Posthumous Keats – A Personal Biography

New
Illustrated
2008
$24.47

John Keats's famous epitaph- Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water -helped cement his reputation as the archetype of the genius cut off before his time. In this close narrative study, Stanley Plumly meditates on the chances for poetic immortality, an idea that finds its purest expression in Keats. Incisive in its observations and beautifully written, Posthumous Keats is an ode to an unsuspecting young poet-a man who, against the odds of his culture and critics, managed to achieve the unthinkable: the elevation of the lyric poem to sublime and tragic status.

Synopsis

John Keats's famous epitaph- Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water -helped cement his reputation as the archetype of the genius cut off before his time. In this close narrative study, Stanley Plumly meditates on the chances for poetic immortality, an idea that finds its purest expression in Keats. Incisive in its observations and beautifully written, Posthumous Keats is an ode to an unsuspecting young poet-a man who, against the odds of his culture and critics, managed to achieve the unthinkable: the elevation of the lyric poem to sublime and tragic status.

$24.47

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 400
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 01 May 2008
ISBN 10: 0393337723
ISBN 13: 9780393337723

Media Reviews

... there have been any number of excellent books published in 2008 whose relevance to our lives will endure beyond the excitability of the moment. Stanley Plumly's richly evocative Posthumous Keats, a tour de force of poet-sympathy across the decades. -- Joyce Carol Oates - Times Literary Supplement
Stanley Plumly has written a haunting study in which the poet's death overhangs and informs the life... [he] is the ideal companion on what he sees as Keat's meandering path to both mortality and immortality... The book... has the wisdom, delicacy and insight of long knowing and reading, and of love. -- The Economist
This is, then, a remarkable book. You need not take my word for it. Christopher Ricks, who knows his onions about Keats, has raved about it; and Jack Stillinger, editor of Keats's Complete Poems, said It's certainly the best book ever written about Keats (and I've read all the others) and may be the best book anybody has written on any writer. Endorsement enough, I think. -- Nicholas Lezard's Choice - The Guardian
[Posthumous Keats] manages to shed more light on Keats and his world than any biography could do... Not only has Plumly produced a powerful meditation on Keats, but he has managed also to write that rare thing - a convincing analysis of the creative process. -- Duncan Wu - The Telegraph
Plumly's luminous biography. -- The Independent
Mr. Plumly writes beautifully and very movingly. -- Charles McGrath - The New York Times
Plumly has written a book to last: worthy of its subject and commensurate with both words of its title. -- Robert Pinsky - Slate

Author Bio

Stanley Plumly is the author of many volumes of poetry as well as The Immortal Evening and Posthumous Keats. The winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors, he is a professor at the University of Maryland and lives in Frederick, Maryland.