Posts Tagged ‘Keats’

Of Interest: Misperceptions About the Publishing Biz; What is a Book Review For, Anyway; Scott Fitzgerald Recordings

Posted: Thursday, December 2, 2010 in Audio Recordings, Clipping, Criticism and Reviews, Recommended, Writers and Money
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Interesting post at The Nervous Breakdown about how the publishing industry really works these days. Takeaway for writers: “Becoming an author in order to get rich is like going to the desert in order to become wet.” (Sigh.) Recommended.

What is a book review? And why should we read them? Joseph Mackin at the New York Journal of Books has the scoop: “Reviews are essential tools for supplying the critical data that readers need to situate a book in the universal library.”

And new recordings of Scott Fitzgerald reading Keats and Shakespeare at PennSound.

“To Autumn”: How to Say Everything in 33 Lines

Posted: Sunday, October 10, 2010 in Poetry, Screed
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See Harper’s Magazine online for a gracious little feature on John Keats’ great poem, “Ode to Autumn.”

(So touching to see again the image of the poem written in his own hand.)

No mention, of course, of the poem’s real tragedy: “Autumn” was Keats’ last major work. He was broke, financially unable to continue writing poetry as a primary occupation, and already ill with the TB that would kill him in two years, at 26.

Keats mentioned none of that.  He simply sat down and wrote out, in 33 lines, the best short poem ever written in English. And mentioned everything.