Laurence Binyon was born in Lancaster, England, on 10 August 1869, and died in Reading on 10 March 1943. During his lifetime he occupied an unusual and influential place in British cultural life: he was a poet, dramatist, translator, art historian, museum curator, critic, and lecturer. Yet public memory has narrowed him, often understandably, to the author of “For the Fallen,” the 1914 poem whose most famous stanza h…
“Every statue, every picture, is a series of ordered relations, controlled, as the body is controlled in the dance, by the will to express a single idea.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Peace
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 was written in about twenty minutes.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Georgian Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Spirituality
