ABBA ABBA is about two poets who may or may not have met in Rome in 18 20-1821. One was John Keats, who was dying in a house on the Spanish S teps. The other was Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli a great poet, little kno wn outside Rome, since he wrote in the rough, dirty, blasphemous diale ct of the Roman streets. The first part of the book is about Keats and Belli. The second part presents Belli himself as poet, translated by Mr Burgess. If Belli knew Keats, did Keats influence him? If Keats kne w Belli, would Keats, if he had lived, have become a sort of English B elli? Hard and unanswerable questions. Anthony Burgess means his book merely to be enjoyable and perhaps touching.