Keats was death-obsessed for good reason. With 
more luck presumably he wouldn't have been. Plath 
was suicidal. A big difference.

Years ago I read an essay on Stephen Crane--it 
was the intro to a selected prose and 
poetry--which said that there was nothing much to 
regret about his death at 30, as he seemed to be 
washed up as an artist. Which is to say, he 
hadn't produced a masterpiece in two years. 
Nobody's trajectory is that predictable. Had he 
lived, who knows? And maybe Keats would have 
become late Wordsworth or blazed the trail for 
Rimbaud through the slaver's camps of Africa. 
Maybe Plath would have written a self-help book on surviving divorce.

How about this? Emily Dickinson's brother gets 
appointed ambassador to Paris and takes Emily 
along, where she gets involved with a louch 
crowd. Chatterton gets transported to Australia 
and writes Lord of the Rings. Byron is elected king of Greece.

One could go on.

Mark


At 01:58 PM 2/22/2008, Sally Evans wrote:
>I regret Dylan Thomas didnt live longer.
>Keats was kind of headed for it, like Plath?
>SallyE
>Sally Evans
>http://www.poetryscotland.co.uk
>http://groups.msn.com/desktopsallye
>http://www.myspace.com/poetsallyevans
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin 
>Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 3:43 PM
>Subject: Re: Stevens TLS poet of last week
>
>
>I think I prefer "The Idea of Order At Key West".  I feel a bit about the
>post-Harmonium Stevens the way I feel about the later Auden -- scattered
>nuggets, but not the sustained achievement of the earlier work.
>
>It's not that all poets ought to die at forty (though there is a strong case
>to be made for Wordsworth), but it is rather a crossing-the-bar moment.  The
>one poet I really regret didn't live longer is Keats.
>
>Robin
>
>(Incidentally, did C.S.Lewis rip-off the first sentence quoted from Stevens?
>I seem to remember him writing something like, "If you no longer believe in
>god, you believe in nonsense" (or something).
>
>[Sorry, Patrick
>
>        <g>
>
>R.]
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Max Richards" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 11:40 PM
>Subject: Stevens TLS poet of last week
>
>
>TLS February 12, 2008
>
>Presence of an External Master of Knowledge
>by Wallace Stevens;
>
>introduced by Mick Imlah
>
>"If one no longer believes in God (as truth)", Wallace Stevens once wrote,
>"it is not possible merely to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in
>something else."
>
>For Stevens, born into an affluent family in Pennsylvania in 1879, that
>"something else" was poetry, conceived of as an independent quest for
>meaning. This "belief" underpins his late poem, "Presence of an External
>Master of Knowledge"; the poem also relates to Tennyson's "Ulysses" (1842),
>whose ageing narrator resolves to "follow knowledge like a sinking star, /
>Beyond the utmost bound of human thought".
>
>The TLS published "Presence of an External Master of Knowledge in Stevens's
>seventy-fifth year, in 1954. He died the following summer.
>
>
>Presence of an External Master of Knowledge
>
>Under the shape of his sail, Ulysses,
>Symbol of the seeker, crossing by night
>The giant sea, read his own mind.
>He said, "As I know, I am and have
>The right to be." He guided his boat
>Beneath the middle stars and said:
>
>"Here I feel the human loneliness
>And that, in space and solitude,
>Which knowledge is: the world and fate,
>The right within me and about me,
>Joined in a triumphant vigor,
>Like a direction on which I depend . . .
>
>A longer, deeper breath sustains
>This eloquence of right, since knowing
>And being are one ­ the right to know
>Is equal to the right to be.
>The great Omnium descends on me,
>Like an absolute out of this eloquence."
>
>The sharp sail of Ulysses seemed,
>In the breathings of that soliloquy,
>Alive with an enigma's flittering,
>And bodying, and being there,
>As he moved, straightly, on and on
>Through clumped stars dangling all the way.
>
>WALLACE STEVENS (1954)
>
>
>--
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