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| Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography | 
 enlarge | Author: Stanley Plumly
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $16.15
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 41023
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0393065731
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.7
EAN: 9780393065732
ASIN: 0393065731
Publication Date: May 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An acclaimed American poet reflects on the life and legacy of John Keats.
Posthumous Keats is the result of Stanley Plumly's twenty years of reflection on the enduring afterlife of one of England's greatest Romanticists. John Keats's famous epitaph—"Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water"—helped cement his reputation as the archetype of the genius cut off before his time. Keats, dead of tuberculosis at twenty-five, saw his mortality as fatal to his poetry, and therein, Plumly argues, lies his tragedy: Keats thought he had failed in his mission "to be among the English poets."
In this close narrative study, Plumly meditates on the chances for poetic immortality—an idea that finds its purest expression in Keats, whose poetic influence remains immense. Incisive in its observations and beautifully written, Posthumous Keats is an ode to an unsuspecting young poet—a man who, against the odds of his culture and critics, managed to achieve the unthinkable: the elevation of the lyric poem to sublime and tragic status. 7 illustrations.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A lovely set of meditations July 17, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
Stanley Plumly finds Keats companionable -- and so do I. Plumly is a distunguished poet, yet his interest here is less in the poetry than in the poet. The story of the poet is sad and heroic, courageous and pitiable, and Plumly touches all these themes with generosity and compassion as well as a hard critical eye. Plumly is also interested in what might be called the myth of Keats - how his story and even his appearance have been burnished and reworked by his friends and the generations that follow. It takes a remarkable youth to have friends like Keats had, and Plumly has earned his place in the Keats Circle.
A few of Plumly's interests here threaten to become obsessive - the need to count the days til Keats's death appears throughout, whereas it would need be a source of profitable speculation only once. That Keats lived in the shadow of death is true enough, but the truth becomes diminished when it is mentioned so often. Still, any lover of Keats will embrace this work and acknowledge that it holds a unique place on the very long shelf of Keatsiana.
 a lot of badly written nonsense July 15, 2008
4 out of 41 found this review helpful
of course if u absolutely love keats--certainly there are treasures in this book-- and it will interest a keats lover despite the fact that to me this book seems a bit pretentious and might even be just badly writtten/edited--- oh it sounds literary-- and the descriptioons are o so poetic-- all conjecture about things this writer imagines-- but its often repetitive and ludicrous---and the imagination of the writer seems a bit sophomoric and limited----am i going too far saying its an outright injustice to keats and i bet he would have hated it too ? ----it does go on and on quite a bit about fairly unintersting things-- like a bad movie--w only intermittent insight into the man & his poetry--- the poet lived not 25 years--- he was sick consumptive died of tb--- was ridiculed in his time as a less than minor poet who critics at the time dismissed---he fled england ended up by the spanish steps in Rome and died there----in fair obscurity --- i still think keats is a bit over rated and dramatic-- he thought the world of himself-- all the more painful i guess to be dismissed in his own time-- yer he somehow knew he would be remembered-- but not very well by this charlatan writer and obvious sychophant who seems to think every imagined moment of this poor guys life was worth retelling--from his paltry imagination and letters keats left behind----he weaves an almost irrelevant bio-- dont waste yer time unless yer a real keats freak but be prepared for what i found to be many annoying passages --- read the stuff the poet wrote of course-not this lame professor who is probably gripped by the publish or perish nonsense at our universities-- where professors who write books like this seem to become as sophomoric as their students--- i can imagine keats coughing up blood while reading this and being embarrassed by it---finally embracing his obscurity-- and gladly shuttling off his mortal coil !
 Rekindle your love of a great Poet! August 23, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am an college English major from nearly forty-five years ago, and rarely have looked at Keats' poetry since. Plumly's book elegantly recreated for me the milieu of Keats' last few years, when he lived with the certain knowledge that his life was ebbing because of TB--an illness whose signs and symptoms and course he recognized well from his education as a medical student and his experience with the deaths of his mother and brother from the disease. The biographical details of his travels, companions and caregivers, the inevitable course of his illness and the futile attempts to stem its progression, and concomitant production of his extraordinary poetry were fascinating to me. The book gave me a new appreciation of certain poems -- particularly Ode to Autumn -- and made me want to re-read Keats' poetry -- which I am in the process of doing. Some of the extended quotations from his and contemporaries' letters, as well as some extended literary criticism by Plumly were not my cup of tea -- but all in all, this was a wonderful book. I passed it along to my college roommate, also an English major, knowing he would enjoy it as well. Any reader remembering the beauty of Keats' poems and wanting a illuminating entry into their restudy would enjoy this book very much.
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