1.
Rudyard Kipling
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Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kiplings works of fiction include The Jungle Book, Kim, and many short stories and his poems include Mandalay, Gunga Din, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, The White Mans Burden, and If—. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, Henry James said, Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known. In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on occasions for a knighthood. Kiplings subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age, George Orwell called him a prophet of British imperialism. Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote, is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary, but as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and a recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts. Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865, in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, to Alice Kipling, Alice was a vivacious woman about whom Lord Dufferin would say, Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room. Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, was the Principal, John Lockwood and Alice had met in 1863 and courted at Rudyard Lake in Rudyard, Staffordshire, England. They married and moved to India in 1865 and they had been so moved by the beauty of the Rudyard Lake area that when their first child was born they referenced it when naming him. Alices sister Georgiana was married to painter Edward Burne-Jones, and her sister Agnes was married to painter Edward Poynter, Kiplings most famous relative was his first cousin, Stanley Baldwin, who was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times in the 1920s and 1930s. Kiplings birth home on the campus of the J J School of Art in Bombay for many years was used as the Deans residence. Although the cottage bears a plaque stating that this is the site where Kipling was born, the original cottage may have torn down decades ago. Some historians and conservationists are also of the view that the bungalow merely marks a site close to the home of his birth, as the bungalow was built in 1882, Kipling seems to have also said so to the dean when he visited J J School in the 1930s. Kipling was to write of Bombay, According to Bernice M. Murphy, Kipling’s parents considered themselves Anglo-Indians and so too would their son, complex issues of identity and national allegiance would become prominent features in his fiction. So one spoke English, haltingly translated out of the idiom that one thought. Kiplings days of light and darkness in Bombay ended when he was five years old
2.
Ramayana
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The Ramayana is an ancient Indian epic poem which narrates the struggle of the divine prince Rama to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. Along with the Mahabharata, it forms the Sanskrit Itihasa, the Ramayana is one of the largest ancient epics in world literature. It consists of nearly 24,000 verses, divided into seven Kandas, in Hindu tradition, it is considered to be the adi-kavya. It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying characters like the ideal father, the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife. The Ramayana was an important influence on later Sanskrit poetry and Hindu life, like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is not just a story, it presents the teachings of ancient Hindu sages in narrative allegory, interspersing philosophical and ethical elements. The name Ramayana is a compound of the name Rāma and ayana. According to Hindu tradition—and according to the Ramayana itself—the epic belongs to the genre of itihasa like Mahabharata, the definition of itihāsa is a narrative of past events which includes teachings on the goals of human life. According to Hindu tradition, Ramayana takes place during a period of known as Treta Yuga. In its extant form, Valmikis Ramayana is a poem of some 24,000 verses. The text survives in several thousand partial and complete manuscripts, the oldest of which is a manuscript found in Nepal. A Times of India report dated 18 December 2015 informs about discovery of a 6th-century manuscript of the Ramayana at the Asiatic Society library, the Ramayana text has several regional renderings, recensions and subrecensions. Goldman differentiates two major regional recensions, the northern and the southern, scholar Romesh Chunder Dutt writes that the Ramayana, like the Mahabharata, is a growth of centuries, but the main story is more distinctly the creation of one mind. There has been discussion as to whether the first and the last chapters of Valmikis Ramayana were composed by the original author. Most Hindus still believe they are parts of the book, in spite of some style differences. Some cultural evidence, such as the presence of sati in Mahabharata but not in the body of Ramayana. By tradition, the text belongs to the Treta Yuga, second of the four eons of Hindu chronology, Rama is said to have been born in the Treta yuga to king Dasharatha in the Ikshvaku dynasty. The names of the characters are all known in late Vedic literature, however, nowhere in the surviving Vedic poetry is there a story similar to the Ramayana of Valmiki. Also, in the epic Mahabharata, there is a version of Ramayana known as Ramopakhyana and this version is depicted as a narration to Yudhishthira
3.
