Romantic Poets Poll

tough call between shelley and keats

"stanzas written in dejection.." was probably the first poem that ever had an effect on me, so I guess Shelley. Blake is intriguing too but I havent read a lot of his stuff. Kudos for being the first multi-media artist though.

Shelley just ahead of Blake

sorry, just ahead of Keats, Blake a good distance back in 3rd

Kind of want to vote Blake just for the sheer mad power of his whole project, but probably enjoy reading Keats' poems more. Dig Shelley's politics tho.

I probably read Keats more but I have to vote for Blake.

Coleridge is underrated ITT

feel like Blake's gonna walk this & I really love Wordsworth too so I voted for him.

SHELLEY. Though my ignorance of Blake is a good candidate for that secret intellectual shame thread.

Was never particularly moved by Byron or Keats, though they're okay. Mostly dislike Coleridge but there's at least one thing he did I have time for. Hate hate hate Wordsworth.

Eliot talked so much shit about Shelley.

Wordsworth stops being interesting around the moment Keats outpaced them all in concentration and lyricism, but he wrote the best blank verse in the language – better than Milton's. One of my first lit epiphanies occurred, of all places, while taking the AP exam my senior year of high school: we had to write an analysis of an excerpt from the first volume of "The Prelude" – the bit about the Poet taking a small boat and rowing towards a mountain. Although I'd read "Tintern Abbey" months earlier, nothing prepared me for this poem's stillness.

Byron is hilarious – you can start reading Don Juan at any point and have a laugh.

hard for me not to vote for blake here just cause of how much i loved him in high school, tho havent really read any of these guys much since college. i should.

Shelley wrote so damn much.

damn, will really have to think about this one a bit... but I think it's going to be between Shelley and Coleridge for me. probably Coleridge - it looks like he's going to be underrepresented anyway

Keats though, and Blake... this is nearly impossible to decide

Blake is so outlier - including him among the romantics has always seemed odd to me, he's his own creature. It weirds me out in the extreme that there are people on this thread lobbying for Shelley, much of whose poetry is completely appalling. His peaks are great though, no question. Byron on his worst day is a greater poet than Shelley by many orders of magnitude, and so is Keats. Wordsworth is the only one of these who can make me cry ("Nature never did betray the heart that loved her" was a moment of profound awakening for teenage underrated a); Coelridge is the most underrated I think. Still, since he's a candidate, it's hard not to vote for Blake; he's not only the best poet here, but the most important, Wordsworth's impact on the craft & all -- Blake shapes history, I think.

But Byron though. I may not vote, I'm not sure I can really pick one and be happy with my choice here

Keats outpaced them all in concentration and lyricism, but he wrote the best blank verse in the language – better than Milton's

this is crazy talk btw

I have a lot of love for Blake but yeah, I've never really this was a fair category for him; of the other 5, it's got to be Keats, and if you disagree go read "Ode To Autumn" again. Hell, it's autumn now, everyone should go back and read it anyways.

Coleridge has jaw-dropping moments, Byron is probably the most consistent--Alfred's totally right about the comedy value of Don Juan. OTOH, it's taken me a long time to start coming around to Wordsworth--so plain and sanctimonious at his worst.

Blake

i know it's childish but i resent the Romantic poets (i guess i really mean Wordsworth) for being so influential. blake excluded, since he precedes wordsworth's whole i am revolutionizing poetry thing. if blake hadn't been in the poll, i totally would vote shelley. i sort of think keats is a better poet, yes, but it's like a dostoevsky v. tolstoy thing. and yes i guess in part i'd be voting shelley for his politics. what a bunch of jerks, btw (again, not blake.)

Keats outpaced them all in concentration and lyricism, but he wrote the best blank verse in the language – better than Milton's

this is crazy talk btw

I guess it wasn't clear – I'm talking about Wordsworth!

"When the entourage reached Cologne and the Rhine, Polidori, who had been musing over the inequalities of fate, said unexpectedly to Byron, 'Pray, what is there excepting writing poetry that I cannot do better than you?' Byron calmly faced him and replied, 'Three things. First, I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door. Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point. And thirdly, I can give you a damned good thrashing.’”

Cosign on Blake as outlier / shaping history; comes down to Byron/Coleridge for me. Byron is funny/heroic/easy on the ear, while Coleridge has a v.modern blend of eggheadedness ("I wish he would explain his Explanation" etc) & the deathless pop wonder of stuff like Mariner/Kubla Khan/Christabel etc.

Grouping all these poets never made a lick of sense to me. They each have wildly different strengths and weaknesses which far outweigh any commonality in my view. Trying to sort them out in terms of best or worst is nearly impossible, but taking each in terms of the number of good poems written, I'd rank them:

Wordsworth
Keats
Blake
Byron
Shelley
Coleridge

But, even though I put Wordsworth above Keats in that list, I find Keats's lyricism rises to much greater heights than anything Wordsworth managed to reach, and WW also earns demerits for the mass of flat, insipid poems he published.

