English poet · 1795–1821
John Keats
John Keats trained in medicine before devoting himself to poetry, producing his major odes during an extraordinarily concentrated career that ended with his death at twenty-five.
His poems repeatedly test what beauty, art and sensation can offer in a world governed by time, illness and loss; they rarely resolve that tension into a simple lesson.
How to read John Keats
- Dense sensory imagery turns thought into experiences of taste, sound, texture and colour.
- The odes move through argument and counterargument, allowing a speaker's mood to change while the poem unfolds.