Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse

Intense emotion abounds in this literary blend of analysis and autobiography from UCLA English professor Nersessian (Utopia, Limited). In six essays that examine each of Keats’s Great Odes, Nersessian tells a “kind of love story” between herself and the poems, and reads Keats’s work as radical (while he frequented leftist circles, she writes, his radicalism lies “in his style”). In “Ode to a Nightingale,” she describes Keats’s “persistence of beauty within the ugliest situations,” and in “To Autumn” discusses what inspired the poem. Only two of the essays include extended first-person narration (“The autobiographical dimension will not always be obvious,” Nersessian warns in the introduction): “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which Nersessian powerfully recounts her experience with sexual harassment as a student, and “Ode on Melancholy,” in which she asks, “What kind of woman am I?” While Nersessian aims for her study to appeal to nonspecialists, that goal is undermined by ample use of literary jargon (apotheosis, ekphrasis, and caesuras), and discussions of poetic meter that will leave lay readers behind. This astute work will be best enjoyed by academics or Keats enthusiasts. (Feb.)