Negative Capability 

By DAVID LEHMAN

Imagine the money the Keats estate would have made
if they could have copyrighted “negative capability” 
and charged permission fees for its use, nearly as pricey
as Kant’s “categorical imperative,” which rests on the solidity 
of logic while “negative capability” stands for 
a destination you arrive at despite signs that say “dead end.”
A letter Keats sent to his brothers Tom and George
in 1817 is the ultimate authority, for it was there that he coined
“negative capability” for being in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, 
without any irritable reaching for fact.” Consider King Lear. 
The poetry is sublime and we love it despite the ugly atrocities 
without denying they exist. And therefore “beauty is truth,”
or “ripeness is all,” which, according to Yale’s Cleanth Brooks
in The Well Wrought Urn, means pretty much the same thing. 

 

 

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

David Lehman is editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry and series editor of The Best American Poetry. His books include The Morning Line: Poems and One Hundred Autobiographies: A Memoir.

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Negative Capability 

Related Posts

Cover of Willa Cather's O Pioneers!

What We’re Reading: August 2025

AIDAN COOPER
A duck paddling in a pond is a memorial to the passage of time; winter snow doesn’t represent death nor sleep, but rather life at its most ferocious. With Cather, the world is flush with a force so powerful it can’t be predicted or contracted or even known, only guessed at and trusted in. A magic rushes from every stream, from every hog’s bark.

Image of a tomato seedling

Talks with the Besieged: Documentary Poetry from Occupied Ukraine  

ALEX AVERBUCH
Russians are already in Starobilsk / what nonsense / Dmytrovka and Zhukivka – who is there? / half a hundred bears went past in the / direction of Oleksiivka / write more clearly / what’s the situation in Novoaidar? / the bridge by café Natalie got blown up / according to unconfirmed reports

A Tour of America

MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
This afternoon I am well, thank you. / Walking down Main Street in Danville, KY. / The heavy wind so sensuous. / Last night I fell- / ated four different men back in / Philadelphia season lush and slippery / with time and leaves. / Keep your eyes to yourself, yid. / As a kid, I pledged only to engage / in onanism on special holidays.