Eliot, T. S. 1922. The Waste Land

Poem of the week: Returning, We Hear Larks by Isaac Rosenberg Nature returns... A poppy field. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian This week's poem, Returning, We Hear Larks, is one of Isaac Rosenberg's most popular war poems, but I often wonder if he'd have made further revisions, given time. It's among the last handful of poems he wrote, working on scraps of paper in circumstances that would have silenced a less motivated artist.

The Art of Wandering: 'Quattrocento' The snake enters your dreams through paintings: this one, of a formal garden in which there are always three: the thin man with the green-white skin that marks him vegetarian and the woman with a swayback and hard breasts that look stuck on and the snake, vertical and with a head that's face-coloured and haired like a woman's. Everyone looks unhappy, even the few zoo animals, stippled with sun, even the angel who's like a slab of flaming laundry, hovering up there with his sword of fire, unable as yet to strike. There's no love here.

Epic Pooh : Feature — www.revolutionsf.com Author's Note: 'Epic Pooh' was originally published as an essay by the BSFA, revised for its inclusion in the 1989 book Wizardry and Wild Romance, A Study of Epic Fantasy, and slightly revised again for this publication. It was written long before the publication and much-deserved success of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy which, in my view, merits all the optimism I have expressed here. The essay did not attempt to deal with all fantasy, such as Alice in Wonderland or other children's fantasy, but only epic fantasy from its origins in romance poetry to the present day. Certain highlighted phrases indicate additional comments from the author: mouse over the phrase to read the note.

Poem of the week: In the Trenches "Here's a little poem a bit commonplace I'm afraid," Isaac Rosenbergwrote to his friend, Sonia Rodker in the autumn of 1916. The poem, In the Trenches, was written by Rosenberg while serving with the British Expeditionary Force in France. A year and a half later, in April 1918, the poet was killed during a wiring patrol near Arras. In the Trenches turned out to be one of those poems a poet in a hurry considers finished, only later to discover, it was actually draft. It's still worth reading in its own right, and for the illumination it lends to the better-known and more achieved Break of Day in the Trenches. Born in Bristol in 1890, of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, Rosenberg had been raised in considerable poverty in London's East End.

We are hard by Margaret Atwood – Read A Little Poetry If I love you — the same question I keep asking myself, over and over. We are hardMargaret Atwoodi We are hard on each other and call it honesty, choosing our jagged truths with care and aiming them across the neutral table. The things we say are true; it is our crooked aim, our choices turn them criminal. ii Of course your lies are more amusing: you make them new each time. Your truths, painful and boring repeat themselves over & over perhaps because you own so few of them iii A truth should exist, it should not be used like this.

Online texts Professor Jim Herod and I have written Multivariable Calculus ,a book which we and a few others have used here at Georgia Tech for two years. We have also proposed that this be the first calculus course in the curriculum here, but that is another story.... Although it is still in print, Calculus,by Gilbert Strang is made available through MIT's OpenCourseWare electronic publishing initiative. TS Eliot's The Waste Land describes a sickness, without a prescription TS Eliot in 1919. 'What did the first readers of The Waste Land see, knowing little of Eliot as a person and nothing of his private life?' Photograph: EO Hoppe/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Matthew Arnold: Poems Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "The Scholar-Gipsy" (1853) Arnold opens "The Scholar-Gipsy" describing a beautiful rural setting in the pastures. Oxford is in the distance, and the speaker discusses the setting around him, painting an image of the shepherd and the reapers who work there. The speaker tells the shepherd he will be in the field until sundown, enjoying the scenery and looking at the towers of Oxford. Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village vs. George C "The Deserted Village" by Oliver Goldsmith is a nostalgic poem about the passing of a simpler, happier rural past. It tells the story of a village which had once been happy and flourishing, but which is now quite deserted and fallen to ruins. As for George Crabbe's "The Village", can be perceived as a response to "The Deserted Village", since, unlike Goldsmith, Crabbe conceived the idea of telling the truth about country folk just like he saw it, showing the rural poverty in a very bleak picture from which he himself came.

observando My friend, my friend, I was born doing reference work in sin, and born confessing it. This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue’s wrangle, the world’s pottage, the rat’s star …I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. Poem of the week: The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith ''Twas certain he could write' ... Detail from Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Oliver Goldsmith. Photograph: Public domain Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village is both a marvellous descriptive poem and a powerful political essay. Polemic comes alive when it is grounded in detail, and Goldsmith conducts his argument using an expansive array of vivid supporting material – topographies, interiors, and sharp human portraits. The passage chosen for this week's poem is the best-known of those portraits.

Seven Poems by Anne Carson Todd Watts, Urban Asteroids (Dimensional Abstraction), 1986, silver print. Courtesy of P.P.O.W. Short Talk On Chromo-luminarism Sunlight slows down Europeans.