Keats's Odes
A Lover's Discourse
by Anahid Nersessian
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Pub Date Feb 10 2021 | Archive Date Feb 03 2021
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Description
In 1819, the poet John Keats wrote six poems that would become known as the Great Odes. Some of them—“Ode to a Nightingale,” “To Autumn”—are among the most celebrated poems in the English language. Anahid Nersessian here collects and elucidates each of the odes and offers a meditative, personal essay in response to each, revealing why these poems still have so much to say to us, especially in a time of ongoing political crisis. Her Keats is an unflinching antagonist of modern life—of capitalism, of the British Empire, of the destruction of the planet—as well as a passionate idealist for whom every poem is a love poem.
The book emerges from Nersessian’s lifelong attachment to Keats’s poetry; but more, it “is a love story: between me and Keats, and not just Keats.” Drawing on experiences from her own life, Nersessian celebrates Keats even as she grieves him and counts her own losses—and Nersessian, like Keats, has a passionate awareness of the reality of human suffering, but also a willingness to explore the possibility that the world, at least, could still be saved. Intimate and speculative, this brilliant mix of the poetic and the personal will find its home among the numerous fans of Keats’s enduring work.
Advance Praise
Maureen N. McLane
“This is an intense, often dazzling, original, illuminating, idiosyncratic, but also welcoming and welcome book. Offering trenchant, astute, often polemical and sometimes breathtaking readings of Keats’s Odes—and simultaneously of love, politics, worldmaking, and self—Nersessian has written a propelled, impelled, impassioned work, truly in Keats’s spirit.”
Juliana Spahr
“This book claims to be ‘about’ Keats’s odes. And it is. But it is also about beauty and sadness and love and revolution and how the odes can help us to better understand these things. It is nothing short of a perfect book, one that understands how poetry can transform one’s life. Nersessian is on track to be the Harold Bloom of her generation, but a Bloom with politics.”
Srikanth Reddy
“In a tour-de-force series of revisionary readings, Nersessian makes Keats’s odes new in A Lover’s Discourse; and by the end of this exhilarating book, a new poet emerges into historical and psychological focus as well, neither aesthete nor insurgent, but someone who discovers the radicalism immanent in literary style. On yet another level, Keats’s Odes is a discourse on love as interpretive practice. Demanding, generous, precise, utopian, and unfailingly brilliant, Nersessian reinvents reading itself as a form of critical intimacy for our broken times. ‘If love is anything not laid waste by this world it is free,’ writes this reader. ‘Mine is.’”
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780226762678 |
| PRICE | $20.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 160 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Melissa W, Reviewer
This review has also been posted to Goodreads and will be posted to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and my instagram account after it has been published.
“I love Keats not because I belong in his poetry, but because his poetry wants so much to belong to us—to those who know intimately why a relentless self exposure to the world has to be made, somehow, into a virtue because otherwise it is just abuse.”
Keats’s Odes a Lover’s Discourse by Anahid Nersessian is an amazing tribute to Keats’s Great Odes. The author does such a fantastic job of making the odes relatable both to Keats’s life and times as well as our own. She also takes the themes of love and loss and personalizes them with stories and feelings from her own life. By the end I felt connected to Keats’s work in a brand new way. I am incredibly impressed with this authors ability to take some of the most beautiful poetry ever written and make the reader feel them on a much deeper level. I will never look at the odes quite the same after having read this and I very highly recommend this read to any fan of Keats. I give it 5 full stars.
Lark !, Reviewer
This book is an incredible dive into the life and times and above all the poetry of Keats. it's a wonderful rush! The prose is so clear, and the author's enthusiasms so infectious, that this literary analysis of Keats's odes was a joy to read. It dives deep into each ode, but never in a ponderous way, and never in a way that was less than revelatory.
I don't think the author knows how delightful her book is. My only criticism about this book is that Professor Nersessian should omit the first sentence where she declares "If you've never read anything on Keats's odes before, this book should not be your first step." That's wrong. I am decidedly -not- a Keats scholar and I never felt condescended to, or left behind in any way. I felt swept along.
The literary analysis here reminds me of George Steiner, only without the pomp. I learned so much, not only about Keats, and not only about these poems, but also about how to read, and how to pay attention to what I read. How to hear the language on the page. Just as it happens sometimes when you go to an art exhibit or a concert or a play, and come out with all your senses heightened--I came out of this book with all of my senses heightened.
Wonderful. Everyone should read it.
Lucía R, Reviewer
"I love Keats not because I belong in his poetry, but because his poetry wants so much to belong to us".
SYNOPSIS:
This is a book about personal essays and analysis of John Keats’ most famous odes. The author analyses Keats’ six famous Odes (the Great Odes) and intertwines it with her own personal experiences and other literary issues.
OPINION:
John Keats is one of my favourite poets ever and I have studied a few of his poems at university, so when I saw an opportunity to learn more about him and his poetry, I went for it. I had read Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale, but the others it was my first time reading, and they were what you would expect of him; Keats has such a beautiful way with words it is almost mesmerizing.
I loved the author’s insight on these odes but not only that. She also explores Ovid’s Metamorphosis (which I also really like) and relates it to the Odes, mentions of philosophers and writers like Freud or Milton, and what gives this book a more original outlook, her own private life. I learned a lot and ended up empathising with the author. She puts more of herself that I originally thought, I expected it to be a little more academic, and less related to her life, but I found out I liked it better this way.
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