachy-Quick explores the growth of the young man’s poetic imagination during the years of his writing life, from 1816 to 1820. A Brighter Word Than Bright aims to enter the poems and the mind that wrote them, to explore and mine Keats’s poetic concerns and ambitions. It is a mimetic tribute to the poet’s life and work, a brilliant enactment that is also a thoughtful consideration.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this immensely pleasurable study, poet Beachy-Quick (Circle's Apprentice) chronicles the last five years of Romantic poet John Keats's life, focusing on the poet's work. Beachy-Quick effortlessly subverts the standards of conventional literary biography, weaving together critical analysis, excerpts from Keats's poems, and his own thoughts on Keats's relationship to his writing. Covering the years 1816 1820, this slim volume is divided into chapters on subjects such as "Indolence-Ambition-Imagination" and "Eros" as they applied to Keats's work at the time in question. Intermixed with these are "portraits" of Keats at different stages, focusing on his experiences and creative process. Beachy-Quick holds true to his poetic sensibilities, and his sentences ring gorgeous and complex on nearly every page: "The poet is one who from perfection learns quickly to flee. Perfection the advice that guides one towards it, and worse, the questions that garner such advice privileges a world-like system over a system-breaking world." Though at times the material reads as too dense or esoteric, Beachy-Quick contributes new insights on a much-ruminated-upon literary figure, and through his beautiful prose, provides fresh ideas on creativity and genius.
