Assignment 2- 5 poets

1) Mihai Eminescu

Mihai Eminescu is a well known Romanian poet. He was born in Botosani, Romania on January 15, 1850. His parents were small land owners and he was the seventh of eleven children. He was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist. He worked as an editor for the newspaper called The Time. His work was inspired by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. His work was strongly influenced by Romanian writers and poets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mihai Eminescu’s  most famous poems are: The Vesper 1883, And if...1883, I Have Yet One Desire 1883, Blue Flower 1884, Evening on the Hill 1885, Oh Linger On 1884, Epigones 1884, Letters, in Ancient Meter, At Star 1886, Evening star, So fresh thou art, Sonnet I II III, A Dacian's prayer, Venus and Madonna, Down where the lonely poplars grow, One wish alone have I , Years have trailed past, Now it's autumn, Time flows by, Sleepy birds, To the star version 1 and 2. His poems had themes of nature, love, hate and Romanian folklore. The way Mihai Eminescu used to write his poems was hard to believe. He would not write a poem when he had free time but whenever he felt emotional or felt the need to express himself. However, when he begun to write a poem, he would write his poems three to four days without sleeping or eating he used to have coffee near him and cigarettes so that he would stay awake. He stayed in his small room with a feather, ink and paper to write on the poem. His poems have rhyme and it is very expressive and emotional. His wife left him after spending many years together as a result, he used to live alone in a small house and stayed in his room for days and expressed himself and grieved through poems. Then, Mihai Eminescu becomes depressed. He suffered from bipolar disorder, he also had syphilis. The doctors injected him with Mercury which at that time it was the usual treatment for syphilis. Mihai Eminescu suffered with depression and had syphilis but he died from mercury poisoning on 15 June 1889. After his death his poems were translated in over 60 languages. Mihai Eminescu is considered the last Genius of Europe even today he is the national poet of Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. There are many monuments everywhere including Montreal, Canada and even his image or face is on Romanian money called lei. Therefore, his legacy will live on.  

2) Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born on May 26, 1799 in Moscow, Russia. He was a Russian poet, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer of the Romantic era. Alexander Pushkin is considered the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. He wrote many famous poems such as; Ruslan and Ludmila 1820, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, 1821 The Gabrieliad, The Robber Brothers, The Fountain of Bakhchisaray 1823, The Gypsies 1824, Count Nulin 1825, Poltava 1829, The Little House in Kolomna 1830, Angelo 1833, The Bronze Horseman, I Loved You, A Wish, Friendship, A Serenade, I've Lived To See Desire Vanish, She, Thoughts, Winter Evening, To Natasha. Most of his poems were about love, time, seasons and Russian folklore. In his poems Alexander Pushkin used to express himself, fight, or critique the life style he used to live in. His poems also refer to different periods of life. For example, in the poem “The Coach of life” he is comparing time to a carriage. The carriage is going faster as you grow older, at the beginning you want it to move faster or you want to grow up but after adulthood you wish for time to slow down because it is moving faster and faster. There is a phrase "the night's dark lodging” meaning that he refers to death. Thus, in that poem he is using different times of the day morning is childhood, afternoon is adulthood, evening is old age, the end of the day must be death. The technology he used to write poems is similar to Mihai Eminescu a feather, ink and paper. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin died on February 10, 1837. He became convinced that his wife had an affair with the French officer Georges-Charles de Heeckeren D’Anthès. Alexander Pushkin challenged him to a duel. In the woods Georges D’Anthès shot him in the stomach and after 2 days Alexander Pushkin died. His home is a museum now. Thus, he is consider a Russian poet Genius and even today his poems are taught in schools. In his honour there are many monuments, a small town named Pushkin, even a small planet that was discovered by a Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, is named after Pushkin. 

3) William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cumbria, England. He was a major English Romantic poet. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was 8 thus, he will write about it in his poems later on. William Wordsworth went to Hawkshead Grammar School and that is when he fell in love with poetry and it is believed that he made his first attempts at writing poetry. In 1802 he married a childhood friend and had five children which after 2 years two of their children died. William Wordsworth met with another poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, they published together the famous poem called Lyrical Ballads in 1798. His famous poems are: An Evening Walk (1793), Descriptive Sketches (1793) ,Borders (1795,) Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey (1798), Lyrical Ballads (1798), Upon Westminster Bridge (1801), Intimations of Immortality (1806), Miscellaneous Sonnets (1807), Poems I-II (1807) ,The Excursion (1814), The White Doe of Rylstone (1815), Peter Bell (1819), The Waggoner (1819), The River Duddon (1820), Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822), Memorials of a Tour of the Continent (1822), Yarrow Revisited (1835), The Prelude Or Growth of a Poet's Mind (1850), The Recluse (1888), The Poetical Works (1949), Selected Poems (1959), Complete Poetical Works (1971), Poems (1977). However, he was known for his poem called The Prelude and it is considered to be the most successful achievement of English romanticism. It is about his spiritual life. In fact, all of his poems are about his experience and what he has been through, he expressed himself through the meaning of the poems. In 1847 his other daughter died as a result, Wordsworth lost his will to write poems. He died on April 23, 1850. Thus, his wife published The Prelude after his death.

4) Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson was an American poet born in December 22, 1869. He is best known for his short poems. He had a difficult life thus, his poems have a dark pessimism theme. He describes that his childhood was unhappy, his parents wanted to have a girl they did not named him until he was six months old. His brother Dean died of a drug overdose. He also had another brother named Herman. He was very charismatic and handsome he married a woman that Edwin himself loved. Not only his personal life was failing but also business as well as a result, he became an alcoholic and became alienated from his wife and children eventually he died in 1901 in a charity hospital. Because his life was kind of dark and so many negative things kept happening his poems had a sad emotional meaning. Poems that he wrote are: A Happy Man, A Song at Shannon's, Aaron Stark Afterthoughts, Alma Mater Amaryllis, An Evangelist's Wife, An Island, An Old Story, Another Dark Lady, Archibald's Example, As a World Would Have It, Atherton's Gambit. His poem were simple, neat short and he rhymed the words. For example, in the poem “A Happy Man” he rhymed, see, me, dead, said, behind, kind, life, wife, right, night, brought, thought, tears, years, rest, blest. His poems were also about personal failure, frustrated desires, bad luck, ideas that he believed in and truth that he has seen. He died at the age of 65 because of alcoholism due to his failures in life.  

5) Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson was born on June 11, 1572 in London, England. He was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. His poetry is about drama, rhythmical prose and sometimes has passion in it thou his poems are more about rhymes. Some of his famous poems are: A Farewell to the World, A Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme, A Hymn on the Nativity of My Saviour, A Hymn to God the Father, A Nymph’s Passion ,A Pangyre, A Pindaric Ode, A Sonnet, to the Noble Lady, An Elegy, An Ode to Himself ,Begging Another ,Blaney's Last Directions. For example, in the poem “An Elegy” he uses rhymes such as: praise, raise, much, such, rear’d, fear’d. Ben Jonson was married and had children however, he outlived all of his children this affected him and wrote poems about his children. His marriage was unhappy and he separated from his wife. He was paralyzed due to illness and died on August 6, 1637.