Judi’s Reviews > Poem For the Day Two > Status Update

Calypso

W. H. Auden
(February 21st 1907 — September 29th 1973)

Auden wrote this poem in May 1939, just four months after he left England to live in America. Already, the influence of his new country of residence can be seen in the poem, which includes American phrases (and spellings) like 'waiting-hall', 'side-walk' and 'parlour car' (rather than waiting-room, pavement and parlour carriage).

To my Dear and Loving Husband

Anne Bradstreet
(c. 1612 — September 16th 1672)

Interestingly, she was distantly related, via the ancient aristocratic Sutton-Dudley family, to the Elizabethan poet Philip Sidney, who had a much more courtly, exalted view of love and marriage.

Poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, author of Vulpine and Bartholomew Fair, born in Westminster June 11th, 1572.

Luis de Camoes, Portugal's great national poet and author of the epic poem, Os Lusiadas, died in Lisbon June 10th 1580.

Simplify me when I'm dead

Keith Douglas
(January 24th 1920 — June 9th 1944)

Wounded by a land mine in 1943, Keith Douglas wrote from his hospital bed in Palestine in defence of his poetry: "I see no reason to be either musical or sonorous about things at present...I suppose I reflect the cynicism ... with which I view the world."

Darrion Domfort

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(July 28th 1844 — June 89th 1889)

...It is regarded as the first of Hopkins' series of so-called 'terrible sonnets', an epithet which refers to the inner despair and turmoil which gave rise to them.

My Enemies Have Sweet Voices

...

I was blind side to the gutter
when Merlin happened by
asking, 'Why do you lie
her bleeding?'
I answered him, 'Magician,
as a matter of a fact
I was jumping to conclusions
when one of them jumped back.'

...

Pete Morgan
(June 7th 1939 — )

Pierre Corneille, writer of 'Le Cid', born June 6th 1606

In the Desert
III

?Stephen Crane
(November 1at 1871 — Jne 5th 1900)

... As a war correspondent he covered the Greco-Turkish war before settling in England, where he befriended the writers H.G. Wells, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad and ricocheted between poverty and wild partying.

To Catherine Wordsworth 1808 —1812

William Wordsworth
(April 7th 1770 — April 23rd 1850)

In early June 1812, while William was in London and Mary on her way to visit relatives in Hereford, the Wordsworth children were in the care of their aunts at the family home in Grasmere. Catherine suffered a convulsion in the night and died the following morning.