Japanese poetry
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Much of the literary record of Japanese poetry begins when Japanese poets encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang dynasty. For example, in the Tale of Genji both kanshi and waka are frequently mentioned, since the middle of the 19th century, the major forms of Japanese poetry have been tanka, haiku and shi or western-style poetry. Today, the forms of Japanese poetry include both experimental poetry and poetry that seeks to revive traditional ways. Poets writing in tanka, haiku and shi may seldom write poetry other than in their specific chosen form, although some active poets are eager to collaborate with poets in other genres. Also, much of Japanese poetry features short verse forms, often collaborative, older forms of Japanese poetry include kanshi, which shows a strong influence from Chinese literature and culture. Kanshi literally means Han poetry and it is the Japanese term for Chinese poetry in general as well as the written in Chinese by Japanese poets. Kanshi from the early Heian period exists in the Kaifūsō anthology, Waka are composed in Japanese, and are contrasted with poetry composed by Japanese poets in Classical Chinese, which are known as kanshi. The Manyōshū anthology preserves from the eighth century 265 chōka,4,207 tanka, one tan-renga, one bussokusekika, four kanshi, and 22 Chinese prose passages. However, by the time of the tenth century Kokinshū anthology, waka had become the term used for short poems of the tanka form. Tanka are poems written in Japanese with five lines having a 5-7-5-7-7 metre, the tanka form has shown some modern revival in popularity. As previously stated, it used to be called waka, much traditional Japanese poetry was written as the result of a process of 2 or more poets contributing verses to a larger whole piece, such as in the case of the renga form. Typically, the honored guest would begin by composing a few beginning lines and this initial sally would be followed by a stanza composed by the host. This process could continue, sometimes with many composed by numerous other guests. Other collaborative forms of Japanese poetry also evolved, such as the renku form, haiku are a short, 3-line verse form, which have achieved significant global popularity, and the haiku form has been adapted from Japanese into other languages. Typical of the form is the metrical pattern of 3 lines with a distribution of 5,7. Other features include the juxtaposition of two images or ideas with a kireji between them, and a kigo, or seasonal reference, usually drawn from a saijiki, much of Japanese poetry has been transmitted historically through published anthologies, many of them with imperial patronage. Important collections are the Manyōshū, Kokin Wakashū, Shin Kokin Wakashū, the history of Japanese poetry is tied to the history of Japanese literature, that is in the purely historical sense of having extant written records. However, the early pre-history and mythology of Japan involve or include some references to poetry, and, the earliest preserved works in the Japanese language also preserve some previous poetry from this earlier period
4.
English poetry
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This article focuses on poetry written in English from the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The article does not include poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, the earliest surviving English poetry, written in Anglo-Saxon, the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry and it is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD700, by and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth, beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from works to biblical paraphrase, elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin, and numerous proverbs, riddles. With one notable exception, Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure, with the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke predominantly Norman, and this became the language of courts, parliament. While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament, the reputation of Chaucers successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were believed to be influenced by Chaucer. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland, the main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509 and it is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle. The introduction of printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas, the establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life
5.
W. H. Davies
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William Henry Davies or W. H. Davies was a Welsh poet and writer. Davies spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or hobo, in the United Kingdom and United States, but became one of the most popular poets of his time. The principal themes in his work are observations about lifes hardships, the ways in which the condition is reflected in nature, his own tramping adventures. Davies is usually considered one of the Georgian Poets, although much of his work is not typical of the group, the son of an iron moulder, Davies was born at 6, Portland Street in the Pillgwenlly district of Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, a busy port. He had a brother, Francis Gomer Boase and in 1874 his younger sister Matilda was born. In November 1874, when William was aged three, his father died, the following year his mother Mary Anne Davies remarried and became Mrs Joseph Hill. She agreed that care of the three children should pass to their grandparents, Francis and Lydia Davies, who ran the nearby Church House Inn at 14. His grandfather Francis Boase Davies, originally from Cornwall, had been a sea captain, Davies was related to the famous British actor Sir Henry Irving, he later recalled that his grandmother referred to Irving as the cousin who brought disgrace on us. Davies grandmother was described, by a neighbour who remembered her, pretty little caps, with bebe ribbon, tiny roses and puce trimmings. A maidservant, a dog, a cat, a parrot, a dove, Sitwell also recounts that Davies grandmother, a Baptist by denomination, was of a more austere and religious turn of mind than her husband. In 1879 the family moved to Raglan Street, then later to Upper Lewis Street, in 1883 he moved to Alexandra Road School and the following year was arrested, as one of a gang of five schoolmates, and charged with stealing handbags. He was given twelve strokes of the birch, in 1885 Davies wrote his first poem entitled Death. In his Poets Pilgrimage Davies recounts the time when, at the age of 14 and he missed the final moments of his grandfathers death as he was too engrossed in reading a very interesting book of wild adventure. Having finished school under the cloud of his theft he worked first for an ironmonger, in November 1886, his grandmother signed the papers for Davies to begin a five-year apprenticeship to a local picture-frame maker. Davies never enjoyed the craft, however, and never settled into any regular work and he was a difficult and somewhat delinquent young man, and made repeated requests to his grandmother to lend him the money to sail to America. When these were all refused, he eventually left Newport, took casual work, the Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, published in 1908, covers his life in the USA between 1893 and 1899, including many adventures and characters from his travels as a drifter. During this period he crossed the Atlantic at least seven times and he travelled through many of the states, sometimes begging, sometimes taking seasonal work, but often ending up spending any savings on a drinking spree with a fellow traveller. He took advantage of the system of boodle, in order to pass the winter in Michigan
6.
