Keats "sighting"

[Nightface]

You can't live without it....I mean...The face of a dog

[Saturn]

[Malia]

Here's a Keats sighting that involves me. I was in a production of the Vagina Monologues to raise money for anti-domestic violence services on the nearby Umatilla Indian Reservation this week and in the program (which I didn't help put together) I read this in the cast bios:

Mary is an active member of Toastmasters and is a leader in the Episcopal Church. She has a special passion for Keats.

There was more in the bio--but I wanted to point out the Keats bit. It was funny, as I said, I had no part in putting the bio together so the person who wrote the bio knew just by knowing me that I have a love of Keats. Hmm. . .didn't know I was that "obvious" hehe

[Credo Buffa]

ha ha, that's great! Whoever wrote it obviously pays attention

[Malia]

I suppose this could go under the heading "Poets reading Keats" but I figured I'd put it here as a sighting.

On the BBC website I found this interesting page--highlighting Andrew Motion's first inspirational experience while reading Keats when he was 16. He wrote a poem about it which I've copied below. If you want to hear him read the poem aloud, try the link I've added and it should take you to that page.

On First Looking Into Keat's Poems by Andrew Motion

Sixteen or so, I took your book outside
and read it to the living wind and sun
until your here-and-now was far-and-wide.
I saw the stained glass colours start to run
back to the scenes from which they started out:
those antique rooms where love decides its fate;
the banished rulers with their cut-off shout;
a god discovering his power too late… .

Now what felt young in you has come of age
through time you never had, but kept in view,
and here's your book again. Each deep-dyed page
still shows me what is beautiful and true:
old artifice connecting head to heart;
new planets orbiting a world apart.

Here's the link to the site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/ ... .shtml#one

[Malia]

Oops--somehow my message got sent three times. I can't figure out how to delete--can you help, Saturn?

[Despondence]

I don't know what's up with that, actually (sorry, jumping in here). Normally there is a "delete" button available for your own posts while you're logged in, but sometimes the button goes away... Try logging in again and post a new message, and the button should be available - maybe then you'll be able to delete your older posts too..

Worst case, you can just edit the duplicates to economize on screen real estate, removing the text and leave a note "[deleted - double post]" or smth

[Saturn]

Deleted them Malia - sorry you had to lose two posts

[Malia]

Keats (and the rest of the Romantics) is mentioned in a book I'm reading called Happiness, A History. This book is basically a historical and philosophical look at what people in the Western world think Happiness is (and how to attain it) throughout the ages. The author Darrin M. McMahon concludes that the Romantics invested pain with significant depth--he mentions Keats particularly and quotes Ode on Melancholy saying "Keats, too, in his celebrated 'Ode on Melancholy' extols the pleasures of dejection, recommending that we take them much further afield . . .the world, in this reckoning (the poem), became a field on which to project one's sadness, to luxuriate in one's despair."

So, in a sense, the Romantics fould pleasure in pain. The masochists!

[Cath]

There's an episode of the comedy Blackadder in which Coleridge, Byron and Shelley appear [but no Keats] which is similarly bizarre.

The Blackadder scene in which the Romantic poets are mentioned is from Series 3, "Ink and Incapability", and can be watched here (Coleridge, Byron and Shelley appear around the 13:30 min mark):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on9U_tdRIeU

Mrs Miggins: "Don't you worry 'bout my poets, Mr Blackadder. They're not dead; they're just being intellectual."
Edmund: "Mrs Miggins, there's nothing intellectual about wandering around Italy in a big shirt trying to get laid."

It's brilliant .

[Raphael]

Poor Baldrick- Beelezub or a pencil!