By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
How can one even attempt to offer an analysis of ‘Anecdote of the Jar’, one of the most baffling and elusive short poems of the twentieth century? Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) wrote ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ in 1918 and it was published a year later.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What are the best English poetry anthologies? And how would one define ‘best’? The answer, of course, is that it’s always going to be subjective to a point. But it’s worth having a go at picking the greatest anthologies from which the poetry fan can choose. The poetry anthology is a great way not only of revisiting old favourites, but of discovering new poets. In this post, we’ve turned our attention to a kind of book that provides a highly valuable service for the poetry-lover.
A summary of a great Larkin poem
‘Afternoons’, like a number of Philip Larkin’s other poems, treats the theme of the passing of youth and the setting-in of middle age. But rather than focusing on his own middle age (Larkin was in his mid-thirties when he wrote the poem, in 1959), Larkin examines the lives of others, analysing the existence of a group of young mothers he observes at the local recreation ground. You can read ‘Afternoons’ here.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘From fairest creatures we desire increase’: so begins Sonnet 1 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. This opening sonnet is all about procreation, but also, perhaps, sexual pleasure (including solitary sexual pleasure – about which we say more below). For the next 154 weeks (or nearly three years, in other words), we’re going to offer an analysis of one of William Shakespeare‘s sonnets every Monday.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Matthew Arnold (1822-88) is best-remembered as a poet, although very few of his poems remain widely known. ‘Dover Beach’ is the most famous of these. But he led a curious life and has left us with some lasting legacies, so in this post we intend to offer a very short biography of Matthew Arnold, taking in the highlights of his life and work.
Matthew Arnold was born in Surrey, England on Christmas Eve 1822, the son of Thomas Arnold, influential and celebrated schoolteacher and Headmaster of Rugby School, where young Matthew studied. Thomas Arnold would later be immortalised in the Thomas Hughes classic Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857). Arnold – Matthew, that is – had to wear leg braces for two years during his childhood to correct crooked legs.