Poems of the English Language

An Introduction

Posted by juillet , Sunday, 24 May 2020 11:00

Hello. My name is R and this is a blog that I've created, collecting poems from English literature. I took English Literature as a course in my last year of high school and I absolutely fell in love with it. I've learned so much about life and the world just from studying all these various poems. Learning about the poets as well, has greatly enriched the course, and I recommend that anyone who has a passion for poetry (or even just Shakespeare) to take a course in English literature.

The reason I started this blog was because I wanted to keep all my favourite poems from the course in one place, so that when school ended, I could still re-read all those poems. Another reason was because I hope that other people will take an interest into English literature and will study it as well.

What's amazing is that I think that poets and literature, in general, teaches life lessons. Believe me, a lot of poets are from much more simpler times and the poets really seemed to know what was going on and what to do. It's amazing to study a poem, to see it from all angles, and to try to understand what the poet is trying to say. That's what I love about poetry. It's romance of the voice, it's the language of art, it's absolutely beautiful.

As previously said, I've learned a lot from this course. I've learned that our surroundings are so important, I've learned that it's never too late to do what I want, I've learned that I should always say my mind and so many more things. Whether your interest is in English literature, or French literature or Chinese, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Indian literature....I greatly recommend that you take a chance and study it. You won't regret it.

Here are some notes about my blog:

You may notice that some of the tags are titled as "modern age, victorian age" etc. These are the timelines that the poems were written, or in which the poet lived and thrived. Here is the breakdown of the tags, with their years:

The Anglo-Saxon Period: 449-1066
The Medieval Period: 1066-1485
The Renaissance: 1485-1660
(The Renaissance includes the Elizabethan Age, the Jacobean Age, and the Puritan Age)
The Restoration and Eighteenth Century: 1660-1798
(The Eighteenth Century includes the Restoration of King Charles II, the Age of Pope and The Age of Johnson)
The Romantic Age: 1789-1832
The Victorian Age: 1832-1900
The Modern Age: 1900-Present

The textbook that I am studying from (and that I cannot possibly highly recommend more) is Adventures in English Literature (Athena Edition), published by Harcourt Brace and Company. It is written by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Most of the poems I write out here are from British/Irish/Scottish and Canadian/American poets (occasionally I'll post up a poem that has been translated into English from another language).

The picture at the top of this blog is "The Blue Boy" by Thomas Gainsborough. Brilliant painter.

Posted in introduction