Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy was born in London on 14 March 1844 and died there on 30 January 1881, at the age of thirty-six. His life was brief, financially constrained, and repeatedly shadowed by bereavement, yet it produced a body of verse whose finest passages have retained an unusual power. He belongs to that fertile, sometimes neglected region of Victorian poetry situated between the late Romantics, the P…
“My artistic object is gained if, in them, I have kept strictly within the lines assigned to the sculptor’s art.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Matsuo Bashō, born in 1644 and dead on 28 November 1694, occupies a singular place in Japanese literature: he was at once a professional poet, teacher, traveler, theorist, editor, correspondent, and restless seeker after a way of seeing. His name is now inseparable from haiku, although the compact poems for which he is famous were called hokku in his own lifetime and originally functioned as opening verses for collab…
“Follow the path of the ancients, seek what they sought, and then go beyond them.”
Neighbourhood:
Japanese Haiku Masters, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Wonder, Spirituality