Archibald Lampman
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Archibald Lampman FRSC was a Canadian poet. He has been described as the Canadian Keats, and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets, the Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is generally considered the finest of Canadas late 19th-century poets in English. Lampman is classed as one of Canadas Confederation Poets, a group also includes Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman. Archibald Lampman was born at Morpeth, Ontario, a village near Chatham, the son of Archibald Lampman, the Morpeth that Lampman knew was a small town set in the rolling farm country of what is now western Ontario, not far from the shores of Lake Erie. The little red church just east of the town, on the Talbot Road, was his father’s charge, in 1867 the family moved to Gores Landing on Rice Lake, Ontario, where young Archie Lampman attended at the Barrons School. In 1868 he contracted fever, which left him lame for some years. Lampman attended Cobourg Collegiate, followed by Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, while at university, he published early poems in Acta Victoriana, the literary journal of Victoria College. Lampman was slight of form and of middle height and he was quiet and undemonstrative in manner, but had a fascinating personality. Sincerity and high ideals characterized his life and work,3,1887, Lampman married 20-year-old Maude Emma Playter. They had a daughter, Natalie Charlotte, born in 1892, arnold Gesner, born May 1894, was the first boy, but he died in August. A third child, Archibald Otto, was born in 1898, in Ottawa, Lampman became a close friend of Indian Affairs bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott, Scott introduced him to camping, and he introduced Scott to writing poetry. One of their early camping trips inspired Lampmans classic Morning on the Lièvre, Lampman also met and befriended poet William Wilfred Campbell. Lampman, Campbell, and Scott together wrote a column, At the Mermaid Inn. As Lampman wrote to a friend, Campbell is deplorably poor and they agreed to it, and Campbell, Scott and I have been carrying on the thing for several weeks now. In the last years of his life there is evidence of a spiritual malaise which was compounded by the death of an infant son. Lampman died in Ottawa at the age of 37 due to a weak heart and he is buried, fittingly, at Beechwood Cemetery, in Ottawa, a site he wrote about in the poem In Beechwood Cemetery. His grave is marked by a stone on which is carved only the one word. A plaque on the site carries a few lines from his poem In November, The hills grow wintry white, I alone Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor gray Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream
7.
Arthur Stringer (writer)
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Arthur Stringer was a Canadian novelist, screenwriter, and poet who later moved to the United States. He published 45 works of fiction and 15 other books, in addition to writing numerous filmscripts, Stringer was born in Chatham, Ontario. He was a spirited boy who spent his childhood days fishing, swimming, raiding orchards. In 1884 the family moved to London, Ontario, where Charles attended London Collegiate Institute, at the Institute he founded and edited a school magazine called Chips. He then attended University College, University of Toronto from 1892 to 1894 and his first book of poetry, Watchers of Twilight and Other Poems, was published in 1894. In 1895 he worked for the Montreal Herald, at this time he was also publishing in Saturday Night and the Canadian Magazine. In 1898 he got a job with the American Press Association, moved to New York City and his first poem in Harpers, Remorse, appeared in February 1899. His first novel, The Silver Poppy, came out in 1903, in the same year he bought a farm on the shore of Lake Erie. and married actress Jobyna Howland, known as the original Gibson girl. They divorced in 1914, and Stringer married his cousin, Margaret Arbuthnott, Stringer was popular in his day for his crime fiction and his wilderness adventures, but he wrote in many genres, from social realism to psychological fiction (The Wine of Life. He even wrote early science fiction novels, The Story Without a Name with Russell Holman, much of his writing was for films. In 1921, the Stringers moved to Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, where Arthur Stringer continued to write, modern critics have not been kind to his fiction. For example, Douglas Fetherling wrote of him in the Canadian Encyclopedia, Stringer was not in any stream of Canadian writing. The fact that he lived most of his life in the U. S. however, did not prevent him from frequently inventing Canadian characters, setting them in the Far North, a region he misunderstood lavishly, thereby contributing to foreign stereotyping of Canada. Against that one has to set Stringers prairie trilogy – Prairie Wife, Prairie Mother, the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature described Stringers poetry as undistinguished verse. However, it was said that in his poetry there is maintained a standard of beauty, depth of feeling, and technical power. At its time his blank verse drama Sappho in Leucadia was called an imaginative, passionate, Stringers arguments become even more striking from the point of view of literary history, Dudek and Gnarowski continued, if we recall. That the famous notes of F. S. Flint and the strictures of Ezra Pound on imagisme and free verse had appeared less than a year before this, in the March 1913 issue of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse. Stringer was awarded an honorary D. Litt. by the University of Western Ontario in 1946, Stringer is commemorated by Arthur Stringer Public School in London, Ontario, which opened in 1969
8.
