Keats stands as a prophetic precursor behind much in today's radical attempts at cultural and self-transformation. But this side of him has been forgotten, or at least was never taken very seriously. He is remembered, if at all, mostly as a Romantic poet whose value and standing was magnified by his early death. Eclipsed by the lushly sensuous affection of his poems, the real meaning of his life and the greatness of his achievement in poetics--how one makes sense out of experience--has been ignored. Now Andres Rodriguez redresses the balance by granting to Keats' Letters their huge intellectual and spiritual labor. In these Letters, one of the most inspiritng spiritual documents of the West, we see the poet forming and transfroming a passionate life of great joys and sorrows into a self of imagination and power. Book of the Heart grasps the core of Keats' poetical practice of life, uncovering the path of knowledge that the Letters reveal. United with Keats in an imaginative union that is as moving as it is true, Rodriguez presents Keats as a hero of the heart, whose deep life experience oriented him in a unique way toward the world of love, suffering, death, and creativity. C O N T E N T S Preface Introduction: A Noisy, Savage Genius 1. Keat's Letters and the Complex Mind 2. The Penetralium of Mystery 3. The Light of Supreme Darkness 4. From Feathers to Iron 5. The Chamber of Maiden Thought 6. The World out There 7. The Vale of Soul-making 8. Love's Patient, Sleepless Eremite Conclusion: Will and Beauty
