weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
Annette Wynne was an early 20th century American writer of children’s poems. Her debut collection ‘For Days and Days: A Year-Round Treasury of Child Verse’ came out in 1919, followed by ‘Treasure Things’ in 1922. The short poem featured in this post is called ‘To an Old Tree’. It’s a lovely ode to the stoic …
Charles Turner Dazey was an American writer and playwright born in Lima, Illinois, in 1855. He wrote a number of successful plays, also leaving a mark in the early film history as a writer of numerous of silent films. He died in Quincy in 1938; sadly, his works quickly became forgotten. Charles T. Dazey I …
Amos Russel Wells (1862–1933) was an American scholar and Christian activist. He authored numerous works, including poetry, essays, young adult fiction and devotional writings. In this post we’ll read his poem “Some Questions for Saint Valentine’s Day.” You can tell that Wells was a classicist: addressing Cupid rather than the venerable Christian saint and martyr, …
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Thomas Hardy was an English poet who lived and worked between two literary eras, connecting the legacy of British Romanticism with the early 20th century poetry. Best known as a novelist, thanks to classics such as Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, he is also rightly considered one of the finest …
Continue reading "“Winter in Durnover Field” by Thomas Hardy"
We’ve encountered Walt Whitman’s poetry on this blog before: in a longish post where I offered some advice on how to interpret poems, I presented his poem To a Stranger. And now I would like to share with you another poem of his, on a similar theme of the need for love and companionship. Walt …
In 2021 some of the major dictionary publishers chose words related to the pandemic, unsurprisingly, while others reflected on the broader social issues or tech developments. (If you don’t recall what those words were, click here to refresh your memory). With New Year’s just around the corner, let’s see which words marked the year 2022, …
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) was a Canadian author nowadays best known for her novel Anne of Green Gables. Even those who haven’t read the book about the charming red-haired orphan girl must have watched the very successful 1985 TV series by the same title or the more recent Netflix adaptation Anne with an E. Lucy …
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Nikolaus Lenau was the nom de plume of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau, a poet who is now considered one the most important voices of Late-Romantic literature in German. A portrait of Lenau by Matevž Langus Born in Csatád in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lenauheim in the Banat region of western Romania) in 1802, …
In the days leading up to Halloween, one of the highlights of the dark season of the year, I’d like to share some adjectives that you can use when talking about the weird, the sad, and the gloomy. Twenty six words, to be precise, one for each letter of the English alphabet, along with some …
Beginning of a new year is the perfect time to reassess one’s priorities and set personal goals for the coming twelve months. I’ve been doing my New Year’s resolutions for many years, always writing them down on the first page of my annual planner. Looking back, most of my past resolutions were quite unrealistic (lose …
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