the poet of the senses?

[nate]

hi there! i think all of us would agree how keats uses the power of the senses throughout his work so- to what extent (reasons, how and why etc. if possible) do you share the view of keats being the 'poet of the senses'

open to any opinions, many thanks

[Saturn]

Very tough question to answer.

Of course every artist uses their senses, but I don't see that Keats did so any more than anyone else - he used the senses to react to life and then in his work explored what his senses made him feel, but I suppose every poet or artist does that.

[MonroeDoctrine]

Keats is not a poet of the senses! He uses the senses like Shelly to get you out of the domain of simple sense into the domain of THOUGHT!

"Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter," (Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn).

Keep in mind his theme is that beauty is truth and truth is beauty; have you ever smelled or tasted truth?

[Saturn]

Oh, give it a rest you pedantitic fanatic - are you seriously telling me Keats lived in some remote world of the intellect, totally unconcerned with the information he received from his five senses??????

I don't think so!!!!!!

He was a living, breathing human being, not some superintellectual superior being, not a walking brain.

You're believeing the hagiographic view of the poor, weak, defenceless poet crushed by an uncaring world as propogated by Shelley in Adonais.

Get into the real world!!!!!!

[MonroeDoctrine]

Look at yourself! You're going insane like George Bush! The fact that your reactionary and unthoughtful post exposed your ignorance about Keats causes me to laugh histerically!

If you don't know Keats is trying to get people out of the domain of sense perception then you don't know John Keats! Why would he say, "Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter?"
You can rant all you want about what Keats is about but I can demonstrate Keats is about the mind not objects....

"My spirit is too weak mortality weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep," i.e. this damn mortality weighs heavily on my immortal soul.

"For indeed 'tis a sweet a peculiar pleasure for blissful is he who such happiness finds to possess a span of the hour of leisure in elagant pure and aerial minds, " i.e. the mind is a pleasure.

His Poem about Chapman's Homer is the recollection of stories that he could never experience because most of Homer's poems are myths! Keep in mind Keats loved Dante and I garantee you the Catholic Dante Aligeri was not pro-obsession with objects!

Shelly is similar to Keats and right now I have plenty examples where Shelly does the same thing:

"A widow bird sat mourning for her love upon a wintry bough
the frozen wind crept on above
the freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
no flower upon the ground,
and little motion in the air...
EXCEPT THE MILL WHEELS SOUND."

i.e. The Mill Wheel Represents human thought because like Keats Shelly was into thinking and humanity look at this part of Shelly's Ode to the West Wind:

"Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,"

And finally to send your baseball argument into outer space with my rebuttle bat, Notice how John Keats ends his poem about Ben Nevis:

"Is mist and crag, not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and mental might!"

[/b]

[nate]

MonroeDoctrine: i find that view really interesting although your slamming of stephen Saturn's opinion was quite harsh.

so are you totally disagreeing with the idea of him being the poet of the senses?

don't you feel that the senses have quite an influence on his poetry and that surely the idea of just escaping into the domain of thought isn't the only purpose of his work

i mean its its great how you have picked out so many examples but surely when examining his work its possible to quote so many more examples of his use of the senses and what a clear role they play in his poetry

maybe its just my amateur way of looking at it

thanks for the idea , nate

[Saturn]

There's no use arguing with the guy - he's a stubborn fanatic who is as inflexible as steel.

[nate]

i think poetry is for the open minded, its hard to beliee that such a fanatic can have such narrow views

oh well

many thanks, nate

[MonroeDoctrine]

I'm passionate about Keats; and that does not translate into fanatic. I will defend my ideas until proven wrong!

Does Keats talk about the senses more than thought? NO! Even though he did write poems that were not profound or may have been in the domain of the senses, that doesn't mean that in general he was trying to dwell in the senses.

I only try to defend the truth, and you may find like two poems where Keats stays in the senses but most of his poems are not about the senses.

I must admit that every human being needs his or her senses. The body obviously can't be ignored! As a matter of fact it is impossible to communicate some of the most profound ideas without using sensual objects.

The nature of people like Keats and Shelly has always been to get people out of simple sense perception. Even if they use the medium of the senses they want people to look at the mind....

A Widow Bird

A widow bird sat mourning for her love
upon a wintry bough
the frozen wind crept on above
the freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare
no flower upon the ground
and little motion in the air,
EXCEPT THE MILL WHEELS SOUND

[girl]

I think that Keats, like all of us, had different concerns at different points of his life. He did write about escaping into the imagination, however his concern with the imagination was its lack of sensuality.

"I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet"

It is true that he cannot see, however he is still concerned with sight, i.e. the lack of it. He guesses each sweet by means of the imagination however the word "sweet" would suggest some kind of sense be it sweet looking, smelling, taste and so he is imagining not being able to see/smell/taste something and so is still concerned with the senses, just again the lack of them!

I think he is very sensual in other poems and his use of synasthyesia in "On The Sea" describing the water making a "...shadowy sound..." shows how the senses define our World. How else can we describe something even in the imagination without describing how it looks, sounds, feels, tastes, smells? So as far as poetry is concerned that is all he has...