Discuss Keats' view of "Negative Capability" as an essential element of poetry.

Negative capability is a term that was first coined by Keats, and is used to refer to the ability that humans have to transcend and think beyond the way that humans are conditioned to think. It is a phrase that refers to the power of imagination in relation to our ability as humans to think above and beyond our contexts. Keats used it in one instance, where he was criticising Coleridge, who, in the opinion of Keats, wrote his poetry in order to search for truth and as a result missed out on beauty and its elevating affects.

Negative capability can be seen in many of the poems of Keats and is clearly something that is vital to his poetry, as they all focus on nature or beauty and the ways that they allow humans to transcend their limitations. Note, for example, the following example from "Bright Star!":

No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest...

For the speaker, the power of the imagination allows him to look at the moon and imagine possessing a combination of the moon's steadfastness and the human ability to be intimate and close to capture the moment he is enjoying so deeply forever. Negative capability is something therefore that lies at the very heart of the poetry of Keats in the way that it allows humans to escape the restrictions of their lives and imagine and experience different worlds.