Selected Poetry

I don’t think anybody truly knows or understands Keats simply because we never got his full developed poetry. He died far too early. Just as he was beginning to break away from the contemporary influences on his voice, and to form his own poetic genius, he died. What we have is an early version of the poet Keats: not a full picture of what he would have been. We can glimpse Keats but we can never comprehend exactly where he would have ended up.Keats would have, undoubtedly, gone on to write ma [...]

I was introduced to the poetry of John Keats by my eighth grade English teacher. It has been a long time since I've read more than a line or two. It is worth the time to get a little lost in his reveries.

Far and away my favorite poet.

“Life is but a day;A fragile dew-drop on its perilous wayFrom a tree’s summit.” Just a few days ago, I happened to have a conversation with a person about experiences and life and we came to the conclusion that life is momentary and sometimes a few moments define life more than a complete day, month or year. It is crucial to understand how we feel things around us and then I came across this line from this bookI almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such d [...]

I really enjoyed finding out about John Keats and I was quite impressed with his ability to write lengthy poetry without once losing my attention. I am talking here about his piece, 'Endymion', which in my view is one of the best poems I have ever read. Overall, an enjoyable read. I think it would have been nice to receive more of a life history of John Keats, because he was a gifted writer who had his life pulled short when he died of TB at 25.

There is just something about Keats. A form of light in the lines seen nowhere else. A clarity. An urge for life itself. So enlightening getting to these primeordeal modern writers in your own pace, mot having been exposed to them in school. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Browning, Byron. And Keats

An entirely new selection! As though the poet, dead at 25, had written a Collected Works like Browning's or Tennyson's. Read 'em all; you've got nothing better to do. I mean that. Literally. Unless you haven't got round to Shakespeare or Milton yet, you've got nothing better to do.

Selected Poetry, John Keats

If you read only one collection of poetry in your lifetime, consider reading this.

I almost gave this book three stars, since I really loved only a few of the Keats poems contained within, but the book as a whole gave me such a great look at his progression from start to finish. That was one intent of the editor, Elizabeth Cook. She writes in her introduction: "But to read Keats's poetry through in chronological sequence (the principle of this volume) is to be impressed with the astonishing speed with which it matures. Keats effectively produced his life's work in two years; t [...]

I am currently writing a research paper on his poetry, and although my feelings are mixed with stress and anxiety while reading his poems, they still succeed in moving me. I particularly liked I stood tiptoe upon a little hill, which is a lovely poem with depictions of nature, and I smiled all the way through it. But the one poem that stayed with me is When I have fears that I may cease to be, which I memorized the evening I got the book because I read it over and over again, it was just so beau [...]

Now Morning from her orient chamber came,And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill;Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill;Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,And after parting beds of simple flowers,By many streams a little lake did fill,Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.There the king-fisher saw his plumage brightVieing with fish of brilliant dye below;Whose silken fins, and [...]

This one star rating is essentially a judgment on me. Apparently, I'm too much of a barbarian to enjoy a book of poetry by a famous poet. I'm sure the poems, by and large, are meaningful and probing, but a class and a knowledgeable teacher are prerequisites to a mind expanding read for this reviewer.Yes, among the 216 pages, I did come across the single line, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever " And Keat's musings on nature and the universe were intriguing, thinking back about his time from the [...]

The longer poems I listened to on audio, and found that I enjoyed them a lot more when I did that. However, I wasn't completely in love with this collection--I much prefer the poems relating to love, nature, and self-reflection rather than the poems that were inspired by Greek mythology, which were some of the longest poems in the collection and there were several of them so they took up a large portion of the book. These poems just weren't for me.I did manage to mark down the poems I loved the [...]

I like Keats. I think he is one of the more accessible and approachable poets. Certainly his poetry is hit and miss with some being fantastic and some being mediocre. That he died so young and so tragically (but oh so in the Romantic way of things!) is of course sad but I wonder if that doesn't lend some ethereal magicalness to his writings. I suppose the other way to look at it is that if he would have lived longer he surely would have produced more and greater poems.

This selection includes some of his famous poems, like "Bright Star" and "Ode to a Nightingale." Keats beautiful words still resonate two centuries later. I could swim in a phrase like, "And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d." from The Eve of St. Agnes. His musings on death are all the more poignant because he died when he was only 25. I can't help wondering what he would have written if he'd lived longer.

It is sublime, as is only to be suspected. Dipping into the book, you are borne away on half familiar verses (so embedded in our culture is Keats) and on to entirely unfamiliar ones to delight over and over again.Read the rest of my review here.

So enjoyable to read Keats poetry, even more so than when it was assigned in school. I leisurely read his poems while eating breakfast and drinking really delicious hot cocoa. It was fun looking at notes I took in school about these poems, and hearing in my head the voice of my favorite professor while he talked about them.

Swoon! I can always read Keats. What a master at construction, meter, and rhyme. If you give his poems enough time, I feel they reveal his complex philosophy on life too. It is truly tragic that he died so young and didn't have more time to live his life and expand his craft. Fantastic poetry that's not too hard to work through but ever so rewarding as you do.

hard slog, i forget now why he was classified as a romantic in the sense that a lot of his work was in classical style, rhymes and metre. Then the odes and the pervasive themses of nature and the pastural has him back in the category. The mythology is tough to get through for me.

Very touching. To be read with a leisurely mind. But i found the language quite complicated due to myriad references to Greek mythology - so missed out the context altogether. But those few poems i could understand, i appreciated thoroughly.

I don't think Keats is one of my favorite poet. I enjoyed most of his poetry especially the one of the nightingale but some of them had too much reference to classics which were a bit drowning his style into a mass of knowledge necessary to read the poems.

I prefer to the poem called "The Ode to Nightingale" for the rest of the book. It's quite completely thrilled to take a glimpse on it. (Although it's a tough task for a beginner reader, that's for sure.)

" Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head. "

I love Keats works!

He aight.

My favourites were "la belle dame sans merci", "ode on melancholy" and the delightful nonsense verse "on mrs Reynolds' cat". Will be revisiting.

Excellent! I wanted to reread Endymion in particular. It's a beautiful poem.

Beautiful!

This was my first favorite. When I was a young teen, I carried this collection around everywhere I went. I still have it. It's held together with duct tape.