Francis Thompson was born on 18 December 1859 in Preston, Lancashire, and died in London on 13 November 1907. His life has often been told as a dramatic Victorian parable: the devout doctor’s son who failed at the professions chosen for him, fell into homelessness and opium dependence in London, and was rescued into literary recognition by sympathetic Catholic publishers. There is truth in that narrative, but it can…
“Without health, no energy; without energies, no struggle. Seldom does the faineant become the Saint; the vigorous sinner often. He that sins strongly has the stuff of sanctity, rather than the languid sinner.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Tenderness, Longing
In the autumn of 1914, as the Great War began tearing Europe apart, a young American poet lay dying in a sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. Adelaide Crapsey was only thirty-six years old, and though she had published little during her lifetime, she had invented a new poetic form that would outlive her by generations. The cinquain, her creation, distilled the essence of imagist poetry into five crystalline lines, e…
“It is brief, but it has taken a long time.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Wonder
