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poem

Claude McKay and “The White House”

February 16, 2017 - Danielle Sigler

Photograph of Claude McKay, taken for 'Home to Harlem' promotion, c. 1928.
Explore the Harry Ransom Center, search digital collections, or plan your visit.

This February saw the release of a previously unpublished Claude McKay novel, Amiable with Big Teeth (Penguin Classics). [Read more…] about Claude McKay and “The White House”

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: A Long Way from Home, African American History Month, Black History Month, Claude McKay, Danielle Brune Sigler, Harlem Renaissance, Harlem Shadows, Home to Harlem, Max Eastman, poem, poetry, Survey magazine, The Liberator, The New Negro, The White House, White Houses, William A. Bradley Literary Agency collection

Remembering James Tate

September 12, 2016 - Kurt Heinzelman

James Tate

I think I have been reading James Tate all my so-called adult life. At least an early defining moment occurred when a poet-friend observed one day, out of the blue, [Read more…] about Remembering James Tate

Filed Under: Authors Tagged With: Bat City Review, creative writing, James Tate, James Tate tribute, journal, Kurt Heinzelman, poem, poetry

“Possibility of Repair”

September 12, 2016 - Harry Ransom Center

List from Tate's notebooks

This poem originally appeared in issue 12 of The Bat City Review as part of its James Tate Tribute. [Read more…] about “Possibility of Repair”

Filed Under: Authors Tagged With: Bat City Review, James Tate, James Tate tribute, Lisa Olstein, poem, poetry, tribute

Hartley Coleridge’s Valentine’s Day sonnet

February 13, 2014 - Abigail Cain

"Valentine" poem by Hartley Coleridge, 1810. Coleridge wrote the poem when he was 14 years old.

As Elizabeth Bennet commented in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, poetry is not always the food of love. “If it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination,” she tells Mr. Darcy, “I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

For Hartley Coleridge’s sake, let us hope Ms. Bennet was wrong. Hartley, the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, composed this sonnet for Valentine’s Day in 1810, at the age of 14. Throughout his youth he was considered a bright and imaginative child. In “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” William Wordsworth described six-year-old Hartley as the “best philosopher” who “read’st the eternal deep.”

Hartley led a troubled life, however. Estranged from his parents at a young age, he was raised by poet Robert Southey. He attended Oxford and went on to receive a scholarship from Oriel College. Although expected to excel, alcoholism and inattentiveness to his studies caused him to lose his scholarship. His sister Sarah dubbed him “our Trouble in the North.”

Soon after losing his scholarship Hartley moved to London, where he worked as a private tutor and published poetry in the London Magazine. He excelled at writing sonnets and published a short collection, Poems, in 1833. It was received positively, as was his collection of author biographies Biographia Borealis; or Lives of Distinguished Northerns, which came out the same year.

Hartley’s continued instability, however, cut short his literary career, forcing him to return home to the Lake District at Grasmere. Although this valentine hints at a romantic streak, he never married. Yet he occasionally wrote sentimental musings from the point of view of “a whimsical Old Bachelor acquaintance of mine,” and many of these bear a resemblance to this early sonnet.

Read more sonnets, as well as letters and other manuscripts by Hartley Coleridge, in his archive. The Ransom Center houses materials by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as Hartley’s siblings Sara Coleridge and Derwent Coleridge and other members of the Coleridge family.

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: Derwent Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge, poem, poetry, Samuel L. Coleridge, Sara Coleridge, sonnet, Valentine, Valentine’s Day

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