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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 60 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Poets
| Who would have thought an Anglican priest could once have lived such a romantic life? Nevertheless, this poet secretly married the 17 year old niece of Lady Egerton, an act which landed him in jail. | The Fascinating Lives of Poets
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John Donne. Donne’s marriage to Anne More lost him his job and landed him temporarily in jail. His life was apparently a struggle after this point, but he eventually rose to the position of Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
| Which author states that "stupidity, delusion, selfishness and lust torment our bodies and poison our minds"? | Wild Lives of Famous Poets
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Baudelaire. This is the opening of "The Flowers of Evil", Baudelaire's influential book of poems. Happy camper, wasn't he?
T.S. Eliot. The "love song" I referred to in the question is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".
Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens wrote a wonderful poem called "Sunday Morning". It's probably my favorite of his works.
e. e. cummings. e.e. cummings' (yes, he liked to spell his name like that) poems are interesting yet hard to understand at times because of the lack of any punctuation and very odd word choices in his poetry.
Langston Hughes. Hughes is easily considered the most famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance with poems such as "Dream Deferred", "I, Too", and, my favorite, "Mother to Son".
Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was considered the Beat Generations most eloquent and persistent spokesperson.
| This author of a poem about a red wheelbarrow was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. He was also the author of works about a town in New Jersey called "Paterson". Who was this poet? | Birthplaces of some Famous American Poets
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William Carlos Williams. I love "The Little Red Wheelbarrow" by Williams. I think his poetry is some of the better poetry in the early 20th century.
Bethlehem. H.D. wrote a nice little poem called "Helen" about Helen of Troy.
Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is an earlier American poet born in 1809. Other early American poets are Whitman and Emerson.
Topeka. Brooks is a late poet of the 20th century, like Ginsberg. "We Real Cool" is one of Brooks' more famous poems.
| One of his many lovers described this poet as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ (and in those days the phrase wasn't a cliché). He spent much of his early childhood reading the Old Testament while disdaining the New. He had a strong personality that outraged and dumbfounded many of his contemporaries. Even by today’s standards the stories of his gross excesses such as his compulsive love affairs with women and boys; his zest for debauchery and the alleged scandalous liaison with his half sister seem almost incredible. Despite this, he left a legacy of very high quality poetry.
This was an example of his verse:
“Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults that so many could find”
Who was this remarkable poet?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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Lord Byron. George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was born on 22 January 1788 in London and died 19 April 1824 in Missolonghi, Greece. He was among the most famous of the English Romantic poets. He was also a satirical poet who was well-known throughout contemporary Europe. His major works include 'Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage' and 'Don Juan'. He died of fever while helping the Greek struggle for independence. In his lifetime he was widely hailed as a liberal and a champion of the 'underdog'. From his lifetime until the late in the 20th century he was immensely popular in much of Central and Eastern Europe and widely regarded as second only to Shakespeare among English poets.
| Queen Victoria was an ardent admirer of this poet’s work. Early sound recordings by Edison exist of him declaiming his own poetry. He was very popular with the public of his day, if not with all of his literary critics.
Among his lines of poetry were:
"Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;"
Can you name him?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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Tennyson. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), was an English poet often regarded as a leading example of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850.
His output was impressively vast but not always to the critics' taste. His "In Memoriam", an elegy for his lost school friend Hallam took seventeen years to complete. Some other examples of his work at his best include: "The Lady of Shalott", "The Lotus-eaters" "Morte d'Arthur" and "Ulysses" which appeared in 1842 in the two-volume anthology called "Poems".
| This poet never reached the levels of fame achieved by his contemporary Romantic poets but his radical, individual interpretation of Christianity inspired many people during the cultural revolutionary movements of the 1960s.
He was an advocate of free love but remained happily married for all of his adult life. His poetry was described as a caustic social and political protest. He was a true individualist.
Among his lines of poetry were:
"When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
Can you name him?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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William Blake. Blake advocated the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism commonplace during the contemporary Industrial Revolution in Britain.
He was trained as an artist and illustrated his own works with engravings. Blake claimed that from his very early years, he experienced visions of angels and ghostly monks and that he saw and conversed with the angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and various historical figures.
| This poet had a life in which he was at times revered and at others reviled. In his youth he was involved in popular radical political circles, but some researchers speculate now that, when in Germany, he was an agent for the British Foreign Office (in other words, a spy!). His poetry was full of introspection, guilt and an appreciation of the place of nature ‘in all things’. In his later life he was able to turn his back on the relative poverty of his upbringing and he found himself comfortably off with patronage from the same Crown whose existence he had earlier challenged.
Among his lines of poetry were:
“Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare”
Can you identify this poet?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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William Wordsworth. During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. he became a very strong supporter of the republican movement in France at that stage of his life. On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French girl, Annette Vallon, a daughter of a barber-surgeon, by whom he had a illegitimate daughter Anne Caroline. The affair was basis of the poem 'Vaudracour and Julia', but otherwise Wordsworth did his best to hide the affair from posterity.
| This poet was the son of a livery-stable manager. He was the eldest of four children, who remained deeply devoted to each other even after their widowed mother remarried. He was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary.
