Dweller in Shadows

Dweller in Shadows PDF Author: Kate Kennedy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212783
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
"Originally a student of music, [Gurney] took up poetry in the trenches of the First World War, and was working on what would be his first volume of verse when, in 1917, he suffered wounds to the shoulder; and it was just before publication of this volume, Severn & Somme, that he was gassed at Passchendaele. After his return to Britain he resumed his musical studies, ... and quickly found outlets for his compositions. There is some debate about whether or not his subsequent mental illness was a consequence of the horrors and sufferings of the war; but mental illness marked the rest of his life, and indeed from about 1922 until his death he was institutionalised ... He nevertheless continued to produce poems and musical compositions in prolific fashion, and his works in both areas are read and performed, respectively, to this day"--

Dweller in Shadows

Dweller in Shadows PDF Author: Kate Kennedy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212783
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
"Originally a student of music, [Gurney] took up poetry in the trenches of the First World War, and was working on what would be his first volume of verse when, in 1917, he suffered wounds to the shoulder; and it was just before publication of this volume, Severn & Somme, that he was gassed at Passchendaele. After his return to Britain he resumed his musical studies, ... and quickly found outlets for his compositions. There is some debate about whether or not his subsequent mental illness was a consequence of the horrors and sufferings of the war; but mental illness marked the rest of his life, and indeed from about 1922 until his death he was institutionalised ... He nevertheless continued to produce poems and musical compositions in prolific fashion, and his works in both areas are read and performed, respectively, to this day"--

Severn & Somme

Severn & Somme PDF Author: Ivor Gurney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description


Ivor Gurney & Marion Scott

Ivor Gurney & Marion Scott PDF Author: Pamela Blevins
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1843834219
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Insightful account of the life and works of two of the most important figures in twentieth-century British cultural life.

Poetry of the First World War

Poetry of the First World War PDF Author: Tim Kendall
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191642053
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 1048

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Book Description
The First World War produced an extraordinary flowering of poetic talent, poets whose words commemorate the conflict more personally and as enduringly as monuments in stone. Lines such as 'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?' and 'They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old' have come to express the feelings of a nation about the horrors and aftermath of war. This new anthology provides a definitive record of the achievements of the Great War poets. As well as offering generous selections from the celebrated soldier-poets, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and Ivor Gurney, it also incorporates less well-known writing by civilian and women poets. Music hall and trench songs provide a further lyrical perspective on the War. A general introduction charts the history of the war poets' reception and challenges prevailing myths about the war poets' progress from idealism to bitterness. The work of each poet is prefaced with a biographical account that sets the poems in their historical context. Although the War has now passed out of living memory, its haunting of our language and culture has not been exorcised. Its poetry survives because it continues to speak to and about us.

Stars in a Dark Night

Stars in a Dark Night PDF Author: Ivor Gurney
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780750934671
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This collection of letters written by Ivor Gurney whilst on the Western Front shows that, although the facts of his life are undeniably tragic, the relationship he forged with his family was loving.

Best Poems

Best Poems PDF Author: Ivor Gurney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Best Poems consists of fair copies Gurney made, with few alterations. The Book of Five Makings is more a working draft, with recastings of the same poems, revealing the process by which he brought his art to completion. Of the 116 poems in this double volume, fewer than a quarter are previously collected. In his introduction R.K.R. Thornton, Professor of English at the University of Birmingham and editor of Gurney's poems and collected letters, sets the books in context. Annotations give readers a clear picture of the books as Gurney wanted them to be.

Ivor Gurney: the Complete Poetical Works, Volume 1

Ivor Gurney: the Complete Poetical Works, Volume 1 PDF Author: Ivor Gurney
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199566952
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is the first volume in a five-volume edition of the complete poetical works of Ivor Gurney (1890-1937). Following an extensive study of all known manuscripts, the edition brings much of that work to publication for the first time. Since his death, much of his work has been censored or overlooked, his stylistic development towards modernism written off as the product of 'insanity' The availability of his complete poetry will change absolutely our understanding of Gurney's development, and the true nature of his poetry. It will lay bare his aspirations and pursuits as an artist in all its diversity, as a poet of war, of place, and of the asylum; a poet whose work has been celebrated by Geoffrey Hill for its 'incontestible grandeur'. Volume I presents all of Gurney's poems written from March 1907 to December 1918. It begins with Gurney's earliest surviving verse, and ends, just after the Armistice, with his return to civilian life.

Ordeal of Ivor Gurney

Ordeal of Ivor Gurney PDF Author: Michael Hurd
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571242016
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
First published in 1978 The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney is a moving and extraordinary account of a tragic genius penned by the composer Michael Hurd. Born in Gloucester in 1890 Ivor Gurney began writing songs and poems in his teens, taking his inspiration from the Severn Valley countryside where he grew up. Sent to the Western Front during the First World War Gurney experienced desolation and horror that made a profound impression on him. He ended his days in an asylum, but at his death in 1937 he was beginning to be acknowledged as one of England's finest composers. Still, it took several more decades for his work as a war poet to be fully appreciated. 'Hurd compresses into a taut, sympathetic outline the initial optimism and later torment of Gurney's ill-starred life... distinguished by its crisp use of poetic extracts.' PN Review

The Poetry of Shell Shock

The Poetry of Shell Shock PDF Author: Daniel Hipp
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786421746
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The British poets Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon found themselves psychologically altered by what they experienced in the First World War. Owen was hospitalized in April 1917 for "shell shock" in Scotland, where he met Siegfried Sassoon in June of that year, hospitalized for the same affliction. Ivor Gurney found the war, ironically, to have been a place of relative stability within an otherwise tormented life; When he was wounded during the war's final year, his doctors observed signs of mental illness, which evolved into incapacitating psychosis by 1922. For each of these men--all poets before the war--poetry served as a way to inscribe continuity into their lives, enabling them to retaliate against the war's propensity to render the lives of the participants discontinuous. Poetry allowed them to return to the war through memory and imagination, and poetry helped them to bring themselves back from psychological breakdown to a state of stability, based upon a relationship to the war that their literary war enabled them to create and discover. This work investigates the ways in which the poetry of war functioned as a means for these three men to express the inexpressible and to extract value out of the experience of war. Bibliography and index are also included. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

In Zodiac Light

In Zodiac Light PDF Author: Robert Edric
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0552774189
Category : Biographical fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
It is December 1922. Ex-soldier, poet and composer, Ivor Gurney, suffering from increasingly frequent and deepening bouts of paranoid schizophrenia is transferred to the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford. Neglected by the military and his own family, and abandoned by all but a notable handful of his friends, Gurney begins a descent into the madness and oblivion which he believes has long been waiting to claim him. Yet following his arrival at Dartford, there are still those who continue to believe in Gurney’s capabilities. It seems that he might find some calm and ease in his life, and thus achieve the status so many consider him capable of achieving..