The Practice of Poetry

In a letter to his brothers, John Keats says, “The excellence of every Art is in its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth–Examine King Lear and you will find this examplified throughout….with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration” (Letters of John Keats, edited by Robert Gittings, 42-43).

I am interested in the word “intensity” as this the the center-point of Keats’ remark; if it is beautiful enough, he says, nothing else will matter. The piece of art will succeed because the beauty & truth of it will burn away all other, minor imperfections. The intensity of the piece creates a staring-at-the-sun effect: one becomes blinded to all else. His musings are in response to a picture he had just seen, one called Death on the Pale Horse which he deemed as “nothing to be intense upon” (42).

We do feel a rush of response when we are moved by a piece of art. We respond to it emotionally, intellectually, and physically; when art moves us, we glimpse a new glimmer of truth.  But what about the intense experiences generated for entertainment and mass consumerism? Such things are tricky: they have the glare of the sun, but don’t fit Keats’ definition of art. How do we tease out such imitations from the “real thing”? In a world of over-stimulation and eye-catching bling, we can easily get exhausted. Reponses get muted, mixed-up, lost. We start responding to false light. Like moths, we can burn in the distractions. So, how do you pause long enough to sort responses, like Keats, and decide what is beautiful & true and what is “nothing to be intense upon”? 

Without a conscious effort, it’s easy to get stimulated but still feel empty or emptied. Keats says if it is true and beautiful, “the disagreeables evaporate.” So are you left with disagreeables? Everyday, I find myself sifting through things and asking, “yes?” But we know when it’s true: the yes is declarative.

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