Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse

"When I say this book is a love story, I mean it is about things that cannot be gotten over--like this world, and some of the people in it." In 1819, the poet John Keats wrote six poems that would become known as the Great Odes.Some of them--"Ode to a Nightingale," "To Autumn"--are among the most celebrated poems in the English language.Anahid Nersessian here collects and elucidates each of the odes and offers a meditative, personal essay in response to each, revealing why these poems still have so much to say to us, especially in a time of ongoing political crisis.Her Keats is an unflinching antagonist of modern life--of capitalism, of the British Empire, of the destruction of the planet--as well as a passionate idealist for whom every poem is a love poem. The book emerges from Nersessian's lifelong attachment to Keats's poetry; but more, it "is a love story: between me and Keats, and not just Keats." Drawing on experiences from her own life, Nersessian celebrates Keats even as she gr