Samuel Coleridge

Coleridge seemed to me as a troubled man, even in his early years. Not sure what his place is in life. He changed from one religious affiliation to another. His addiction to opium I'm sure caused problems in his marriage, and his friendship with Wordsworth dwindled.

In his poem "Dejection: An Ode", there is sadness and pain. Is this being written to a woman, or to any one in general?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I'm not very literate when it comes to literature, but reading Tennyson's "In Memoriam," touched me in a special way. I too have experienced the death of a good friend, confidante, and best supporter of whatever it was I was doing in my life. This person was one who I attribute my success today.

I also felt "blights joy in all living things"pg. 599, when this happened to me. "He is not here, but far away, The noise of life begins again!" pg. 601. Somehow I was able to move on, for if I hadn't, I would not be where I am today. I think this is a beautiful and healthy way of mourning your best friend.

George Gordon

In reading about George Gordon Byron, his life was like today, very scandalise. The incest and affairs cost him his marriage. Then he continues his afair with Claire Clairmont. Besides his awful personal life, I was impressed on how he was able to build his own army for his political cause to aid Greece. I found it hard to stay focus on his poems, but with Don Juan, is this the same as the movie starring Johnny Depp a few years back?

William Wordsworth

Williams had death that surrounded him, losing his brother and two of his children. With his sister's writings and his own, William was able to describe his love of nature. Spending years with his sister I found a little strange. Like I mentioned in my blog about Dorothy, were they really brother and sister? The way Dorothy spoke of him and admired him seem like there was more to their relationship

Williams Butler Yeats

The poem Easter 1916 is Yeats reaction to the revolution of the Irish. You can relate this event to modern day also. The 911 terror attack on the U.S. brings to memory while reading this poem. In the end it reads pg. 1121, "A terrible beauty is born." Does this mean that the violence is seen as beauty for those who support this type of resolution?

An example of Yeats insight of human conditions is stated on pg 1120, "Too long a sacrifice, Can make a stone of the heart," which can apply to family relationships, your job, and your marriage. We tend to stick it out when things are going bad but in the long run cause the heart to grow weaker and weaker until you feel nothing.

I enjoyed Yeats and his work.

George Bernard Shaw

To bad Shaw's mother left him early in his life. Later moving to London proved to be the best thing that could of happened to him. His ability to write and express his thoughts about the English language unfortunately did not receive it's claim to fame until after his death, in the playwright "Pygmalion," and later titled "My Fair Lady."

Pygmalion is a funny play about a phonetics expert who attempts to make a lady out of an uneducated Cockney flower girl. This play also brings out the important questions about relationships between men and women, human behavior, and social class.

Glad to see Shaw take a stand for women and their roles. He, in a sense was helping to free women of the stereotypical role of running the home and being submissive. Yeah to Shaw!

John Keats

I am noticing that with some of the authors, their lives seem to be cut short from illness, such as Keat's unfortunate tragedy of losing his mother at an early age, then losing is brother. With these losses, he had lost inspiration to continue his works. Even he himself ended up with the same disease that his mother and brother had, and died in the prime of his life. However his works where well known before and after his death.

Keat poems created a world of imagination, an escape of unhappyness, and passing of time. In Ode to a Nightingale, pg.438, he listens to a real nightingale sing and feels joy and pain at the same time. As the poems moves on, is this a real nightingale or does he use the bird to symbolize his feelings about nature, joy, and pain? Even in this poem he talks about drinking which to me seems a way to escape, "With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, and purple-stained mouth(wine perhaps) that I might drink, and leave the world unseen, and with thee fade away into the forest dim:"

Not sure if this poem is real experience or just a daydream.