Tag: Poet

Shakira is a talented lady, no doubt.  Her voice warbles like a bird; she can dance up a storm, and she writes poetry in her native Spanish as a hobby.  That said, I do not think her talents extend to having two birthdays that span years.

Is the Astrology Book and the Poet the same man?

Charles Olson was a postmodern poet, sort of a Jack Kerouac, in verse. Separated by twelve years, both men came from Central Massachusetts, — Olson from Worcester, Kerouac from nearby Lowell – a twenty-mile distance probably shorter if the crow flies. Both men went to Harvard, but Olson was huge: six foot six in his […]

Constantine P. Cavafy, was the pseudonym of Konstantínos Pétrou Kaváfis. He was born April 29, 1863, in Alexandria, Egypt, and died 70 years later on his birthday, April 29, 1933, in Alexandria. His parents were both from the Greek community in Constantinople (now Istanbul) Turkey. Historically, this was Anatolia.

Our header image is William Blake’s rendition of Paradise Lost — written for the poem.

Who was Tennyson? Alfred Tennyson was the most popular poet of the Victorian age. With royal patronage, Queen Victoria made Tennyson Poet Laureate in 1850 for his poetry defined an era. There was a time when his poems, particularly the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. were […]

In Autumn Moonlight   In autumn moonlight, when the white air wanIs fragrant in the wake of summer hence,‘Tis sweet to sit entranced, and muse thereonIn melancholy and godlike indolence:When the proud spirit, lull’d by mortal primeTo fond pretence of immortality.Vieweth all moments from the birth of time,All things whate’er have been or yet shall […]

Marc Jones has this incorrectly marked as L. Stowacki, September 4, 1809, place unknown.  His correct name is Juliusz Slowacki, born in Krzemieniec Poland; now Ukraine. Slowacki is one of the “Three Bards” of Polish literature and a  major figure in the Polish Romantic period, concurrent with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Keats in […]

Recently I was reading a series of essays, “English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism” edited by M. H. Abrams in 1960. One writer, I think it was the poet Donald Davie,  mentioned how when he was young and first introduced to the Romantics he loved Shelley to the point of memorizing his poems and quoting […]

That James Russell Lowell is part of the Jones 1000 makes sense; Jones considered himself a minor poet and wrote esoteric verse whenever he could much like Aleister Crowley, his contemporary, did. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL was born at Elmwood the family home, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 22nd of February 1819.  James was the son […]

Janis Lyn Joplin was born on January 19, 1943 at 9:50 am in St. Mary’s Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas. Her father, Seth Joplin, worked at Texaco, and she had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. When she had acclaim she admitted that the Empress of the blues singer, contralto Bessie Smith (1894-1937) and the […]

  Elizabeth Moulton-Barrett was born on Thursday, March 6, 1806, the eldest child of Edward Moulton-Barrett (1785–1857) and Mary Graham-Clarke (1781–1828), at Coxhoe Hall, County Durham, England.   Both come from families with extensive plantations in Jamaica, where her father Edward was born and lived until the age of seven. The Barretts left Coxhoe in the Autumn of 1808 and, […]