Poet John Keats, sketched by B R Haydon
Credit: Culture Club
Situated for two centuries in the icy silence of his tomb, in the Cimitero Acattolico, Rome, John Keats at least hasn’t had to confront the Keatsians – the scholars, academics and other buffoons, who have published books and papers about Keats’ Post-Newtonian Poetics, The Etymology of Porphyro’s Name, The Dying Keats: A Case for Euthanasia? and, not forgetting, Keats, Modesty and Masturbation.
Now comes Lucasta Miller’s Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph (Jonathan Cape, £17.99), which is one big farrago of cliché, jargon, mixed metaphor and general sloppiness. Page upon page is filled with phrases like under the skin, scruff of its neck, strapped for cash, cocked a snook, one fell swoop, punches far above the weight. Ad infinitum, via, raison d’être, status quo, inter alia and social kudos pepper the paragraphs, along with opined, emotional fallout, hands-on mentor, helicopter parenting, su