On Keats’ Sonnet “Bright Star”

The sonnet begins: “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.” The first spondee “bright star” is like a great jazz horn player blowing two clear, breath-filled notes to start the song, a musical call powerful enough to reach the sky. There is an echo of the word “star” in the rearranged letters of the word “art” that closes the line. As if to remind us how wide and flexible (like the bright sky!) art can be, or to express the wish on the poet’s part that his art be solid. No sooner has Keats finished this clear, pure opening salvo then he negates it in the second line: “Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night.” How wild to start the second line with the negation, in part, of the desperate wish of the first! I read it as a kind of commitment to honesty about consciousness –the speed of thought, the discontent that’s stitched all through even the wishes we might experience, initially, as pure.

— Sarah Stickney, Faculty Member