John Gillespie Magee Jr., born in Shanghai, China, on 9 June 1922 and killed over Lincolnshire, England, on 11 December 1941, occupies an unusual and enduring place in twentieth-century literature. He is remembered above all for “High Flight,” the fourteen-line poem that begins, “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” and ends with one of the most quoted conclusions in English poetry: “Put out my hand, and tou…
“It is called High Flight and was inspired by a flight I made a few days ago.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Georgian Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Spirituality
Robert Lee Frost was born on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco, California, at a distance both geographical and imaginative from the New England landscape with which his name would become permanently associated. His father, William Prescott Frost Jr., was a Harvard-educated teacher turned journalist and political aspirant, a man of forceful opinions, Southern sympathies, and unstable prospects. His mother, Isabelle Mood…
“We're like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made the father such a man.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Peace
