FREE ESSAY ON THE LIFE OF A POET !

THE LIFE OF A POET !

John Keats
The life of a poet!
Katrina Bartlett
English per.2
May, 31 2000 pg. 1
He started at the pacific. All his men/looked at each other with a wild surmise--/silent,
upon a peak in Darien"; "Beauty is truth, truth Beauty, --that is all/ ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know"; The author of these and many other lines fixed permanently in
the shared consciousness of those who speak English, John Keats was an extremely unlikely
candidate for poetic immortality. Born into a working-class family two centuries ago.
Orphaned in childhood, his work was subjected to vicious attacks by established literary
critics, dead in his mid-twenties from tuberculosis, he overcame all obstacles, not only
to write some of the finest poems in the language, but also to form, in the minds of
millions of people. 
John Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795. The first child of Thomas Keats he was
a livery-stable keeper. And his wife Frances (Jennings) Keats was a housewife. Three more
sons were born one of whom died in infancy. A daughter was born to the couple before
Thomas's death in April 1804 from a horse accident. With four very young children to care
for. Frances married a man named William Rawlings in 1805. The marriage was not
successful and when the couple separated in the following year she and her four children
went to live with her mother. John Keats received his earliest education at a private
school in Enfield run buy the Reverend John Clarke. Among his classmates was the
headmaster's son, Charles Cowden clarke. 
Who would be his lifelong friend. Keats's mother died of tuberculosis in February 1810,
and in 1811 he was taken out of school and apprenticed to Thomas Hammond, a surgeon at
Edmonton hospital. It was during this time that he began to read poetry seriously and to
write it himself. 
His apprenticeship ended by mutual consent in 1815, and Keats went to London to study
medicine at the joint school of St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals. In July 1816, he passed
his examination as an apothecary, and worked until April of the next year as a medical
practitioner. 
Keats's first volume entitled simply Poems was published in March 1817 and failed to
attract much notice beyond a favorable review from Leigh Hunt. During that time Keats met
Fanny Brawne, a young woman who throughout what appears to have been for him at least.
Rather tormented relationship was to be the great love of his brief life and to whom he
became engaged some time around the end of the year. By December 1818 when his brother
Tom died of tuberculosis. On February 3, 1820 Keats had a coughing fit that led him to
hemorrhage some dark arterial blood. With his medical training he recognized the gravity
of the situation and he told his friend Charles Armitage Brown, "That drop of blood is my
death-warrant; I must die."
After another relapse in June 1820 Keats determined to go to Italy, from whose warmer and
drier climate he hoped to find some relief of his suffering. On September 18, he sailed
for Naples with a close friend the artist Joseph Severn. Keats never saw England or fanny
again. The two men took lodgings in Rome, where severn loyally cared for Keats, who
retained his gentle and uncomplaining nature until his death on February 23, 1821. He was
not quite four months past his twenty-fifth birthday. 
In addition to his poetry Keats is the author of some of the most interesting letters by
any literary figure. In their aesthetic theorizing, their insights into nature of the
creative process and their constant display of a lovable and admirable personality, his
letters not only complement his poetry but shows an intellectual grasp and penetration
that is not always evident in the poems themselves. 
The life of Keats to some degree mythology by biographers and other enthusiasts has done
as much as anything to fashion the popular image of the poet as a doomed and tortured
soul. Scorned by an uncaring and pouring out his heart in spasms of unrequited love. And
his work has likewise done much to shape the common view of poetry as sensuous images
expressed in rhapsodic language that, to quote his own lines on the nightingale's
song,"oft-times hath/ charmed magic casements, opening on the foam/ Of perilous seas, in
faery lands forlorn." The best of his poems, of course, transcend such stereotypes.
Gorgeous as their music may be, they do not traffic in pretty escapist fantasies, but
instead confront some of life's most complex problems and situations, with a constant
awareness of irreducible sadness that lies at the heart of human experience. 
My opinion I learned more of john Keats that I ever knew about him.
I learned what he went threw just to become a poet and what hardships he went threw just
to get there. And all of the sacrifices he made just to become known as one of the best
British writers that anyone has ever lived so I end by saying that john keats in my
opinion is one of the best poet's that I have read so far. And I give him credit for all
of the hard work and inspiration that he has put into peoples lives all over the world
and if they have not read a peace of work by john then you should go out and read some.