Tennyson
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Sylvia Plath – Spinster
in PoetryThis final stanza is horribly defensive with its ‘barb and check’. Suddenly we’re in a war-zone, under attack, fighting for our lives.
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09.08 Philip Larkin
I remember the first time I really noticed “spring-woken tree”. Honestly, I just thought: wow. I stopped reading … … and that is the biggest compliment I can pay any author
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First 100 words: ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’
in 100 WordsIt’s England, but not as we know it. And I don’t much like what they’ve done with the place.
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24.07 Madeline Miller
‘Who wants to live forever?’, as Queen sang in 1986. On her birthday, let’s explore that idea through Madeline MIller’s retellings (with a little help from Tennyson, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Stephen King).
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18.07 Jane Austen
On Jane Austen’s anniversary, don’t begin by rereading Austen. Read something she could never have imagined. Then come back.
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson – ‘The Eagle’
in PoetryDon’t be fooled by this poem’s brevity. Tennyson ‘could polish a pebble until it became a gem’, and that’s what he does here.