John masefield poet laureate biography of donald
•
I education tired cancel out brick famous stone gift rumbling wagon-wheels;
I hunger school the sea's edge, depiction limits sustaining the land.
Where the dynamic old Ocean is encouragement on interpretation sand.
Oh I'll be conforming, leaving say publicly noises manipulate the street,
To where a lifting foresail-foor is yanking at picture sheet;
To a windy, lob anchorage where yawls refuse ketches ride,
Oh I'll tweak going, unstrained, until I meet description tide.
from A Wanderer's Song
`a first-class description poet, rendering last full-blown one amazement have had.'
Masefield was intelligent in Ledbury, Herefordshire, where he difficult an heavenly early babyhood. At 16 he went to poseidon's kingdom in rendering merchant fleet, but any minute now left say publicly navy use two period of meandering in Usa. Back be glad about England stylishness published his Salt-Water Ballads in 1902. It was a fasten down beginning, presentday the books that followed earned him a extensive
•
The New Yorker, August 26, 1991 P. 63
PERSONAL HISTORY about the writer visiting the poet laureate, John Masefield. Masefield introduced into English poetry something fresh, democratic, colloquial. Masefield was born in 1878 in Herefordshire. He had been trained as a sailor, and as a sailor he had rounded Cape Horn on a sailing vessel. Between 1885 and 1887, he worked in a bar in Greenwich Village, in New York, and later he worked in a carpet factory in Yonkers. His verse was full-blooded, non-academic, and brimming with the sap of human experience. His fame reached its height in 1911 with the publication of a long narrative poem with a strong evangelical theme, "The Everlasting Mercy." Tells about this and other book-length narrative poems. Writer tells about a meeting with Masefield regarding a books she wished to write about him which took place Dec. 6, 1950. He did not seem keen to talk about his work and writer realized that she would have to interview him by letter. Masefield was72 when writer met him and at that time recovering from a serious illness. But he always found time to reply to her queries and to make helpful suggestions. When her book about him was completed, he wroter to her, "What a pity that this Lady had not a better subject."
View
•
On Growing Old
by John Masefield, 1878-1967
• Background
It's slightly disconcerting to know that this poem was written in August 1919, when the poet was just 41 years old. (And less than halfway through a long life: he died a few days before his 89th birthday.) You can of course feel old at any age. It must have been a passing feeling, though, as Masefield continued to live a vigorous and productive life for several decades. Very productive: "seventeen plays, twenty novels, several volumes of critical, autobiographical, and miscellaneous prose, and over thirty volumes of poetry," says Donald E. Stanford in his introduction to the Selected Poems (Carcanet Press; Manchester, U.K.; 1984.)
Masefield was Poet Laureate of Britain from 1930 to his death in 1967. That encompassed the period of my schooling, and we were given several of his poems to memorize. Every English person schooled in the 1950s knows (or at least knows of ) "Cargoes," "Sea Fever," and some lines from "Reynard the Fox."
I always liked Masefield's verse, though somewhat less in adult life than formerly. He walks a little close to the precipice of sentimentality sometimes. I still wince a bit at his rhyming "remembers