Interesting Literature

10 of the Best Poems about the Future

Selected by Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Predictions are always difficult’, an anonymous Danish person (probably not Niels Bohr) is said to have quipped – ‘especially about the future.’ Poets have often dwelt on the past, whether nostalgically or more dispassionately; they have dealt with the current times they have lived through; but they have also sometimes turned their thoughts to the (as yet unknown) world of the future.

Here are ten of the greatest poems to consider the future.

A Short Analysis of Sir Philip Sidney’s Sonnet 67: ‘Hope, art thou true, or dost thou flatter me?’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Astrophil and Stella is the first long sonnet sequence in English literature. Although other poets had already written sonnet sequences – namely the largely forgotten Anne Locke and the unjustly neglected George Gascoigne – it was the all-round Renaissance man Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), in the early 1580s, who first unleashed the potential of the themed sonnet sequence in English, using the cycle to tell the story of the poet’s doomed love for a married woman.

What is Literary Allusion?

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

What is allusion? And what role does allusion play in works of literature? It’s a key part of what many writers do, so it’s worth defining ‘allusion’ and exploring some of the issues that arise from its use in literary texts.

First, though, a handy one-sentence definition might help: allusion is when a writer calls into play the work of another writer, usually without explicitly mentioning that other writer by name. If the writer is mentioned, it becomes a reference. Contrast these two (made-up) examples:

10 of the Best Poems to Memorise and Learn by Heart

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

What qualities make a poem especially good for committing to memory? In our extensive experience of compiling lists of poems for all occasions and needs, we’d say that ideally, the best poems to memorise or ‘learn by heart’ should 1) have a fairly regular rhythm or metre (as this can aid the memory), 2) rhyme, and 3) be fairly short.

The poems we’ve compiled below all fit these criteria, so if you’re looking to impress your friends or increase your knowledge of poetry, these ten poems are great places to start.

A Summary and Analysis of Wallace Stevens’ ‘A Postcard from the Volcano’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Postcard from the Volcano’ is one of Wallace Stevens’s most famous poems. It is also one of his more accessible. The poem was published in Stevens’s 1936 collection Ideas of Order. You can read ‘A Postcard from the Volcano’ here before proceeding to our analysis below, which homes in on the poem’s form, language, imagery, and themes. Although it is more straightforward than many of Stevens’s other poems, there is still much to discuss and unpick.