Kevin Young

That section starts with Keats.

And, you know, he died looking out at the Spanish steppes.

And I went and saw him, sort of paid homage to him.

I mean, this was 20 years ago.

And I was always struck by the tiny room, but also the view from his room.

So it was both beautiful and beautiful.

What must it be like to be dying and looking at both beauty and also know you're dying?

I mean, he was well aware and wrote, I think, with this fever because of it.

And there's also his death mask in there.

And so I was always struck by what happens for me in the poem, which is look at it, not look at us.

and that idea of this death mask, which is really for the living.

And those other poets seem alive to me.

Hardy, Blake is one of them.

How do they kind of

become Virgil's in that portion of the poem, which of course is about ascent, you know, in Dante's conception, this idea of this mountain that you're climbing up, the stair, if you will.

And that was really haunting to me.

And that just happened to be the name of the first Keats poem.

So we were off to the races and thinking about, you know, what would that ascent look like?

And again, you know, it's a different kind of flight that the book is interested in.

That's a great question.