“The Same River” by Jeffrey Harrison from Into Daylight. © Tupelo Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission. ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2017 It’s the birthday of the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne born in London (1837). He was just over five feet tall. His cousin wrote about him during their school days: “He was strangely tiny. His limbs were small and delicate; and his sloping shoulders looked far too weak to carry his great head, the size of which was exaggerated by the tousled mass of red hair standing almost at right angles to it. Hero-worshippers talk of his hair as having been a ‘golden aureole.’ At that time there was nothing golden about it. Red, violent, aggressive red it was, unmistakable, unpoetical carrots.” Swinburne liked Eton, where he was known as “mad Swinburne,” and he hated Oxford. But it was there that he befriended the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who called him “my little Northumbrian friend.” As roommates, they kept a pet wombat and got drunk together frequently. Swinburne was famous for his outrageous personality—extremely melodramatic, he liked to slide naked down banisters, and he would literally skip around a room, shrieking his poetry at the top of his lungs. Oscar Wilde called him “a braggart in matters of vice.” But he was a popular and respected poet in his own right. His books include
Love Writer’s Almanac! It’s true….you learn something every day and the Almanac proves that!
Thank you.
Love Writer’s Almanac! It’s true….you learn something every day and the Almanac proves that!
Thank you.