Two years later his first book of verse, Six Poems, was published. Thomas wrote his first poems in 1914 at the urging of the American poet Robert Frost, with whom he forged a friendship during Frost’s years in England. His work included essays, natural history, criticism, biographies, reviews, fiction, introductions, and topographical descriptions. Much of the work he received was uncongenial, but Thomas wrote steadily, sometimes producing as many as three books a year. Faced with the necessity of supporting a growing family, Thomas began accepting writing and reviewing assignments from London publishers. Shortly thereafter, while still a student at Lincoln College in Oxford, Thomas married Noble’s daughter, Helen. Paul’s School, Thomas met the successful literary journalist James Ashcroft Noble, who encouraged Thomas in his literary ambitions and was instrumental in getting his first book, The Woodland Life, accepted for publication. Much later Thomas was to portray this adversarial relationship with his father in the poem “P.H.T.” In 1894, while attending St. Temperamentally, Edward’s father was the opposite of his son, and the two disagreed on nearly all matters, including Thomas’s desire for a literary career. His father was a railway clerk who neglected his six sons in favor of politics and intellectual pursuits. Thomas was born of Welsh parents in London. Auden and Ted Hughes, to the poetic subjects of Victorian and Georgian poetry. Most critics would agree with Andrew Motion, who states that Thomas occupies “a crucial place in the development of twentieth-century poetry” for introducing a modern sensibility, later found in the work of such poets as W.H. Since 2000, much serious consideration has been given to Thomas’s work. In particular, Thomas’s experiences of World War I, which echo and sometimes intrude on his poems, distinguish his work from his predecessors. However, Thomas’s personalized voice and intensity of vision give his poetry an artistic force which the Georgians never approached. Like the work of his Georgian contemporaries, his poems display a profound love of natural beauty and, at times, an archaic use of diction. Despite affinities with the Georgian movement of the early 20th century United Kingdom, Edward Thomas’s verse consistently defies classification. Although prominent critics and authors as Walter de la Mare, Aldous Huxley, Peter Sacks, Seamus Heaney, and Edna Longley called Edward Thomas one of England’s most important poets, Thomas wrote all of his poetry over a three year span, 1914–17, and was much more widely known as a critic and prose writer during his lifetime. Edward Thomas was a poet, critic, and biographer who is best known for his careful depictions of rural England and his prescient understanding of modernity’s tendency toward disconnection, alienation, and unsettledness.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |