Today, dear reader, we pour some out for John Keats, one of the greats of the Romantic movement.  Keats kicked the bucket on February 23, 1821 – 204 years ago today.  He was 25, a punk kid by today’s standards, but he’d already scribbled some of the most gut-punching lines in English lit. The cause?  Tuberculosis, that slow, coughing bastard of a disease that chewed through the 19th century like a plague with a personal grudge.  Back then, they called it “consumption.”  Which sounds poetic as hell – fitting for a guy like Keats – but it was anything but.  He’d been coughing up blood for over a year, a dire sign that his lungs were shredding themselves.  His doctors, in true old-school fashion, tried giving him a good bleeding – because why not drain a dying man’s strength? – and stuck him on a starvation diet.  By the time he got to Rome, hoping the warm air might save him, he was a ghost already.  He died in a cramped room overlooking the Spanish Steps, with his buddy Joseph Severn holding his hand, listening to him rasp, “I am dying – I shall die easy; don’t be frightened.”  Balls of steel, even at the end.  The details are grim but magnetic.  Keats didn’t just fade; he fought The Reaper tooth and nail.  He’d been sick since at least 1820, probably caught it nursing his brother Tom through the same damn disease in 1818.  Karma’s a bitch – Tom died, and John got tagged next.  In Rome, his final days were a fevered haze: he couldn’t stomach food, his voice was shot, and he was pissed – told Severn to ditch the sappy letters from his fiancée, Fanny Brawne, because they tore him up too much.  His tombstone doesn’t even bear his name, just “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” a line he picked himself.  He figured the world wouldn’t remember him.  He was wrong.

So where does Keats stack up among the Romantic Poets?  He’s the dark horse, the scrappy underdog who punches way above his weight.  You’ve got Wordsworth and Coleridge, the old guard, pontificating about nature and dope-addled visions; Shelley, the rebel atheist spitting fire at the gods; and Byron, the rockstar aristocrat boning his way across Europe.  Then there’s Keats: poor, orphaned, trained as a surgeon, no fancy pedigree – writing odes that hit you like a blade to the chest.  He wasn’t about grand manifestos or epic quests; he zeroed in on beauty, mortality, and the pain of being alive.  “Ode to a Nightingale,” “To Autumn,” “Bright Star” – sure, they look like poems, but they’re really existential Molotov cocktails.  He’s the Romantic who makes you feel the weight of your own heartbeat, while the others are busy shouting from mountaintops.
Keats didn’t get the rockstar treatment in his lifetime – critics called his stuff “cockney” and sneered at his low-rent roots – but he rewrote the game after he was gone.  Tennyson, Yeats, even the modernists like Eliot owe him a nod.  His idea of “negative capability” – embracing doubt and mystery without chasing answers – still rattles cages in lit theory.

Keats died young, broke, and lovesick, but he left a stash of words that still draw blood.  Cheers.

N.P.: “Lullaby” – Pure Obsessions & Red Nights

Hot diggity damn, dear reader…tonight is Burns Night!  Since you are not already drinking whisky and jumping off the furniture, I can only assume you are unfamiliar with Burns Night. Fair enough…it is my depressing belief that very few Americans read much anymore.  I’m not confident that many of them can read. But that’s another topic for another day.  Today is Burns Night, dammit.

Today we celebrate the birthday of the OG wordsmith of Scotland, Robert Burns!  Born January 25, 1759, this literary legend penned verses that Rolling Stone said, “flowed as smoothly as a fine Scotch whisky and as sharply as the Highland wind.”  Fact check: true.  This founding member of the D.P.S. was not only a rebel with a quill…he was the man who made haggis a legitimate subject of lyrical devotion.

