Beaming Notes
Your Guide to Literature
About the poet: William Cowper was born on November 26th, 1731, in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England. The poet’s mother died when he was six and Cowper was sent to Dr. Pittman’s boarding school, where he was routinely bullied. In 1748, he enrolled in the Middle Temple in order to pursue a law degree. In 1765, he… Continue reading Summary of The Nightingale and the Glow-worm by Cowper: 2022
The publication details of this poem are not known. However, what we do know about it is that its form is rather innovative for its time and that its message is one for all times. This poem describes a single event and two outcomes of that very event. Therefore, it provides multiple endings to the… Continue reading Sympathy: Summary: 2022
About the poet: John Berryman was born John Smith in McAlester, Oklahoma, on 25th October 1914. He taught at many American universities, ending at the University of Minnesota. In his writing, Berryman was influenced by Yeats, Auden, Hopkins, Hart Crane and Ezra Pound. In his early work like Poems (1942) and The Dispossessed (1948), he displayed great technical control in poems that… Continue reading Summary of The Ball Poem by John Berryman: 2022
“The Echoing Green” (also spelled as “The Echoing Green” in Blake’s original manuscript) by William Blake was published in 1789 as part of his celebrated collection of poetry entitled Songs of Innocence. The Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow-up to Songs of Innocence. The two books were then published together under the merged… Continue reading The Echoing Green: Summary: 2022
The publication details of this poem are unknown. However, what we do know for sure is that it is one of the typically Yeatsian poems. It does not refer to his system of symbols at all. Neither does it hark back to the Irish past. No revolutionary thoughts have gone into this poem. It is… Continue reading The Ballad of Father Gilligan: Summary: 2022
“Open thine Eyes and See thy God” appears as Verse 11 in the English translation of the Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore.The original Bengali collection entitled Gitanjali contained 157 poems and was published on 14th August 1910. The English Gitanjali or Song Offerings is a collection of 103 English poems – Tagore’s own English translations of his Bengali poems – first published in November 1912… Continue reading Open thine Eyes and See thy God: Summary: 2022
About the poet: James Falconer Kirkup (England, 23 April 1918 – Andorra, 10 May 2009) was a prolific English poet, translator and travel writer. He was born on 23rd April 1918. At the beginning of his career, he taught at The Downs School in Colwall, Malvern, where W.H. Auden had earlier been a master. He… Continue reading Summary of No Men are Foreign by James Kirkup: 2022
About the poet: William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland on 13th June 1865. He was the son of a well-known Irish painter, John Butler Yeats and also learned painting as a teenager, but soon found that it was poetry that he preferred. Yeats was involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement against the cultural… Continue reading Summary of For Anne Gregory by W. B. Yeats: 2022
About the poet: Edwin Brock is a British poet. He was born in London on 19th October 1927. He worked as a police constable and an advertising copywriter until 1972, when he decided to become a freelance writer instead. He became poetry editor of the eminent magazine known as Ambit in 1960. Influenced by American confessional poets, Brock writes… Continue reading Summary of Five Ways to Kill a Man by Edwin Brock: 2022
John Milton was born in London on 9th December 1608. After university, he spent six years in his father’s country home in Buckinghamshire, following a rigorous independent study course, including classical and modern works, to prepare for a career as a poet. In addition, Milton was proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, Old… Continue reading On His Blindness Line by Line Summary (2023 Update)
