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Jun 11, 2011
"I am planning to read Keats, Andrew Motion’s biography of John Keats. It’s so big that I tried reading it in bed this winter, but I was afraid I would become drowsy and it would slip through my fingers and break my nose. It’s one of those incredibly monumentally detailed biographies where you find yourself on page 50 yelling, “Will someone please give birth to John Keats already!” John Keats has a good old-fashioned wretched artist’s life: couch-surfing throughout England in a wet jacket and soggy top hat, catching terrible colds. The best thing about his sad biography is that it’s fun to relate to. You read it and think: I too am like John Keats. I too am underappreciated at work. Being stuck in traffic fills me with much more chagrin than other mortals can possibly know. I too am so painfully sensitive to beauty that I really shouldn’t be expected to do my own laundry. And the most we can ask of summertime is that the long colourful days will make us feel like a Romantic poet with thoughts so overwhelmingly lovely that they ought to be pinned like butterflies for posterity to marvel at." Heather O’Neill