...first of the famous "axioms" that he set down in a letter to Taylor of 27 February 1818, "Poetry . . . should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance" (Letters 1:238). This could not possibly come about if the reader did not bring his or her individual...

...while listening to Hazlitt and writing to Reynolds, and which he now formulated as 'a few Axioms'. 'I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity,' he urged at one point — and then added: 'if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree...

...'Negative Capability'. It was the view he always maintained, in whatever language it was expressed I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and...highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance — 1nd Its touches of Beauty should never be half way thereby making the reader breathless instead...

...formal pertinence of single letters and sounds within words is displayed by the use of capitals. ' Cf. "I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by Singularity" (to John Taylor, 27 Feb. 1818, in Letters: Gittings, 69; Rollins, I, 239; my emphases). Keen, fitful...

...enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject." And: "I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and...highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance." Keats 's own work meets these standards. The poems seem to unfold naturally, with sincerity and without...

...produce, is one kind of tribute we make to what Shakespeare has achieved : poetry, as Keats wrote, ' should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts'. But there is always the danger for the literary critic that he will begin to equate his own highest...

...letter of 1818 to John Taylor: "Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity—it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance" (1816-1820, p. 46). So romanticism allows that reader and spectator are not passive. As Barthes (1975)...

...John Taylor quelques semaines plus tard s'inscrit dans la même logique de respect du lecteur : Ist I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity - it should strike thé Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a Remembrance - (I, 238)...

...leading strings. In Poetry I have a few Axioms, and you will see how far I am from their Centre. First, I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and...highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance. Second, its touches of Beauty should never be halfway, thereby making the reader breathless instead...

...in a well-known letter of February 27, 1818, to the publisher John Taylor, Keats wrote that poetry "should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance."4 Keats offers this to Taylor, however, as one of those "axioms" that his poetry cannot...