Sunday, February 22, 2009

In this piece, there is a sense of absence, even from the beginning., with the blotting out of letters in the name of the person the piece is being written for. There is a lack of identity there, an absence of person. This in turn, makes the piece more universal in ways, but holistically less personal and unidentifiable in terms of placement. It also creates a gap in presence, whether or not the poem was originally intended for anyone specific is unclear.  Keats spends the entire poem talking about himself if he were someone else, there is never a sense of definitiveness in identity in himself or in whomever he is speaking to. ("Had I a man's fair form", "I am no happy sheperd of the dell") There are references to "thee," which are not specific, predicting future happenings such as "I'll gather some by spells, and incantation," which are uncertain as well. His desire towards this person marks another spacing between, as they are seemingly not together and there must exist reasons for why they are not, why the poet decided to blot out the name of the person he was speaking to.

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