If you ever meet someone who studies English literature, chances are they have an interest in a particular genre, time period, or theory. While I admire a variety of authors, styles, and periods, I always felt a deep connection to the writings produced by authors of the Romantic period. I spent the third year of my undergraduate studies in the basement of Northrop Frye with Professor Alan Bewell, a master of this moment in history and writing.Our course discussed William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and, my personal favourite, John Keats.But there seemed to be something all too familiar in what occupied their minds and the way that they expressed themselves. Romanticism is defined by taking the emotions one feels and channeling them into art. These authors also protested for individual freedom, for strengthening the connection to the natural world, and against industrialization, modernization, and urbanization. Yet it feels like this movement didn’t end after the eighteenth century, because even today, we are the Romantics. Every time you find yourself wishing life were simpler, or that you lived in another decade and dreaming about the days where you can flip through the records at Sonic Boom, you are embodying the core ideas behind Romanticism. While we may joke about it, this can be summed up with four words: “reject modernity, embrace tradition.” Even if we look back a couple of decades, this motto was seen in the movement of 1960’s singer-songwriter and folk genres.
The artists from this time and genre became the poets of the modern world with their words and protests, accompanied by the fingerpicking of acoustic guitars, glassy piano keys, and a simple backbeat. The similarity between the art produced during the Romantic period and the 1960s became apparent after rereading John Keats’ poem To Autumn and listening to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon album. This British singer-songwriter passed away at the age of twenty-six, well before he would ever see the critical acclaim his music would garner over the following decades, let alone the use of his song in a Volkswagen commercial.
Drake was born into a family of music admirers. Both of his parents played the piano, but it was Drake’s mother, Molly, who taught him how to play and encouraged him to compose songs. He later learned the clarinet and saxophone, then proceeded to teach himself how to play the guitar, where he worked on his finger-picking techniques, which would become a signature style he’d incorporate into all of his albums. Drake enrolled in Fitzwilliam College of Cambridge, where he majored in English literature and took a particular interest in Romantic period authors. While he gradually lost interest in his studies, there seemed to be something about those authors that enamored Drake, as his lyrics seemed to mirror poets like John Keats. If you compare the two of them, an overwhelming number of similarities arise, making it appear as though Nick Drake was himself a reincarnation of John Keats.
Both of these artists were heavily influenced by the natural world and combined complex thoughts with simplistic images that anyone could relate to. While we appreciate their art decades after they were produced, both of these writers suffered from negative reviews in their times, practically endangering the future of their careers.
In his career, Nick Drake only produced three albums: Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970), and Pink Moon (1972). Drake’s first album Five Leaves Left took almost two years to record. When it was released on June 3, 1969, it didn’t do well commercially, and the reviews were a letdown for him. Similar to Keats, Drake’s first album was released at a rather competitive time in his industry. He worked on all three of his albums with Joe Boyd, an American producer, who also worked with Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, and R.E.M. With Boyd on board, Drake had also been signed through the British-Jamaican label Island Records, who managed British bands like King Crimson, Jethro Tull, and Free. As the label and Boyd found major success with their other acts, this put a strain on Drake’s career, leaving him on the backburner of their priorities. With the combination of a lack of promotion, the influx of ill-informed reviews, and Drake’s shy stage presence, his albums struggled to get the recognition they deserved. After the release of Pink Moon in the winter of 1972, Drake took a break from music, focusing on his mental health, and while he had plans to return to the studio, he passed away on November 25, 1974 at the age of 26. In his lifetime, Drake’s three albums sold fewer than 4,000 copies altogether.
About 200km south of where Nick Drake resided is Moorgate in London, England, the birthplace of John Keats. He was born on October 31 in 1795 and studied medicine at King’s College London. While he was there, Keats began to take an interest in literature and was particularly fascinated with Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, inspiring him to start writing poetry at age nineteen. Hunt published Keats’ poem “O Solitude” in The Examiner, which would be the beginning of his relationship with some of the most renowned poets from this period. While he knew Percy Shelley, Charles Lamb, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keats was best acquainted with Charles Armitage Brown, with whom he’d share the house known as the Wentworth Place. The years following his success in minor publishors throughout England would not be enough to support him financially, and his attempts at gaining recognition on a larger scale were often met with criticism. It was Keats’ poem “Endymion”, whichsuffered from negative reviews, that led him to believe that his career would not be remembered in the years to come. In the winter of 1821, Keats passed away from tuberculosis at 25.
