Interesting Literature

Interesting Facts about War Poets

By Ana McLaughlin

As the hundred year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme approaches (1^st July 2016), here’s a look at the most interesting biographies of our greatest war poets, and some surprising facts you might not know about them.

Lawrence Binyon (1869-1943) wrote ‘For The Fallen’, with its immortal fourth verse:

‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.’

Five of the Best Books about T. S. Eliot

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

T. S. Eliot is not the sort of poet you can understand in isolation. True, we can read the poetry and get a great deal from it, but our appreciation of, say, The Waste Land or ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ is intensified and improved with the assistance of a trusty literary guide, such as a good critic or biographer. Here are our five recommendations of some of the best books that have been written about T. S. Eliot’s life and work.

10 Classic W. H. Auden Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) wrote a great deal of poetry, with many of the best Auden poems being written in the 1930s. In this post, we’ve taken on the difficult task of finding the ten greatest Auden poems – difficult because, although certain poems naturally rise to the surface and proclaim their greatness, there are quite a few of those.

Here’s our top ten. Are there any classic poems by Auden that we’ve left off the list? Follow the title of each poem to read it.

Seven Interesting Facts about John Pendleton Kennedy

In this guest post, Dr Peter Templeton offers some fascinating facts about a largely forgotten American author, John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870).

It isn’t out of the ordinary for an author who is popular in their own day to fall from grace in later years. Sometimes this is accelerated or amplified because progress leaves certain views – and, indeed, authors – looking decidedly out of step with what is now accepted, as was the case with a lot of antebellum Southern writing. Of these, one of the most well-connected and fundamentally interesting writers of his day was the author, lawyer and statesman John Pendleton Kennedy. Here a few choice facts about his life and work:

A Summary and Analysis of Hopkins’s ‘Pied Beauty’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Pied Beauty’ belongs to the middle period of the poetic career of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), that period when he had found his distinctive poetic voice but before he became plagued by depression later in his short life. The poem reflects this: ‘Pied Beauty’ is written by a poet who is confident in his style, and in his religious faith. Here are some thoughts on the poem, which might be considered some notes towards an analysis of it.