Among his lines of poetry were:
"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:"
Can you identify him?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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John Keats. Before devoting himself entirely to poetry, Keats worked as a dresser and junior house surgeon. In London he met other young Romantics, including Shelley.
| This poet was the son of an official of the Bank of England. His mother was related to the poet Robert Browning. He was educated in London at St. Paul's Cathedral Choir School, which he left aged sixteen. He was very much a member of the ‘Establishment’ and he became a Companion of Honour and later was awarded the Order of Merit. He is buried in St Paul’s Cathedral.
Among his lines of poetry were:
"'Is anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:"
Can you name him please?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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Walter De La Mare. From 1890 to 1908 De La Mare worked as an accountant in London for the Anglo-American Oil Company. His career as a writer started in about 1895 and he continued to publish to the end of his life.
His son Richard became chairman of the publishing house Faber and Faber, and published several of his father's books. In 1915 de La Mare became one of the legatees of his fellow poet Rupert Brooke.
| This poet was born to a well paid clerk in the Bank of England. His father built up a library of six thousand volumes. The poet became a very well-read man. He was an extremely bright child and a voracious reader. He learned Latin, Greek, French and Italian by the time he was fourteen. His somewhat idiosyncratic poems provided his readers with challenges which he had not necessarily foreseen as many of his allusions were obscure to those without his wide ranging education.
Among his lines of poetry were:
"Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!"
Can you identify the poet please? | Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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Robert Browning. Robert Browning eloped with Elizabeth Barrett whom he married. They lived abroad for a time and the poetry of both reflects this. Robert Browning experimented with metre, rhythm and dramatic content in his poetry. He wrote "How They Brought The Good News From Aix to Ghent" in the rhythmic pattern of galloping horses as an exercise to counteract the slow sweeping motion of the long sea passage by sailing ship back to England.
| This poet was expelled from his college for publishing his a work entitled "The Necessity of Atheism". His father withdrew his inheritance after he eloped with the sixteen-year old Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern owner. The pair spent the following two years travelling in England and Ireland, distributing pamphlets and speaking against political injustice.
Among his lines of verse were:
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Can you name him please?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy Bysshe Shelley was the son of Sir Timothy Shelley, the M.P. for New Shoreham. He was born into a privileged family and was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. However, in his time at Eton he was a frequent rebel against the authorities and his fellow pupils earning the nickname at school of 'Mad Shelley'.
He, Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron moved to Italy to be able to be free from prosecution to continue their poetic and other attacks against the British government of the day.
| This poet had a difficult childhood when he and his siblings were orphaned and brought up by an aunt and uncle who knew nothing of rearing children and lacked the the money to continue the expensive schooling this poet had previously enjoyed. Further, his aunt hated education and books and had his grandfather’s library removed from the home. At the age of thirteen, he was be sent away for training for a life at sea.
Among his lines of verse were:
"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking"
Can you name this poet, please?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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John Masefield. Among the general public of his day Masefield’s poems of sea and ships were very well known. However, the poet himself spent only a very small part of his life aboard ship. Sea life did not suit Masefield and on his second voyage, he deserted ship to find work in New York City.
| In his biography this poet wrote that he owed his successful career as a successful poet to the unfortunate death of the editor of the "London Magazine," who was killed in a duel in 1821.
Among his lines of verse were:
"I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!"
Can you remember who this poet was?
| Scandalous (and other ) Poets and Their Poems
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Thomas Hood. After the death of the editor Hood was asked to edit the periodical. As editor he was introduced to the best literary society of the time; and in becoming the associate of such men as Charles Lamb, Cary, De Quincey, Allan Conningham, Proctor, Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, and other contributors he gradually developed his own poetic ability. (See his own account in "Hood's Own." )
| Siegfried Sassoon is, perhaps, the best-known First World War poet. He wrote, in "Counter-Attack", "He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,/Sick for escape - loathing the strangled horror/And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead." How did Siegfried Sassoon die? | British World War I Poets
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Of old age. Siegfried Sassoon [1886-1967], died of old age in Somerset, England. He did fight in WWI with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and was, apparently, manically courageous, was decorated for his bravery, and was nicknamed "Mad Jack" by his men for his suicidal exploits. During WWI he wrote satirical anti-war verse, and after the war, he became a prolific writer of poetry.
| Edward Thomas wrote, in "Cherry Trees", "The cherry trees bend over and are shedding/On the old road where all that passed are dead,/Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding/This early May morn where there is none to wed." How did Edward Thomas die? | British World War I Poets
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Killed in action at the Battle of Arras. Philip Edward Thomas [1878-1917] died in the Battle of Arras, helping the French to hold Arras by means of a series of medieval tunnels beneath the city that were unknown to the Germans. Thomas need not have joined up; as a married man he was not required to enlist in the army. He joined the Artists' Rifles in 1915. Most of his non-war poetry is about the English countryside.
