Résultats lu par "Gideon Wagner" dans Toutes les catégories

John Donne was born on 22nd January 1572 in London into a Roman Catholic family when Catholicism was illegal in England and there was turbulence and unrest with both state and church throughout much of Europe. His father, also named John, died when he was four, and his mother, Elizabeth Heywood, married a wealthy widower, ensuring the family were looked after. He received a good education in both Oxford and Cambridge but was unable to obtain a degree without taking the Oath of Supremacy, which as a Catholic he refused to do.

William Cowper was born 26th November 1731 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Traumatically he and his brother, John, were the only siblings, out of seven, to survive infancy. His mother died when he was six. In 1763 he was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords. With the examinations approaching, Cowper had a mental breakdown. He tried to commit suicide three times, and a period of depression and insanity seemed to settle on him. The end of this unhappy period saw him finding refuge in evangelical Christianity, becoming the inspiration behind his much-loved hymns.

Adelaide Anne Procter was born on 30th October, 1825 at 25 Bedford Square in the Bloomsbury district of London. Her literary career began whilst still a teenager. Many of her poems were published by the great Charles Dickens in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round before being later published in book form.

Over the far horizon the blanket of night begins to slowly dissolve. The sun is once more on its daily journey across the heavens. The light begins to sharpen and increase in intensity, revealing the landscape. Morning has begun, and dazed heads and sleepy faces come to terms with the new day. Our poets capture the mood, the emotions and all manner of other details in their descriptions of this time. But then with the calibre of wordsmiths such as Tennyson, Wordsworth, Milton, Southey, Donne and many more besides, we are almost spoilt.

Michael Drayton was born in 1563 at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. The facts of his early life remain unknown. Drayton first published, in 1590, a volume of spiritual poems: The Harmony of the Church. Ironically the Archbishop of Canterbury seized almost the entire edition and had it destroyed. In 1593 he published Idea: The Shepherd's Garland, nine pastorals celebrating his own love-sorrows under the poetic name of Rowland. This was later expanded to a 64-sonnet cycle.

Sometimes we just want the best. But that involves choices, judgements, decisions. And that all depends on our feelings, our mood at the time. Even more so with poetry. Would we like a little more pathos, or love, or humour with that? Can we only choose one Keats? And ’If’? Surely Kipling wrote something else? So difficult to decide. This one or that? Is it easier to choose your 50 favourite poets or your 50 favourite poems?

Keats. A short life but a legacy of works that few, if any, can rival. And of course his end was to be tragically Romantic. Keats was returning one night to his home in Hampstead when he coughed. He coughed a single drop of blue blood upon his hand and said, ‘I know the colour of that blood, it is arterial blood, it is my death warrant, I must die’. And so it was that tuberculosis took its slow, devastating hold.

John Clare was born on 13th July, 1793 in Helpston, a few miles north of Peterborough. Schooled only until the age of 12, his early career was that of agricultural labourer, pot boy, gardener and lime burner. His early life of hardship and frequent malnutrition led to his diminutive stature of five feet and contributed to his later health problems. In 1820 his first poems were published and began to earn him a reputation as the 'Northamptonshire Peasant Poet'. His poetry sold well, but only occasionally did that and other incomes keep his head above water.

Night. The day has gone. Departed. And the dark embrace, the inky shadows of night descend. For many a time to unwind and slumber. For some a nagging doubt that all is not well. That some primeval and primordial happening may yet go bump in the night. But for our poets the night is a time of wonder and imagination as well as many other emotions and feelings. Among our ranks of gloried talents are Keats, Coleridge, William Morris, DH Lawrence, Whitman, Longfellow and many more besides. Their descriptions capture what they see and feel as perhaps only a poet can.

The Graveyard Poets, also known as 'Churchyard Poets' or 'the Boneyard Boys' began in pre-Romantic days with a leaning towards gloom, melancholy and the general decay of churchyards. It should be remembered that in the 18th century city graveyards were a teeming mass of overcrowding and disease, their country brethren better but hardly idylls of worship. What would eventually lead to the Gothic literary genre began, in the main, with reflections by Christian clergymen upon God, mortality and the assumed afterlife.

Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on April 5th, 1837, in London, into a wealthy Northumbrian family. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, but did not complete a degree. In 1860 Swinburne published two verse dramas but achieved his first literary success in 1865 with Atalanta in Calydon, written in the form of classical Greek tragedy. The following year Poems and Ballads brought him instant notoriety. He was now identified with 'indecent' themes and the precept of art for art's sake.

Benjamin 'Ben' Jonson was born in June 1572. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair and his equally accomplished lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, including time in jail and a penchant for switching faiths, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets.

Robert Louis Stevenson. In the Scottish canon to be placed alongside Burns is high praise indeed but it’s a rightful place for one of Scotland’s finest novelists and here, poets. Born in 1850 he managed to cram much into his 44 years travelling widely to France, The States, Samoa and the South Seas.

Amidst all our dreams and ambitions from cradle to grave is the wanderlust of travel. To see the world, to experience different cultures and new lands.

The seas and oceans have a mystical power over us: From a playful day at the beach to the hysterical waves of a storm, this ever-changing element evokes both beauty and fear. Its great mass, its shimmering beauty, its raging howl, and all in colours from blue to grey to green and crystal clear. In these collections of verse our poets - including Tennyson, Swinburne, Keats, Shelley, and many others - explore the relationship between ourselves and the great mystical waters.

Many giants of literature originate from the shores of the emerald isles: Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, the Brontes, and Austen, to which most people would willingly add the name Thomas Hardy. Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and The Mayor of Casterbridge are but three of his literary masterpieces. But let us go further and add to his canon his poems....

At this time of the year, as the nights close in and the temperature drops, winter seems like a season that nobody really enjoys, and we look forward all the more to spring. For many children, however, it is the bounty of Christmas that steals their attention, and for others the renewal of the New Year. But for Nature it is a pause for breath, to take stock of what has gone by in the year to date and ready herself for the energies and dramatic development to the landscape that spring will bring.

For many of us Autumn, or as the Americans would say; Fall is the season of mixed emotions. Summer's long days are replaced by a chill in the air. The colours on the trees and fields ripen to warmer hues and the harvest is brought safely home. Yet with this bounty there is the knowledge that Nature is turning her attention to the harder, colder Winter month's ahead.

I should be whispering this because Halloween is almost upon us. A time of Witches, Ghouls and Hauntings and all kinds of scary things that come out the evening before All Saints Day to wreak havoc... I'm glad you're listening so let us begin.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts. Rightly regarded as a major American poet, her life was sheltered, introverted, and reclusive. Despite writing over 1800 poems, only a dozen or so were published during her lifetime. Her structures and wordings are at times difficult to get to grips with, though recurring themes of religion and death certainly shadow many of her works.