Both of these poets suffered in similar ways. The worst connection between these two is how modest they were in measuring the value of their work, basing their assessments mainly on the criticism that they received. On Nick Drake’s gravestone reads the lyrics from his song “From the Morning”: “Now we rise / And we are everywhere.’’ John Keats is buried in Rome, with his gravestone reading, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Their cynicism toward their work is unfortunate, as many artists have since been inspired by them. For Nick Drake, the work of Keats inspired his lyrics, and in the decades to come, Drake would be an inspiration for the new age of those involved in singer-songwriter and folk genres.
Following the years of Drake’s career, many singer-songwriters began to spread throughout the United States, with folk groups from the 1960s continuing to influence the careers that would arise in the 1970s and further. Some of these artists also existed around the time of Drake’s presence, including the solo acts of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Tim Buckley; duos like Simon & Garfunkle or Ian and Sylvia; and the troops and bands like Peter, Paul and Mary, The Mama’s and the Papa’s, and Crosby Stills Nash and Young. Together, these artists would influence a new generation that would include musicians including Elliot Smith, Jeff Buckley, Conor Oberst, Tamara Lindeman, Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, and even Taylor Swift. The continuation of the genres, complex lyrics, and simple motivation to sing about one’s emotions paired with the influence of poets such as John Keats and musicians like Nick Drake ultimately reminds us of the importance of remembering these writers; though time has gone on, their words, the issues, and the beauties that surrounded them have not died.
Below is a playlist of songs ranging from the late 1960s (when Nick Drake started his career) to 2020—all providing a sense of familiarity to the poets that existed during the Romantic period. Their lyrics can be as simple as discussing the morning rain to taking a Bible passage and adding a twelve-string Rickenbacker before performing it on the Ed Sullivan show. This playlist ends with a bonus track from Taylor Swift’s album, folklore. In the documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Swift explicitly mentions the Lake District in England, and the area’s affect on the poets that lived there as they produced their art. As she discusses the admiration she has for those artists, including William Wordsworth and even John Keats, this song is a perfect way to close the playlist; it reminds us that even a pop-star as major as Swift can become enamored with their work more than a hundred years later, and that their art will continue to receive the praise and adoration it deserves.
Playlist
-To Autumn by John Keats
-From the Morning by Nick Drake
-Who Knows Where the Time Goes? by Fairport Convention
-In the Bleack Mid-Winter by Bert Jensch
-You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere by Bob Dylan
-Girl of Constant Sorrow by Joan Baez
-Catch the Wind by Donovan
-Fairest of the Seasons by Nico
-500 Miles by Peter, Paul, and Mary
-Turn, Turn, Turn! By The Byrds
-Scarborough Fair/Canticle by Simon & Garfunkel
-Today by Jefferson Airplane
-4+20 by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
-Once I Was by Tim Buckley
-In the Early Morning Rain by Ian and Sylvia
-European Blueboy by The Mamas & The Papas
-Harvest by Neil Young
-Thirteen by Big Star
-Corpus Christi Carol by Jeff Buckley
-Into Dust by Mazzy Star
-Angel in the Snow by Elliot Smith
-Old Soul Song (For The New World Order) by Bright Eyes
-How Lucky by Kurt Vile and John Prine
-Way It Is Way It Could Be by Weather Station
-The Joke by Brandi Carlisle
-Chelsea by Phoebe Bridgers
-The Lakes by Taylor Swift
To Autumn by John Keats (Origianlly published in 1820)
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
You may want to edit this a bit. King Crimson, Jethro Tull and Free were as British as tea and crumpets, not American as stated in the articel.