T. E. Hulme

A Short Analysis of T. E. Hulme’s ‘Conversion’

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Dr Oliver Tearle’s summary of a classic imagist poem

T. E. Hulme’s poetry offers something different from the poetry being written by his near-contemporaries, ‘Georgian’ poets such as Rupert Brooke and John Drinkwater – or, indeed, the surviving ‘Victorian’ poets such as Thomas Hardy. ‘Conversion’ is not quite as famous as several of Hulme’s other poems, but it was one of the six poems he allowed Ezra Pound to reprint in the facetiously titled ‘The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme’, at the end of Pound’s 1912 volume Ripostes. Here is ‘Conversion’, with a few comments on it, that are designed to serve as preliminary analysis of its form, meaning, and imagery.

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A Short Analysis of T. E. Hulme’s ‘Autumn’

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Dr Oliver Tearle’s summary of a classic modernist poem

‘Autumn’ by T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) is arguably the first modern poem in the English language. Written in 1908, it shows something different from the poetry being written by the Georgian poets such as Rupert Brooke and John Drinkwater, or the surviving ‘Victorian’ poets such as Thomas Hardy. Here is this short gem of a poem, with a few comments on it, that are designed to serve as preliminary analysis of its form, meaning, and imagery.

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A Short Analysis of T. E. Hulme’s ‘The Embankment’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) was an influential poet and thinker in the first few years of the twentieth century. He left behind only a handful of short poems – our pick of which can be read here – but he revolutionised the way English poetry approached issues of rhyme, metre, and imagery. Few before Hulme had thought seriously to liken the moon to a child’s balloon or the ruddy face of a farmer, but Hulme was resolute that poetry, in the hands of the Victorians, had become stale and old, and needed to be reinvented.

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10 Short Poems by T. E. Hulme

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

We’ve written about T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) before, in this previous post on his importance as a modern poet. In this follow-up post, we’ve put together ten of Hulme’s shortest and sweetest poems – most of which were written in around 1908-9 when Hulme was in his mid-twenties.

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T. E. Hulme: The First Modern Poet?

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Who wrote the first modern English poem? When – and, indeed, where – was it written? There are numerous candidates, but one could do worse than propose the answer ‘T. E. Hulme, in 1908, on the back of a hotel bill.’ This poem, ‘A City Sunset’, would, along with a handful of others by Hulme, … Read more