Speaking of haggis, have you read his “Address to a Haggis?”  Only Burns could turn a sheep’s stomach stuffed with oats into an ode of unparalleled grandeur.  Any Burns Night celebration worth its salt (certainly any I’ve ever attended) features a massive haggis, held aloft by a group of dudes in kilts, making a lap around the entire room so all in attendance can get a close-up look at what they’re about to eat.  There are whoops and cheers (especially by those of us who’ve been drinking Snakebites for the previous few hours).  When the haggis has finished its tour around the room, it is eventually placed on a table in the center of the room, and someone then reads the “Address to a Haggis,” as significant amounts of whisky is poured over the haggis, and then it is cut with a sword and plates of the rotten stuff is passed around to whomever is daring enough to eat it.  At least that’s what how I remember it going down…I was always completely shit-housed by the time the haggis showed up.  As it should be.  As it must be.  Haggis is food for drunk people who are hungry, freezing, and out of options.  Sober people cannot eat haggis.  I mean it’s physically impossible.  The sober mind will not let its physical self willingly consume something so fetid and foul.  I have personally verified this theory many times: cold nights in San Francisco when the fridge was a little barren at home, a warm, whisky covered haggis is goddamn delicious.  Sober with a full stomach, and that same haggis is repugnant.

And let’s not forget Burns’ saucier side.  He also gifted us with “The Fornicator,” a tribute to all of us unapologetic fornicators, including himself.

And fornicate he did!  Burns fathered 12 children, nine of them out of wedlock.  He was prolific in many ways.  He worked as a farmer, a customs officer, and was allegedly the smoothest talker north of the border.  Burns was into the Enlightenment philosophers and could talk about Rousseau and Voltaire while slamming shots.

Like so many greats, Burns’ spark was snuffed out too soon.  He died on July 21, 1796, at the age of 37, likely due to rheumatic fever exacerbated by his hard-living ways.  Remarkably, the day he was laid to rest, his son Maxwell was born.

Today I recommend you crack your Burns anthology and check out “Tam o’ Shanter” or “A Red, Red Rose.”  Or, better yet, you could gut a pig, make some haggis, and recite the “Address” as you wash it down with whisky.

Slàinte, Robby!

N.P.: “Model Society” – Deaf Radio

Taking a brief break from the book today to wish the legendary Robert Louis Stevenson happy birthday!  Born on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland.  It’s easy to imagine Robert roaming the misty streets, dreaming about pirates and dual personalities….

Stevenson was a literary maverick who brought us adventures that were as thrilling as his life.  He is known, of course for epic works like “Treasure Island,”  the prototypical pirate adventure, which is awesome if you’re a younger reader into swashbuckling (which I once was).  But for the more adult reader, the dark and twisted alleyways of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” might prove more intriguing.  That certainly is the case for college students when I’ve taught this book.  Yes, the story itself is riveting, and the theme of the duality is particularly engaging to 19-year-olds trying to figure out who they are.  The thing that really got them interested in the book was when I told them about how it was written.  Get this: old Bob got a stack of paper, a bunch of inkwells, and a big bottle of cocaine.  As I’m sure my dear reader knows, one received one’s cocaine from one’s physician in liquid form, which liquid you would mix with wine and drink (they may not have had electric light, but they knew How To Live back then).  So RLS sits there drinking his cocaine and scribbling away, hour after hour, and bangs out a draft of the book in three days!  So he immediately goes back to read it, decides it’s crap, and throws it on the fire.  He sits back down, takes a big belt of cocaine and wine, and starts writing again.  Three days later…draft #2 is complete!  And that draft went on to be an absolute classic.

So cheers to Robert Louis Stevenson, a man who lived and wrote at the edge of his own boundaries.  And for doing his best work whilst addled on a 6-day liquid cocaine bender.  Cheers!

Now back to work…some of us don’t have liquid cocaine and wine as fuel.

N.P.: “Werewolves of London” – Adam Sandler

A literary birthday 2-fer today as we celebrate the births of two of the most badass authors ever to grace the page: Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Kurt Vonnegut.  Imagine these two guys in a room together: one with a deep dive into the darkest corners of the human psyche, the other with a satirical scimitar (you like that?  You’re welcome) to slice through society’s bullshit.  Society’s satirical scimitar.  So sexy.  It would be like putting Batman and Deadpool at the same table, ready to hash out the meaning of life over a drink or two.

