Book of the Heart: The Poetics Letters and Life of John Keats (Studies in Imagination)

About this book

Keats stands as a prophetic precursor behind much in todays radical attempts at cultural and self-transformation. But this side of him has been forgotten or at least was never taken very seriously. He is remembered if at all mostly as a Romantic poet whose value and standing was magnified by his early death. Eclipsed by the lushly sensuous affection of his poems the real meaning of his life and the greatness of his achievement in poeticshow one makes sense out of experiencehas been ignored. Now Andrs Rodrguez redresses the balance by granting to Keats Letters their huge intellectual and spiritual labor. In these Letters one of the most inspiritng spiritual documents of the West we see the poet forming and transfroming a passionate life of great joys and sorrows into a self of imagination and power. Book of the Heart grasps the core of Keats poetical practice of life uncovering the path of knowledge that the Letters reveal. United with Keats in an imaginative union that is as moving as it is true Rodrguez presents Keats as a hero of the heart whose deep life experience oriented him in a unique way toward the world of love suffering death and creativity.