I created this website in the summer of 1997 because there were no sites featuring a wide variety of information about two of my favorite poets, John Keats<\/a> and Lord Byron<\/a>. I made the original sites in about two weeks; they were, and remain, decidedly low-tech. Poetry doesn’t lend itself to flashing graphics and pop-up ads. It just needs a quiet room and your attention. Unfortunately, despite the proliferation of ‘poets’ in our midst, many people don’t read poetry anymore. Or, if they do, it’s the awful modern stuff being churned out by liberal arts majors across the country. Egads! The stuff is horrible. Modern poetry needs its own Tom Servo and Crow to keep the audience sane. I remember listening to Lucille Clifton reading her poetry at my undergraduate college. A nice woman, sincere, likable, yes, but the poetry! And everyone standing up and clapping while I cringed in my seat, thinking, Are they just being polite?! No, they were not. No one judges anything anymore. It’s true. Anything cloaked in sincerity is good enough. The next semester featured fellow students who had been abused by various boyfriends or were bulimic or bisexual. I felt like the Grinch for not applauding. Yes, they were traumatized. But when did poetry become a self-help ritual? If writing is cathartic, then write. Keep a journal; write poems. But don’t write bad poetry, read it in public and expect applause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poetry is now panacea for wounded self-esteem. Anything can get published and read and praised to the sky. It’s ironic to me that our highest art form has become an everyday activity for millions. People don’t sit around saying, ‘I can paint like Vermeer!’ but they do sit around saying, ‘I write poetry!’<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it isn’t real poetry. It’s an oddly-spaced, grammatically-challenged, and often silly prose statement which invariably features lots of ‘me’ or ‘my’ or ‘mine’ and ‘I’. No one is sitting in a garden in Hampstead listening to the nightingale sing anymore. And it’s our loss, a collective loss to millions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I attended the Clifton reading with a close friend. We walked back to our dorm afterwards and she asked me what I thought. It was a tricky moment because I knew she liked Clifton’s work. I was polite but honest. It wasn’t poetry to me, I told her, but it was okay. And besides, time is the great leveler. She wasn’t happy with my response and one of the things she said has stuck in my mind to this day: ‘You don’t understand, Marilee. Lucille is a black woman, she’s writing about our experiences….’<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aha!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poetry is not merely a booster for self-esteem. Now it’s specifically written for a certain audience – in this case, women in general and black women in particular. This didn’t surprise me. I thought briefly of Keats struggling to achieve the essential lack of identity of his ‘presider’, Shakespeare<\/a>, of his desire to be a ‘physician to all men. What would he make of this mess? Nowadays he would be the ‘Poet of Orphaned Cockneys’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth is that Byron and Keats and all great artists make their work for everyone. They claim the whole world, the endless variety of human experience, as their subjects; they want the whole world for an audience. In this, Byron and Keats were successful. People from every background – different races, cultures, men and women, from Gustave Flaubert to Countee Cullen to Tom Clark – love their work. Now think of our famous modern poets. Does anyone really believe there are men who read Ellen Bass for pleasure? But I’m a girl who lives in Annapolis, MD and I read two Englishmen who died centuries before I was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if my exact twin from a parallel universe read me her poetry, which – by my friend’s logic – should be very meaningful to me since she would be blonde, addicted to tea, and a fellow Annapolitan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since I know I can’t write poetry, it wouldn’t mean a thing. And yet Keats’s work in particular means everything to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t think I’m a snob, or an elitist, or pretentious. I’m solidly middle-class and wear the occasional Doctor Who t-shirt. I read just about anything, quite a lot of which is entertaining junk. But I take poetry very seriously. It’s the best stuff in the world. It matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of life is detritus. It has to be, and it’s often enjoyable. But there are moments when we need something beautiful and true and meaningful. It could be a kiss from the love of your life, or watching the stars at 3 am, or walking around your neighborhood, or listening to your favorite song, or – perhaps – reading a poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A poem. A genuine poem. A work of art which takes you outside yourself and makes you think and feel in unexpected and magical ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so I hereby request modern poets to show a bit of humility which, as Eliot so wisely reminded us, is ‘the only wisdom we can hope to achieve’. Achieve it, please. Be wise. Know your own limits. If you must write, don’t call it poetry. Call it ‘autobiographical sketches’ and work on perfecting your prose. I will be forever grateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ….<\/p>\n\n\n\n The above mini-essay is all I mention here about me, or my education – and that’s why there isn’t any ‘academic affiliation’. The websites are about two great poets. I’ve assembled (and keep adding to) a collection of works, images, primary sources, etc You explore them and decide for yourself what you think of Byron and Keats and their poetry. Read books about poetry, yes, but read the poetry first. Critics \/ academics \/ professors \/ teachers – they can all point you in a good direction, give you some insight, encourage you. But it’s up to you to read the work and decide if you like it. And if you don’t like it, that’s okay, too. Just because someone is considered a great poet by millions of other people doesn’t mean he’ll be great reading for you. If you don’t like Byron or Keats, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It just means you haven’t found the poems you’ll love just yet. But they’re out there and you have some great discoveries ahead of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now as for why this website focuses on the ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ Lord Byron:<\/p>\n\n\n\n