By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Whether we’re suffering from insomnia or asleep as soon as our head hits the pillow, whether we get too little or too much of it, sleep is a big part of our lives. So it’s unsurprising that so many poets have explored sleep in their work. Here are ten of the greatest poems about sleep from all of English literature.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Matthew Arnold (1822-88) is largely remembered for one great Victorian poem: ‘Dover Beach’. But he wrote a number of other classic poems beside this. What are the best half-dozen of Matthew Arnold’s poems? We offer our recommendations below. ‘Dover Beach’ is there, as are a few other more famous titles, but we also include a couple which, although not as celebrated as the others, are, we believe, among Arnold’s best poetry.
‘Below the surface-stream, shallow and light’.
This poem is almost like a fragment of blank verse, its five unrhymed iambic pentameter lines appearing to offer a brief insight into the speaker’s mind, though this thought isn’t taken anywhere or developed into some grand psychodrama or narrative. In a curious way, the poem reads like a Victorian precursor to the Imagist poetry of the early twentieth century. If you want a nice short introduction to Arnold’s poetry, this is the perfect place to start.
Interesting George R. R. Martin trivia
1. Contrary to popular belief, George R. R. Martin’s middle initials are not a homage to J. R. R. Tolkien. Although George R. R. Martin is often referred to as ‘the American Tolkien’, it would appear that the two middle initials shared by both masters of fantasy literature are a coincidence and not a direct tribute to Tolkien on Martin’s part. Martin was born George Raymond Martin, and adopted a further middle name Richard upon his Catholic confirmation at age 13 (as, in fact, Martin himself confirms – as it were – in this video, at around 8:30 minutes in).
Interesting trivia about the Maigret author
1. Georges Simenon, creator of Maigret, is one of the most prolific novelists of all time. The Belgian author Georges Simenon (1903-1989) published over 200 novels under 17 different pseudonyms and a further 220 novels under his own name. He also produced three volumes of autobiography. However, he’s best remembered for creating the detective Jules Maigret. (What distinguishes Maigret from other detectives such as Sherlock Holmes is the fact that he doesn’t appear to use analytical ‘deduction’ to get his results. He’s more of a ‘plodder’.) Simenon was born on Friday 13 February, 1903, in Liège, Belgium. Because his mother was superstitious, his birth date was recorded a day early. To this day, Thursday 12 February is often erroneously cited as his date of birth.
Some tips for the close reading of poetry, by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Close reading’ is not as straightforward as it may appear. Many readers of poetry, for instance, may have encountered ‘close readings’ of poems which are anything but. They’re not so much ‘close’ as ‘at arm’s length’. How do you close-read a poem? F. R. Leavis was one of the most influential literary critics writing in English in the twentieth century. Yet he often claimed he was performing a ‘close reading’ of a poem which was actually, at best, a sort of flirtatious dalliance with the words and meaning of the text.