Literature

Allan Quatermain is the original Indiana Jones. He is short, ugly, bearded, skeletal in frame, as well as a marvellous shot and tracker. His adventures in Africa as a professional hunter and explorer will keep you a fan forever.

Robert Frost wrote some memorable poems and became one of America's most popular poets. He sought to produce a 'sound of sense' in his work. But what does this phrase mean?

Frances Cornford's short poem Childhood focuses on the thoughts of an adult looking back to an event which changed things for them as a child. With full rhyme and mostly iambic pentameter, it neatly sums up what it is to learn a life lesson about the old and being young.

Climbing My Grandfather is an extended metaphor focusing on a young boy who 'climbs' his grandfather, a mountain of a man. Autobiographical, full of detail and climbing language, this poem, a single stanza, reflects the awe and wonder and risk a boy takes getting to know his grandfather.

Emily Dickinson's American (innovative) sonnet reveals an attitude dramatized in the Shakespeare sonnets: the poet's confidence in her creation of a world of beauty that will last forever.

The Secret Garden is a story about a seemingly magical garden that has healing powers. The garden has been hidden for ten years when a young girl discovers it.

The Borrowers is a children's book about tiny people living in secret in a house. They survive by collecting items owned by the big people in the house. Eventually their hiding place is discovered.

Here are some examples of contemporary and classic short stories, as well as selections for students of various ages.

We often use words that are derived from a person’s name without even realizing it.

In "I measure every Grief I meet," the speaker examines the nature of human suffering. The poem is long by Dickinson standards, filling out a whopping ten quatrains.

Whether or not one loves or hates the writing of Ernest Hemingway is never much of a consideration regarding his stature, as his stature as one of the finest of America's writers is cemented in history. The life of Earnest Hemingway was complex, and full of danger, intrigue, and adventure, just like his writing, the man was totally unique.

Ruins of a Great House is Walcott's poem on colonialism, power and decay. History, Slavery and the English language combine to reveal a complex, ambivalent relationship between the speaker and the system that brought both cruelty and culture into the lives of once free people of the Caribbean.

An overview of Sir Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" and an analysis of the recurring motifs of mortality, lack of reasoning, love versus lust, and time.

Hopeful, rewarding, and highly informative, this book is a necessity for all who’ve begun the trilogy, following along with the journey of the weary travelers, as it is the satisfying ending of all who hoped to see good triumph over evil, and the hopes of Middle earth restored.

A physician and a poet, William Carlos Williams, modernist, lived and worked in Rutherford, New Jersey most of his life. His poems deal with the everyday things in life, based on the local, becoming universal. Wheelbarrows, plums, people traits, starlings and flowers - No ideas but in things.

The speaker in Malcolm M. Sedam's "Desafinado" holds the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg accountable for what the speaker deems to be the attempted degradation of the soul of humanity.