Although best known for the creation of the detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle did not only write works of mystery and of adventure – he was also a rather successful poet. This is a collection of poems written by the famous author. – Summary by Carolin [chương_files]
Known as the Bard of the Yukon and as a people’s poet, Robert Service immortalized his experience with the Yukon and its gold rush and this collection of poetry. While some poems are anecdotal and amusing, others capture the raw brilliance that frontiers evoke and the ever pioneering spirit of man. Alternately titled Songs of a Sourdough in the United Kingdoms. (Introduction by Becky) [chương_files]
A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman. A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at Housman’s own expense after several publishers had turned it down. At first the book sold slowly, but during the Second Boer War, Housman’s nostalgic depiction of rural life and young men’s early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a bestseller. Later, World War I further increased its popularity. (Summary from Wikipedia) [chương_files]
W. H. Davies was a Welsh poet and writer. Davies spent a significant part of his life in the United Kingdom and United States, becoming one of the most popular poets of his time. Davies is usually considered one of the Georgian poets, although much of his work is atypical of the style and themes adopted by others of the genre. – Summary by Wikipedia [chương_files]
A collection of poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, his first book of poetry after having become poet laureate in 1850. Among the “other poems” is The Charge of the Light Brigade, the most well-known poem in this collection. However, the bulk of the text is the poem Maud, which explores love, courtship, loss, grief, and purpose through the eyes of the emotionally unstable poet narrator. (Summary by TriciaG) [chương_files]
Drum Taps is the next collection of poems published by Walt Whitman after his famous Leaves of Grass. This collection is a direct response to Whitman’s personal observations of the Civil War, many of which come from his volunteer efforts in wartime hospitals. Despite the miseries of war described, Whitman’s poems in Drum Taps assert a steady patriotism in favor of Lincoln’s war effort. Interestingly, the 1915 edition used for this reading includes an introduction from the Times Literary Supplement which draws analogies between the Civil War and the current throes of World War I, enlisting Whitman posthumously as a supporter of the Allied campaign against Germany. – Summary by Expatriate [chương_files]
Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The “aspects” to which he refers in the title are as diverse as “the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance.” Much of the verse is stylistically conventional (more so than modern readers perhaps expect from the author of Moby-Dick), but the shifting subjectivities and unresolved traumas that unfold in the collection merit repeated contemplation. Melville’s Battle-Pieces do not offer a neatly versified narrative of the Civil War but rather kaleidoscopic glimpses of shifting emotions and ambivalent reflections of post-war America.(Professor Meredith Neuman) [chương_files]
“The time came when there was a birthday. Every day was no excitement and a birthday was added, it was added on Monday, this made the memory clear, this which was a speech showed the chair in the middle where there was copper. “A kind of green a game in green and nothing flat nothing quite flat and more round, nothing a particular color strangely, nothing breaking the losing of no little piece. “The teasing is tender and trying and thoughtful.” Extracts from Tender Buttons. [chương_files]
This is a collection of French poems by Charles Baudelaire, originally titled “Les Fleurs du mal.” It was popular in the symbolist and modernist movements of the 19th century, and the poems are about decadence and eroticism. (Summary by Assaf Koss) [chương_files]
This little gem of a book contains twelve poems about World War I. There is more to it than its intrinsic value as verse. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) set three of the poems (The Fourth Of August, To Women, For The Fallen) in his cantata The Spirit of England (1915-1917). Since its composing and musical setting, For The Fallen has held an honored place in every November 11th Remembrance Day for Britain and the Commonwealth (Memorial Day for Americans). Moved by the opening of the Great War and the already high number of casualties of the British Expeditionary Force, in 1914 Laurence Binyon wrote his For the Fallen, with its Ode of Remembrance, as he was visiting the cliffs on the north Cornwall coast,… The third and fourth verses of the poem (although often just the fourth) have so been claimed as a tribute to all casualties of war, regardless of nation. – Summary by Wikipedia and david wales [chương_files]
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