Blake I have trouble with because, although I see his greatness, I just can't handle his prophetic mania, which amounts to 95% of his output. Shelley marred his whole corpus with misplaced archaisms and too-stilted diction as a means to promote his ideas into ex cathedra wisdom, which they were not.

Byron's humor is very welcome, but his defects usually overwhelm his merits - the man was very lazy about his art. Coleridge was amazing, but he strangled his talents in every possible way and ended up with little to show for them.

So, it's Keats for me.

Odd that this should turn up. Been reading Keats & Shelley over the lady day or two.

Can't choose tbh.

Keats because he's naturally got more of it, whatever it is that makes a poet, than anyone bar Shakespeare. Ear/eye/instinct for a line.

Aero otm re Shelley's shortcomings: he muddles his images, struggles to ground the verse. Can get v woolly indeed. BUT I think he's prob right about politics, the imagination, freedom, the universe. So when he hits it, he really really hits it.

Coleridge! I agree he's getting a bit overlooked here. He hears something in English verse that no-one else does, at all, for decades. Christabel, Mariner, Kublai Khan are from another planet; the conversation poems drive in the other direction, daytime transcendence, but are also great. So much shit, so boring later on. But I'm not sure anyone's quite been on fire like that. theoriser too - intellectual in way Wordsworth isn't (explicitly) - feel like he opens up that Shelley to Stevens philosophical poetry line.

Byron because he figures out how to get the other line of English verse back - the chatty, fun, tricksy, talking about the mess of the world poetry. And tbh my heart is with that stuff - the augustans are my boys. Intend to read serious Byron sometime, but it's a struggle. 'well this is a historically important manifestation of romanticism'.

Wordsworth I'm divided on. Admire more than love, though I can get swept up - reread a chunk of prelude a few months ago, and it turned my head. I tend to underestimate him. Maybe some other post abt that.

& yes Blake does & doesn't fit. fwiw, i think Clare as the other bookend if going beyond Canon of Five.

Yes, won't vote.

Forgive typos, on phone.

Eliot talked so much shit about Shelley.

TSE similarly critical of blake, right? the guy was pretty self-assured for someone who wrote like 40 pages of actual poetry.

love all these guys, maybe coleridge most of all, actually.

I guess it wasn't clear – I'm talking about Wordsworth!

oh! yeah I can dig that. I would put Frost in the same exalted company but that's another conversation.

TSE similarly critical of blake, right? the guy was pretty self-assured for someone who wrote like 40 pages of actual poetry.

Eliot ok with Blake early on (may turn later?) - the essay in The Sacred Wood is a good-faith attempt to deal with a 'poet of genius' who's massively unEliotic.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Oh my god guys, any time I get to vote for my #1 faviorite guy –––– Blake, of course –––– it's one more non-edge piece placed in my personal happiness puzzle! One of those fussy ones that just has the blue of the sky on it. Awesome!!!

I was so sad when I found out recently that Byron had that wine-sippin' skull fashioned into a proper wine glass.

I always thought it was weird Blake was a romantic, too. It's like how Plastic Man is now in "Batman: The Brave And The Bold." Like, thank god you are there because you are the best, but also, what is the hell happening?? P.S. Rintrah roared while Palamabron trembled.

Shelley, yes, can be imprecise and woolly, but when he can produce "B-sides" like this, complaints are useless:

When passion's trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last,
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep!

2

It were enough to feel, to see,
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest - and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.

3

After the slumber of the year
THe woodland violets reappear;
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move
And form all others, life and love.

More than the others, you must read Shelley in bulk: Alastor (this poem has the limpid mystery that reminds me of an Apichapong film), "Epipschydion," "The Witch of Atlas," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty."

He's also the only one of these guys who wrote a credible verse tragedy (The Cenci).

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Didn't catch this and didn't vote. Would have voted Wordsworth.

My objection to Shelley isn't that he's too woolly (pace the Leavis/Eliot show trials) but that he's too cerebral/abstract. I read a fair amount of British empiricist philosophy at one point just so I could unlock Shelley, which seemed entirely reasonable and worthwhile at the time but looking back just seems silly.

A reluctant but convinced materialist, I find Wordsworth comes closer to offering an escape route from a stubbornly rational sensibility than any other writer, Rilke perhaps being next best. Perhaps this is an extra-literary reason for liking him, and he probably wrote more unreadable nonsense than just about any poet of similar stature. But for me he's easily the giant in this company.

Coleridge and Keats have written some terrific anthology pieces but there's not enough good stuff to make them serious contenders.

Never cared for Blake, except for the short lyrics. Pretty much never cared for Byron full stop.

