On Sitting Down with John Keats

Abstract

In this essay I focus on the phenomenon of ‘sitting down’ in Keats's letters and poems. Sitting down, in Keats's personal interactions and poetics, has a range of connotations: these range from exercising individual, focused concentration on the task ahead, to enjoying companionable, shared creativity; from maintaining a certain bedside manner, to establishing a long-distance relationship with siblings; from reluctantly resigning oneself to an invalid existence, to summoning the resourceful energy to compose poetry. For Keats, the expression of sitting down points to the required stillness for the imagination to take flight in poetry, but it also features prominently in self-portrayals throughout his correspondence. This essay demonstrates how sitting down, for Keats, is a transformative act with far more dynamic connotations than is usually assumed.