First up, Dostoyevsky, who rolled onto the scene on November 11, 1821.  This Russian maestro didn’t just write massive tomes; he cracked open the human brain and exposed all the beautiful, ugly mess inside.  His novels, like “Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov,” are a wild ride through morality, redemption, an existential dread.  That said, both books can be unwieldy and daunting.  You would not be blamed for looking at their lengths alone and running for the nearest bar.  So let’s talk about my favorite of his, “Notes from the Underground,” which is basically a philosophical gut-punch.  First published in 1864, it’s often considered one of the first existential novels, delving deep into the mind of its protagonist, known as the “underground man,” who’s as complex and contradictory as they come.  He’s a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg, grappling with spiraling thoughts about alienation and resentment toward society.  He’s the precursor to the modern anti-hero.

The book is divided into two parts.  The first part, “Underground,” is a monologue where the protagonist presents his philosophy, his disdain for the rationalist and utopian ideas of his time.  He challenges the notion that human behavior can be predicted or controlled by logic or reason, focusing on the irrationality and unpredictability of human nature.

The second part, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” provides a narrative that illustrates the underground man’s interactions with others, highlighting his social awkwardness and self-destructive tendencies.  The whole thing is amazing.  If you’re ready to stare into the abyss of the human psyche, “Notes from the Underground” is your literary gateway drug.

Now, fast forward a century or so, and we find Kurt Vonnegut being born on November 11, 1922.  Vonnegut’s writing held up a mirror to society and cackled while we all noticed our own absurdity, often for the first time.  With classics like “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Cat’s Cradle,” he masterfully mixed humor with a poignant critique of humanity’s ridiculous escapades.

“Slaughterhouse-Five” follows Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist who becomes “unstuck in time” after being abducted by aliens.  Yep, aliens.  As Billy bounces between moments in his life, including his time as a soldier in World War II and his capture in the firebombing of Dresden, Vonnegut blends science fiction with a hard-hitting antiwar narrative.  If, like me, you have certain psychic itches that can only be scratched by spending long periods of time thinking about time, free will, and destiny, Vonnegut’s your guy.

Cheers to Uncles Fy and Kurt, OG literary badasses.

N.P.: “Wild Flower” – The Cult

And today we shift our focus to verse, as today’s birthday boy is T.S. Eliot.  Born on September 26, 1888, Eliot wasn’t just a poet; he was the maestro of modernism with his work always tapdancing right on the that thin line between comprehension and chaos.

Eliot was the unlikely rock star of the poetry world, something that we’ve not seen in this country for an unfortunately long time, mostly because modern Americans don’t read.  He was a Harvard-educated intellectual who had a “knack for turning the mundane into the magnificent.”  But be was no stuffy academic…his interests ran toward the peculiar, and his wit was a sharp as one of my throwing knives.

I’ve always found it strange that the mastermind behind “The Waste Land” was the same guy who wrote “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” which inspired the frankly overrated Broadway hit “Cats.”  I prefer when Eliot sticks to brooding existentialism instead of whimsical cats, but whatever.

Of course, Eliot’s eccentricities didn’t end with his love for cats.  He insisted on sartorially elegance for himself, which set him apart rather dramatically from his bohemian peers.  It was like me not having any tattoos: rebellion wrapped in a three-piece suit.

T.S. Eliot left the U.S. for London in 1914 primarily to study philosophy at Oxford.  However, he was also eager to immerse himself in the more vibrant literary scene of Europe, which was more aligned with his modernist aspirations.  He wanted to hang out with influential writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Ezra Pound, who became Eliot’s mentor.  In true rebel form, he eventually became a British citizen (actually, the British don’t have citizens…they have subjects, so I don’t know how actually rebellious this was).

Eliot had a day job working at a bank, which seems rather surreal…that mind forced to focus on banking all day.

Cheers, Tom!

N.P.: “Bohemian Rhapsody – OG Mix” – Puscifer