----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: Stevens TLS poet of last week
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
Somebody - can't remember who; Anthony Thwaite? Richard Howard? - wrote a
good poem years back that imagined Keats in old age, having married up (a
rich bluestocking), outlived his reputation, settled in Surrey ...
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