The White Man's Burden
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Originally, Kipling wrote the poem for the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Victorias reign, but it was exchanged for the poem Recessional, also by Kipling. The poem of The White Mans Burden was first published in the 10 February 1899 edition of the New York Sun, a McLures newspaper. S should renounce claim of authority over the Philippine Islands. To that effect, Senator Tillman asked, Four days later, on 11 February 1899, kiplings literary work extolling the virtues of British colonialism in India was popular in the U. S. Like much of his work, The White Mans Burden is a celebration of imperialism. T. Johnson, a clergyman, and Take up the Black Mans Burden by J. Dallas Bowser. S, ernest Crosby wrote a poem, The Real White Mans Burden. In the Congo Free State, the British journalist, E. D. Morel, reported the brutality of Belgian imperialism in The Black Mans Burden. In The Black Mans Burden, The White Man in Africa, from the Fifteenth Century to World War I, Morel presents a critique of the relation between the White Mans Burden and the Black Mans Burden
9.
Bliss Carman
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Bliss Carman FRSC was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. He was acclaimed as Canadas poet laureate during his later years, in Canada, Carman is classed as one of the Confederation Poets, a group which also included Charles G. D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. Of the group, Carman had the surest lyric touch and achieved the widest international recognition, but unlike others, he never attempted to secure his income by novel writing, popular journalism, or non-literary employment. He remained a poet, supplementing his art with critical commentaries on literary ideas, philosophy and he was born William Bliss Carman in Fredericton, in the Maritime province of New Brunswick. Bliss was his mothers maiden name and he was the great grandson of United Empire Loyalists who fled to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution, settling in New Brunswick. His literary roots run deep with an ancestry that includes a mother who was a descendant of Daniel Bliss of Concord, Massachusetts and his sister, Jean, married the botanist and historian William Francis Ganong. And on his mothers side he was a first cousin to Charles G. D. Roberts, Carman was educated at the Fredericton Collegiate School and the University of New Brunswick, from which he received a B. A. in 1881. His first published poem was in the UNB Monthly in 1879 and he then spent a year at Oxford and the University of Edinburgh, but returned home to receive his M. A. from UNB in 1884. After the death of his father in January 1885 and his mother in February 1886, at Harvard he moved in a literary circle that included American poet Richard Hovey, who would become his close friend and his collaborator on the successful Vagabondia poetry series. Carman and Hovey were members of the Visionists circle along with Herbert Copeland and F. Holland Day, after Harvard Carman briefly returned to Canada, but was back in Boston by February 1890. Boston is one of the few places where my critical education and tastes could be of any use to me in earning money, New York and London are about the only other places. Unable to find employment in Boston, he moved to New York City, there he could help his Canadian friends get published, in the process introducing Canadian poets to its readers. However, Carman was never a good fit at the semi-religious weekly, at this low point, Songs of Vagabondia, the first Hovey-Carman collaboration, was published by Copeland & Day in 1894. No one could have been surprised at the tremendous popularity of these care-free celebrations than the young authors, Richard Hovey. Songs of Vagabondia would ultimately go through sixteen printings over the thirty years. The three Vagabondia volumes that followed fell slightly short of that record, but each went through numerous printings. The success of Songs of Vagabondia prompted another Boston firm, Stone & Kimball, to reissue Low Tide. and to hire Carman as the editor of its literary journal, The Chapbook. The next year, though, the job went West to Chicago
10.
1908 in poetry
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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nations poetry or literature. March – Ezra Pound leaves America for Europe, in April, he moves to Venice, where in July he self-publishes his first collection of poems, A Lume Spento. In August he settles in London, where he will remain until 1920, summer – The Marlowe Society stages a production at the New Theatre, Cambridge, of Miltons masque Comus directed by Rupert Brooke. Renée Vivien attempts suicide by overdose of laudanum at the Savoy Hotel in London, founding in London of the Poets Club, a group comprised mainly amateurs which met monthly for most of the year. Late in the year – T. E. Hulme reads to the Poets Club his paper, A Lecture on Modern Poetry, William Wilfred Campbell, Poetical Tragedies including Mordred, Daulac, Morning and Hildebrand William Henry Drummond, The Great Fight, Poems and Sketches. O. Barnabooth Louis-Joseph Doucet, La Chanson du Passant, French language, Canada Albert Ferland, Le Canada Chante, French language, Canada C
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