Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse

“When I say this book is a love story, I mean it is about things that cannot be gotten over—like this world, and some of the people in it.”

In 1819, the poet John Keats wrote six poems that would become known as the Great Odes. Some of them—“Ode to a Nightingale,” “To Autumn”—are among the most celebrated poems in the English language. Anahid Nersessian here collects and elucidates each of the odes and offers a meditative, personal essay in response to each, revealing why these poems still...