John Keats wrote his "Ode to a Nightingale" in the lush spring of May 1819, rejoicing in the song of a nightingale but painfully aware of suffering and death. Keats knew that he lay under a cloud of death, particularly of tuberculosis, his family disease and a major killer in 19th-century England. Longing for the unselfconscious bliss of a songbird, Keats's thoughts swing wildy between ecstasy and gloom. We read this poem today under parallels clouds of pandemic and climate change, seeing in the poet's quest and in the poem itself both the limitations and the power of beauty. In this one-hour class, we will read the poem together in sections. I will discuss how it connects with John Keats's short life and with the England of its day. We will engage with the way Keats engages the human struggle to love the beautiful in nature and in art, despite sorrow, death, and change. And we will consider some of the ways the poem resonates in our lives today. Disclaimer: I will be briefly referencing a classical tale about sexual violence.
