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The Truth of Imagination

Welcome to a page dedicated to poetry from the past 200 years and to poet John Keats. Snippets of information on poetic lives, quotes and art to reflect the role of verse in our fast paced 21st century world. Suzie Grogan is a freelance writer and researcher who writes on literature, social history and health issues. Contact Suzie @keatsbabe on Twitter and visit her at www.nowrigglingoutofwriting.wordpress.com

Posts tagged lit

Apr 23 '12

The best reading of John Keats’ wonderful Ode to a Nightingale so far, in my humble opinion of course. Ben Wishaw reads it without the public or drama school accent that would be so unlike Keats’ own.

This poem has inspired so many poets and writers in the past 190 odd years. To my shame I only found out recently that F. Scott Fitzgerald took the title ‘Tender is the Night’ from stanza 4.

15 notes Tags: John Keats Ben Wishaw F Scott Fitzgerald Ode to a Nightingale lit

Apr 16 '12
Keats the Radical, or where were those fields of mists and mellow fruitfulness?

On my blog over at No wriggling out of writing, I look at a recent paper that suggests John Keats’ inspiration for his great Ode ‘To Autumn’ may not have been the Winchester water meadows as previously thought. However, the spot is not a million miles away, and the Winchester tourist board need not worry too much….

1 note Tags: John Keats Winchester Ode to Autumn poetry lit writing

Apr 5 '12

Song - I had a dove… by John Keats

The first four lines of this ‘song’ by Keats are so very clever as a metaphor for possessive love..

I HAD a dove and the sweet dove died; 
And I have thought it died of grieving: 
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, 
With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving; 
Sweet little red feet! why should you die - 
Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why? 
You liv’d alone in the forest-tree, 
Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me? 
I kiss’d you oft and gave you white peas; 
Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees? 

Published in Posthumous & Fugitive Poems

3 notes Tags: John Keats poetry lit

Feb 17 '12

The Keats Brothers - the life of John & George by Denise Gigante

I have posted a review of this very interesting, well researched and accessible biography linking the life of the poet John Keats with the experience of his brother George in Kentucky as one of the early English settlers in America.

It is of interest to lovers of poetry, biography an history - most particularly that of Kentucky and Illinois. You will meet swindlers, enjoy bear grease sandwiches and learn that John Keats’s greatest poetry was directly influenced by the physical distance between the brothers.

Go to by blog No wriggling out of writing for the full review.

3 notes Tags: John Keats George Keats review biography Gigante poetry lit

Jan 22 '12
John Keats' 'Living Year'. 1818/1819

On my blog: I look at the 13 months of writing that produced some of the greatest poetry in the English language. 

1 note Tags: John Keats lit poetry

Jan 21 '12
'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' makes the Top 10 best seductions

John Mullen in The Guardian yesterday chose the ballad ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats as one of his ‘10 of the Best: Seductions’. Keats shares the list with a diverse mix of writers from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Winterson and Coetzee.

1 note Tags: John Keats Waterhouse The Guardian poetry lit La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Jan 8 '12
John Keats at the British Library Online

A useful introduction to the life and work of John Keats, including transcripts and images of original manuscripts.

      The first page of Hyperion

2 notes Tags: John Keats lit

Jan 3 '12
'When I have fears...' John Keats on self-doubt

On my blog - a John Keats poem that speaks to all of us as we go into a new year with ambitions we long to realise but lack the confidence to pursue.

2 notes Tags: John Keats poetry self-doubt writing literature lit

Dec 16 '11
On our return from this circuit, we ordered dinner, and set forth about a mile and a half on the Penrith road, to see the Druid temple. We had a fag up hill, rather too near dinner-time, which was rendered void by the gratification of seeing those aged stones on a gentle rise in the midst of the Mountains, which at that time darkened all around, except at the fresh opening of the Vale of St. John. John Keats 1818. Walking in the Lake District with Charles Brown and visiting the Castlerigg Stone Circle.  Photo crediy: Żaneta Miderska

On our return from this circuit, we ordered dinner, and set forth about a mile and a half on the Penrith road, to see the Druid temple. We had a fag up hill, rather too near dinner-time, which was rendered void by the gratification of seeing those aged stones on a gentle rise in the midst of the Mountains, which at that time darkened all around, except at the fresh opening of the Vale of St. John.

John Keats 1818. Walking in the Lake District with Charles Brown and visiting the Castlerigg Stone Circle. 

Photo crediy: Żaneta Miderska

7 notes Tags: John Keats Lake District writing lit

Dec 12 '11

Recension Day

Unburn the boat, rebuild the bridge,
Reconsecrate the sacrilege,
Unspill the milk, decry the tears,
Turn back the clock, relive the years
Replace the smoke inside the fire,
Unite fulfilment with desire,
Undo the done, gainsay the said,
Revitalise the buried dead,
Revoke the penalty and the clause,
Reconstitute unwritten laws,
Repair the heart, untie the tongue,
Change faithless old to hopeful young,
Inure the body to disease
And help me to forget you please.

by Duncan Forbes

9 notes Tags: poetry regret loss Duncan Forbes lit

Dec 12 '11
“Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs where the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn’t a shaving of a moon to light the flying streets.”
— Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales

1 note Tags: Dylan Thomas Lit Christmas childhood

Nov 29 '11
apoetreflects: “Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity—it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.” —John Keats, letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818

apoetreflects:

“Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity—it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”

—John Keats, letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818

42 notes (via apoetreflects)Tags: John Keats poetry lit

Nov 29 '11
“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do. A lifetime is not long enough. Nor youth to old age long enough. Immortality and permanence be damned. Sure I want them, but they are nonexistent, and won’t matter when I rot underground. All I want to say is: I made the best of a mediocre job. It was a good fight while it lasted. And so life goes.”
— Sylvia Plath  (via highlighterquotes)

371 notes (via highlighterr)Tags: Sylvia Plath lit

Nov 28 '11
Keats - a band made up of most of The Alan Parsons Project, an 80’s pop/rock band that included Colin Blunstone on occasional vocals.

Keats - a band made up of most of The Alan Parsons Project, an 80’s pop/rock band that included Colin Blunstone on occasional vocals.

6 notes Tags: Keats Alan parsons project 80's music music lit

Nov 27 '11
“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”
— Sylvia Plath. (via morose)

391 notes (via deadxfeelings)Tags: Sylvia Plath lit