| Rudyard Kipling was not just a novelist; he wrote poetry also. In two lines, he sums up his feelings about the war in "Epitaphs of the War - An Only Son": "I have slain none except my Mother. She/(Blessing her slayer) died of grief for me." How did Rudyard Kipling die? | British World War I Poets
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Of a cerebral hemorrhage. Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] died at age 70; he was too old to fight in WWI. However, his only son John died at the Battle of Loos in 1915; the lines I chose reflect Kipling's personal loss. Each gravestone that lays upon the Western Front bears the inscription "Their Name Liveth For Evermore" - these words were chosen by Kipling, who joined the War Graves Commission after the death of his son.
| Charles Hamilton Sorley wrote the poem "When you see Millions ...": "When you see Millions of the mouthless dead/Across your dreams in pale battalions go,/Say not soft things as other men have said,/That you'll remember. For you need not so." How did Charles Hamilton Sorley die? | British World War I Poets
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Shot in the head by a sniper at the Battle of Loos. Charles Hamilton Sorley [1895-1915], from Aberdeen, Scotland, was only 20 years old when he died, and had already been made a Captain. He had begun studying at University College, Oxford, for a year before the war was declared, and he left his studies to join up. A book by the popular novelist, Robert Goddard, entitled "In Pale Battalions" refers to the above poem.
| Ivor Gurney, in "To His Love", wrote these lines: "Cover him, cover him soon!/And with thick-set/Masses of memoried flowers - /Hide that red wet/Thing I must somehow forget." How did Ivor Gurney die? | British World War I Poets
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Of tuberculosis. Ivor Gurney [1890-1937], usually called Bertie, was an English composer and poet. In WWI, he was wounded in the arm in April 1917, and gassed near Passchendaele in September 1917. He wrote two books of war poetry, one in 1917, and the other in 1919. After the war, Gurney, who was bipolar, was declared insane by his family, and was committed to a mental institution. He died of tuberculosis in the City of London Mental Hospital in 1937, fifteen years after being committed there.
| Wilfrid Owen is one of the best-known First World War poets, and deservedly so. In his poem "Mental Cases", he writes "These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished./Memory fingers in their hair of murders,/Multitudinous murders they once witnessed./Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,/Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter." How did Wilfrid Owen die? | British World War I Poets
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On a bridge at Ors, France. Wilfrid Owen [1893-1918] died trying to lead his men across a bridge over the Sambre Canal at Ors, France. The great tragedy of it was that he died seven days before the Armistice; the telegram announcing his death reached his parents on Armistice Day. Wilfrid Owen received the Military Cross for bravery at Amiens.
| Thomas Hardy himself had words to say about World War One. In "Channel Firing" he wrote "That night your great guns, unawares,/Shook all our coffins as we lay,/And broke the chancel window-squares,/We thought it was the Judgment Day/" How did Thomas Hardy die? | British World War I Poets
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Of pleurisy. Thomas Hardy [1840-1928], who was born, raised and died in Dorset, England, was one of the great Victorian writers. He is known for his beautiful but melancholy verse, based mainly on nature themes, and famed for his fatalistic novels such as "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Tess of the D'Ubervilles". He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
| Julian Grenfell wrote this about WWI in his poem "Into Battle": "The thundering line of battle stands,/And in the air death moans and sings;/But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,/And Night shall fold him with soft wings." How did Julian Grenfell die? | British World War I Poets
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From a head wound at the Second Battle of Ypres. Julian Grenfell [1888-1915] died shortly after the Second Battle of Ypres from a head wound. He was treated, to no avail, in a hospital in Boulogne, France. Born in London, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, this young army captain rose quickly in the ranks, and received a DSO [Distinguished Service Order] for a daring feat of reconnaissance in November 1914.
| Rupert Brooke wrote these lines about WWI in his poem "The Soldier": "If I should die, think only this of me:/That there's some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England." How did Rupert Brooke die? | British World War I Poets
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From blood poisoning on a troop ship. Rupert Brooke [1887-1915], on a troop ship en route to the Dardanelles and the Battle of Gallipoli, was already weak from sunstroke when a mosquito bite on his lip became infected; the blood poisoning from the bite killed him. His fame was such that his obituary in the Times was written by Winston Churchill, a great irony, as it had been Churchill who had conceived of the Gallipoli disaster that cost Brooke his life.
| Isaac Rosenberg wrote this about WWI in his poem "Returning, We Hear the Larks": "Sombre the night is./And though we have our lives, we know, What sinister threat lurks there./...But hark! joy-joy-strange joy!/Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks./Music showering on our upturned list'ning faces." How did Isaac Rosenberg die? | British World War I Poets
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Killed by a sniper at the Second Battle of the Somme. Isaac Rosenberg [1890-1918] was raised in a poor Jewish district of east London; his parents moved there from Bristol so that he could get a proper Jewish schooling. Later he gained sponsorship to study at the Slade School of Art. When war was declared, he enlisted, despite misgiving about the war. He made it clear that he was joining up not out of patriotism, but to help support his mother financially. When Rosenberg was killed, he was initially buried in a mass grave, but his remains were identified, and he was reburied in a military cemetary in France. He was one of few war poets who wasn't an officer.
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