By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
George Herbert (1593-1633) is one of the greatest devotional poets in English literature; he is also associated with the Metaphysical Poets of the seventeenth century. ‘Jordan (I)’ is one of his most famous poems, and concerns itself with the role of poetry itself. What follows is a very short analysis of ‘Jordan (I)’ (sometimes known as ‘Jordan 1’), in terms of its language, meaning, and themes.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Hippopotamus’ is one of T. S. Eliot’s quatrain poems, written just after the First World War and published in his 1919 volume, Poems. By turns comical and serious, sincere and playful, high satirical and almost nonsense-like, ‘The Hippopotamus’ shows a very different T. S. Eliot from the one we glimpse in The Waste Land. It is even more interesting as a satire against the Church in light of Eliot’s later conversion to the Church of England, in 1927. You can read ‘The Hippopotamus’ here; below is our analysis.
The ‘quatrain’ poems which make up all but one of the English poems in Poems (the volume also contains a few poems written in French) were inspired by the French example of Théophile Gautier (1811-72), whose volume Émaux et Camées Eliot had been encouraged to read by Ezra Pound. The hard, sculptured feel to these quatrain poems was the result of Pound’s influence: this precise and controlled kind of poetic form was something which Pound thought Eliot could work with to good effect.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Thought-Fox’ is one of the most famous poems by Ted Hughes (1930-98). It is also one of the most celebrated poetic accounts of the act of writing poetry, or rather, more accurately, trying to write poetry and the arrival of inspiration. You can read ‘The Thought-Fox’ here. Below we sketch out our interpretation of the poem, analysing its language and meaning.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Christina Rossetti (1830-94) was one of the leading female poets of the Victorian era. Her ‘Song’, beginning ‘When I am dead, my dearest’, remains one of her best-loved poems. In this post we offer a short summary and analysis of ‘When I am dead, my dearest’ (as it’s sometimes known), paying particular attention to its language and meaning.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Sad Steps’ was completed by Philip Larkin in April 1968, and was published in his final volume of poetry, High Windows (1974). Larkin was in his mid-forties when he wrote ‘Sad Steps’, and the poem analyses and explores the poet’s awareness of middle age, and the loss of his youth. You can read ‘Sad Steps’ here.