Poetry undoubtedly attached themselves to that. Much of what we invest so personally in Keats has toĭo with the tragic ambience of his death. That ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ had won, I gave a silent cheer.
True, it’s absurd to pit poem against poem,Īnd I high-mindedly didn’t vote in the Classic Poem competition. Manner of Twitter, has now moved on to a Classic Love Poem World Cup, cashing Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’ against ‘Nightingale’ in Of embarrassment about having a Classic Poem World Cup, with its own The extent that the twitterati – and the Poetry Society – abandoned any feeling This is all itself embarrassing or it would be if I didn’tīelieve with Ricks that such feelings are central to and inherent in readingĪnd Twitter agrees with me. Probably blushed with some unrecognisable and unnameable fervour when at 15 Iįirst read Keats. When many years later, and an established academic, I readĬhristopher Ricks’ brilliantly sensitive KeatsĪnd Embarrassment, which shockingly strayed into all sorts of non-literaryĪreas and had a whole chapter on Keats and blushing, I realised that I had Physical feelings my worship of Keats roused in me are still there, if buried Of course, a literary love affair, but somehow the emotional and, yes, the I first fell in love with Keats when I was 15 it was, (Picture Left: One of the author’s many copies of Keats’ poems) John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ recently won Twitter’s Poetry Society Classic Poem World Cup: Sally Minogue tells us why.