Recommendations – Page 23 – Interesting Literature

10 Short Amy Lowell Poems

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) is perhaps best-known for being the figurehead and ringleader for Imagism after Ezra Pound, who had founded that movement, grew jaded with it and moved on to Vorticism.

Although her poems were less ‘classical’ and restrained than those by Pound, Lowell’s poetry is often true to Imagist ideals of brevity and vividness, and the ten poems included in this blog post bear this out. There are ten of the finest short Amy Lowell poems – we hope you enjoy them.

10 of the Best A. E. Housman Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) didn’t write a great deal of poetry, but the poems he left behind are loved by millions around the world. But what are Housman’s best poems? Drawing up a ‘top ten’ has proved difficult. We’ve included some of his most famous poems, but have also included some of the poems which, we feel, show Housman doing what he did best: tugging at the heartstrings through skilfully crafted verse.

10 of the Best Elegies Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an elegy as ‘A song or poem of lamentation, esp. for the dead; a memorial poem’. Death, and memorialising the dead, has long been a feature of poetry.

Here are ten of the best elegies from English poetry, from the Middle Ages to the 1980s. What would you add to our list of the greatest elegiac poems in English? (Shelley’s Adonais, by the way, would have been number 11 on this list if we’d extended it beyond a top ten.)

10 of the Best Classical Plays Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

For over 2,000 years, the Greek dramatist Menander’s works were lost. Then, in the twentieth century, they were rediscovered. Menander was praised by his contemporaries as a great comic playwright – some even said the greatest, beating even Aristophanes into second place. But when Menander’s work was rediscovered in the twentieth century, it was something of a disappointment. Translators and Greek scholars were lukewarm in their praise for the newly discovered Menander material. He was, perhaps, the first writer to be the victim of over-hype surrounding his work.

All of this makes us wonder: which are the greatest plays of the classical era? What are the finest ancient Greek and Roman plays? Here is our pick of ten of the best. We’ve tried to offer as great a range of authors as possible here, so have restricted ourselves to just two entries by the same playwright (which proved difficult with some playwrights who wrote a number of classic plays).

10 of the Best Poems about Forests and Trees

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Looking for classic poems based on a woodland theme? In this post we’ve selected ten of the best poems about trees and forests, written by some of the most famous poets in all of English literature. They range from poems set in symbolic gardens to poems about very specific trees that have been felled, to poems about trees which prompt thoughts of mortality and the brevity of life.