Give me a run-down on Keats.
Reading that his 2nd generation Romantic poetry compatriots Byron and Shelley enjoyed his work during his lifetime, but also that he despised them.
Was he exceedingly different than them?
>>9201012
Keats is for my money much better, less consumed by ego (probably because he knew he would die), that is to say, he came closet to realizing the Romantic project of a pure and spontaneous mode of expression. Very inventive with metaphors, up there with Shakespeare, who he adored. I can barely stomach Byron and Shelley is sometimes mawkish but Keats really is divine.
Keats could have been the greatest poet of all time, IMO.