I lived from 1888-1916. I was from the United States, and am in the Americas category.
Seeger spent two years in the French Foreign Legion; as an American citizen he could not join the French military, so he did the next best thing and joined the Legion, since the United States had not yet entered the war against the Central Powers.
After graduating from Harvard in 1910, Seeger lived for two years in Greenwich Village where he wrote poetry and enjoyed the life of a young bohemian. The poetry he wrote then and while he was at the front was not published until 1917, a year after his death..
His collective work Poems was reviewed in 1917 in The Egoist, where the critic commented that "Seeger was serious about his work and spent pains over it. The work is well done, and so much out of date as to be almost a positive quality. It is high-flown, heavily decorated and solemn, but its solemnity is thorough going, not a mere literary formality. Alan Seeger, as one who knew him can attest, lived his whole life on this plane, with impeccable poetic dignity; everything about him was in keeping." The man who wrote this review of Poems was T. S. Eliot, Seeger's classmate at Harvard.
Alan Seeger's "Rendezvous" echoes a letter he wrote in 1915, in which he says, "If it must be, let it come in the heat of action. Why flinch? It is by far the noblest form in which death can come. It is in a sense almost a privilege. . . ."
After graduating from Harvard in 1910, Seeger lived for two years in Greenwich Village where he wrote poetry and enjoyed the life of a young bohemian. The poetry he wrote then and while he was at the front was not published until 1917, a year after his death..
His collective work Poems was reviewed in 1917 in The Egoist, where the critic commented that "Seeger was serious about his work and spent pains over it. The work is well done, and so much out of date as to be almost a positive quality. It is high-flown, heavily decorated and solemn, but its solemnity is thorough going, not a mere literary formality. Alan Seeger, as one who knew him can attest, lived his whole life on this plane, with impeccable poetic dignity; everything about him was in keeping." The man who wrote this review of Poems was T. S. Eliot, Seeger's classmate at Harvard.
Alan Seeger's "Rendezvous" echoes a letter he wrote in 1915, in which he says, "If it must be, let it come in the heat of action. Why flinch? It is by far the noblest form in which death can come. It is in a sense almost a privilege. . . ."
Popular poetry
- I have a rendezvous with Death
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If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence6 lines, 3 comments - Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays
More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid24 lines
