Paradoxical, my dear Watson.

John Keats wrote some of the worst and best poetry I've ever read. An example of the worst: Scare can I scribble on; for lovely airs Are fluttering around the room like doves in pairs. ("Sleep and Poetry," 327-8) And the most ridiculous description of a woman that I have ever read: Enchantress! tell me by this soft embrace, By the most soft completion of thy face, Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes, And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties... I'll give you one guess on what the "milky sovereignties" are. And yet, he manages to write such beautiful lines later on (in his old age of 23 or so). For example, what is quite possibly the coldest stanza in all of English poetry (and with which I'm sympathizing right now): St. Agnes' Eve -- Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. I'm off to cover my milky sovereignties with another sweater and tremble in its woolly folds.