In the pantheon of early twentieth-century poetry, certain names blaze with enduring brilliance while others flicker in the margins of literary history, their contributions underappreciated or nearly forgotten. Walter James Redfern Turner, born on October 13, 1884, in South Melbourne, Australia, belongs to this latter category—a poet, critic, and cultural polymath whose work once commanded the admiration of W.B. Yeat…
“Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow
Charles Tennyson Turner was born Charles Turner on 4 July 1808 at Somersby Rectory in Lincolnshire, and died on 25 April 1879 at Grasby, also in Lincolnshire. He lived during the long Victorian transformation of English literary culture, yet his own life retained a strongly local character: he was a country clergyman, a husband, a brother in an unusually gifted family, and a poet whose finest achievements were small…
“Good wishes in crowds from me I despatch on dove’s wing to you.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness