"I HAVE a rendezvous with DeathAt some disputed barricade,When Spring comes back with rustling shadeAnd apple-blossoms fill the airI have a rendezvous with DeathWhen Spring brings back blue days and fair"The above unfortunately prophetic lines were written by the famed war poet Alan Seeger months before his death at the hands of German fire during the infamous slaughter of the battle of the Somme whilst serving in the French Foreign Legion. He saw ...

Alan Seeger (22 June 1888 – 4 July 1916) was an American poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist. He is best known for the poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death, a favorite of President John F. Kennedy. A statue representing him is on the monument in the Place des États-Unis, Paris, honoring fallen Americans who volunteered for France duri...

Alan Seeger was born on 22nd June 1888 in New York. When he was one the family moved to Staten Island and nine years later onwards to Mexico for two years.After attending several elite preparatory schools he enrolled at Harvard in 1906, where he also edited and wrote for the Harvard Monthly.He graduated in 1910 and went to live the life of a bohemian in New York’s Greenwich Village, and thereafter moved to Paris to continue his poetry writing in the Latin quarter.Wa...

In the trenches of World War I, amidst the deafening roar of artillery and the suffocating stench of death, a young American poet named Alan Seeger pens a haunting sonnet that will forever immortalize his name. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" is a poignant and evocative masterpiece that captures the raw emotions of a soldier facing his own mortality. As the battle rages around him, Seeger contemplates the inevitability of death and the bittersweet beauty of sacrifice. His words, etched in...

In "Poems," Alan Seeger presents a collection that intricately weaves themes of love, longing, and the fleeting nature of existence, expressing a profound sense of beauty amid the tragedy of life. The literary style is marked by lyrical intensity, vivid imagery, and a romantic sensibility reflective of the early 20th century, grounded in modernist ideals. Seeger's poetry often resonates with the existential concerns of his time, exploring the tensions of war, a reflection of his own experi...

In England the Victorian Age was about to become the past and a new age of worldwide wars of horror and slaughter would envelop and decimate generations, forever staining mankind.The Century would see the World discover strengths. The Democracies would stand firm against Fascism and later Communism yet still keep its own elite and privileged in power and the rest of us underfoot.The World was more connected than ever before. Culture accelerated its kaleidoscopic and interwo...

Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another. Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us.Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition ...

The stereotypical image of a poet is one of unknown talent starving in a garret and who’s faithfulness and legacy to the art is discovered only after their death.In some cases this is undoubtedly true, but Poets being human and with the same building blocks of physical and mental health as the rest of us, also had the same afflictions and problems as the rest of us.The long roll call of names and the truncated legacies that were left behind is filled with these lost talents...

The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives. Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives.But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poet...

Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another. Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us.Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition ...