By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), or H. D. as she chose to publish, was labelled ‘the perfect imagist’ by various critics and reviewers. Born in the United States, H. D. made her literary name in London, where she was at the centre of the short-lived imagist movement during the First World War.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Although it was a short-lived literary movement, imagism left a long legacy on poetry. Between 1914 and 1917, four annual anthologies of imagist poems appeared, beginning with Des Imagistes, edited by the movement’s founder, Ezra Pound.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘This Is Just to Say’, a 1934 poem written by the American modernist poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), offers itself to the reader as a note left by the poet to his wife. Is this all ‘This Is Just to Say’ is: a note of apology Williams penned to his spouse for eating the plums out of the icebox? Or is there more to this poem, which helps to explain its status as one of the most famous, most quoted, and most parodied poems of the twentieth century?
You can read ‘This Is Just to Say’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ appeared in Harmonium (1923), the first poetry collection of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens, although it had originally been published in an American magazine, Others, in 1917.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Autumn Rain’ is not one of D. H. Lawrence’s most famous poems. He wrote a great deal of poetry, and whilst some of it falls short of the greatness we associate with his novels and short stories, ‘Autumn Rain’ shows his delicate control of poetic syntax and his inventiveness with imagery. Here is ‘Autumn Rain’ and a few words of analysis.