Thomas Hardy Poetry

Thomas Hardy’s reputation as a man of letter is firmly established by his novels. However, he had told his good friends that he wanted to be remembered first and foremost as a poet. He was writing poetry while writing the novels but his first book of poems wasn’t published until 1898 when he was 58 years old.

He is often considered to be the first modern poet. He looks unsentimentally and unflinchingly at the world and reports what he sees.

This poetry does not tell, it shows what it often means in a world indifferent to suffering. His war or anti-war poems are among the best ever written. His love poems, or elegies, written after his wife’s Emma’s death, are, according to D.H. Lawrence, some of the very best in the English language. During this seminar, we will study and examine some of his greatest work.