Byron starts to taste better after you're older and have read enough Wilde, Waugh, Powell, and other Anglo funny men.

still, I'm stunned he got not one vote. He's more sheer fun to read than the others. If you don't believe me, get thee to "The Vision of Judgment."

would be interested to see results with blake excised

I used to think I'd mature to like Byron but I don't think so any more. With the romantic poets I've lost enthusiasm with age rather than gaining it (I used to like Keats and Shelley much more than I do now and I also used to delude myself that I liked, or at least was on the point of developing a liking for, Blake. Eventually I admitted to myself that liking the idea of Blake wasn't the same thing as enjoying his poems).

I'm not a particular fan of Wilde but I do like that comic tradition - love Waugh, Wodehouse, Powell, E C Benson etc.

Missed this. For shame. Poor Byron! But really only for Don Juan and a few of the lyrics for me. Was thinking about giving Childe Harold another read at some point - this might prompt me. Vision of Judgment always makes me feel a bit sorry for Southey. Keats' tone is so sweet when he gets it right, as he so often does - more of his lines rise unbidden to my mind than any other poet I think. I love Blake's shorter verse, have more and more problems with his prophetic stuff, although so much of it contains gold-dust - fresh proverbs, astonishing and unlikely images, a passionate and articulate mysticism, rather brought down by the 'giant forms' in which they're often encased. Wordsworth I dismissed for years, foolishly - a recent early morning Thames-side reading of Westminster Bridge, which made me rather teary, sent me back to the Prelude, and I enjoyed its discursive investigations of the imagination a lot more than I had. Sometimes its conversational roll feels like first rate poetic exposition, other times it can feel merely conversational (my ear is the worst tho). Shelley wrote poetry that engaged, its anger means it rarely feels like its off with the fairies - what woof said, when he gets it right, it fires you with the righteousness not just of its expression but its political and social engagement.

Coleridge was the one I first got into, when really quite young, his poetry seemed and seems almost uncanny - a 'phantom light' seems to encompass his poetry.

'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness

Who would I most like to have a pint with? Probably Shelley truth be told. Byron's wit probably would've got a bit scathing, funny and brilliant, but scary. Blake - compassionate and intriguing at first, potential pub bore? (and put your clothes on btw), Keats - medical background would make him interesting company, and a chance to see pure inspiration in repose, also strikes me as likable, Wordsworth - always fancied him a bit of a bore tbh, the Prelude does go on rather, Coleridge - wake up, it's your round. Shelley would have fire in his conversation.

E C Benson sh'd of course be E F specifically the Mapp and Lucia series.

Pint-wise I'd go for Coleridge. So erudite, the most impressive intellect and liable to talk the most sense despite the neediness and addictions. Keats second. Think Shelley would harangue you with a lot of much more deeply felt than considered political stuff and/or ignore you while trying to get off with your wife.

Sam Coleridge's table talk was legendary. His friends wondered how so much brilliance could be squandered over supper and so little put to paper.

yes, I've got one of those old popular editions of C's Table Talk kicking about somewhere. I think he would be the most fun of all of them if you got him on a good day. crazy depth of knowledge + opinions4u.

like the idea of byron but feel like he would clam up quickly if you tread on his toes went the wrong way ('you must have a few stories, eh?', 'I admire your melding of the romantic dramatic ego w/ c18th wit') , like maybe stick to bears, horses, the fighting career of the Game Chicken.

I find Coleridge's essays among the most pedantic in English lit, specifically Biographia Literaria. I should get The Portable Coleridge from my closet and check for Table Talk.

Here the old Table Talk
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8489

sweet! Thanks!

would be interested to see results with blake excised

Poll Results
Option Votes
William Blake 9
John Keats 5
William Wordsworth 4
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 3
Percy Bysshe Shelley 3
Lord Byron 0

On rereading the table talk, i see that it might be wise to keep Coleridge of the subject of Anglicanism.

On Shelley, yeah, 'woolly' was a bit woolly. I don't think the 30s crits were wrong-wrong (I share/imbibed their pro-1600-1760 prejudices), though I think Empson is the one who properly nails it in 7 Types while he's sort of defending him - Shelley tumbles over himself (he's an exciting and excitable poet who wrote too much), he's bad at finding comparisons, & when he's doing lyric he tends to offer you these little tangles that take too long to unpick - like the last stanza quoted by Alfred above pulls me up because I'm not sure how life in particular is not reviving when violets, etc are. (the first two stanzas are knockout).

Just to tangle myself up, I think these problems turn into virtues in some of the poems - Mont Blanc, the big odes, Prometheus, Triumph of Life, Adonais - and there I do like his cerebral drive & energy. Alastor and Epipsychidion go a bit far for me - not quite enough to get a grip on, feel like we're headed for some of the messiest bits of early Browning.

'coleridge off' in that first sentence.