Call me grouchy and unreasonable if you will, but I hate movies about poets. Even the thought of having to sit through this new movie about Keats makes my stomach hurt. Per usual, the movie will be all about romance and nothing about poetry, although I am picturing a bit of sonnet-reading by candlelight, alongside a few soulful looks and a throbbing bosom.

The thing about these kinds of movies (and wasn't there also a Plath-Hughes one a few years ago?) is that the plot must necessarily revolve around physical drama. Nothing is more boring than watching a writer write, so instead we have to watch the writer take part in a hot love affair, preferably tragic. This makes the writer more like a fictional character and less like a writer. The sight of Plath putting her head in the oven or tubercular Keats expiring in Rome might indeed make scintillating drama, but to pretend that it reveals anything about genius is foolish. Genius is what happened when they crossed out one verb and penciled in another.