Alan Seeger

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Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger, born on June 22, 1888 and died July 4, 1916, was an American poet who also fought in World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
.

in New York

New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
, Seeger moved with his family to Staten Island

Staten Island

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Encyclopedia

Alan Seeger, born on June 22, 1888 and died July 4, 1916, was an American poet who also fought in World War I

World War I

Life

Born in New York

New York

Staten Island

Staten Island is a borough of New York City, situated almost entirely on the island of the same name in the extreme southwest part of the city....
at the age of one and remained there until the age of ten. In 1900, his family moved to Mexico for two years, which influenced the imagery of some of his poetry. His brother Charles Seeger

Charles Seeger

Charles Seeger, Jr. was a musicologist, composer, and teacher.He graduated from Harvard University in 1908, then studied and conducted in Cologne before taking a position as Professor of Music at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught from 1912 to 1916 before being dismissed for his public opposition to the US entry int...
, a noted musicologist, was the father of the American folk singer, Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger

Peter "Pete" Seeger is an United States folk singer, and a key figure in the mid-20th century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 50s as a member of The Weavers, most notably the 1950 recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" that topped the charts f...
.

Seeger entered Harvard in 1906 after attending several elite preparatory schools, including Hackley School

Hackley School

Hackley School is a private university-preparatory school located in Tarrytown, New York, New York and is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League....
. At Harvard, he edited and wrote for the Harvard Monthly. After graduating in 1910, he moved to Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village , often simply called the Village, is a largely residential area on the lower west side of southern Manhattan in New York City....
for two years, where he wrote poetry and enjoyed the life of a young bohemian

Bohemianism

The term bohemian, of French origin, was first used in the English language in the nineteenth century to describe the untraditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities....
.

During that time, he attended soirées at the Mlles. Petitpas' boardinghouse (319 West 29th Street), where the presiding genius was the artist and sage John Butler Yeats, father of the poet.

Having moved to the Latin Quarter

Latin Quarter

Latin Quarter is a part of the 5th arrondissement in Paris.Latin Quarter may also refer to:* Latin Quarter , a British pop/rock band*Latin Quarter, Aarhus, part of Midtbyen, Aarhus C, Denmark...
of Paris

Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
to continue his seemingly itinerant intellectual lifestyle, on August 24, 1914, Seeger joined the French Foreign Legion

French Foreign Legion

The French Foreign Legion is a unique unit separate from the regular French Army, established in 1831. The legion was specifically created as a unit for foreign volunteers, to be commanded by French officers; it is however also open to France citizens, who amount to 24% of recruits....
so that he could fight for the Allies in World War I

World War I

Belloy-en-Santerre

Belloy-en-Santerre is a communes of the Somme d?partement in the Somme d?partement in France in the Picardie region of France....
, famously cheering on his fellow soldiers in a successful charge after being hit several times himself by machine gun fire. One of his more famous poems, I Have a Rendezvous with Death, was published posthumously. Indeed, a recurrent theme in both his poetic works and his personal writings prior to falling in battle was his desire for his life to end gloriously at an early age.

Poetry

Seeger's poetry was not published until 1917, a year after his death. Poems, a collection of his works, was relatively unsuccessful, due, according to Eric Homberger, to its lofty idealism and language, qualities out of fashion in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Poems was reviewed in The Egoist
The Egoist (periodical)

The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 in poetry to 1919 in poetry, during which time it published early modernist works, including those of James Joyce and T....
, 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

T. S. Eliot

'Thomas Stearns Eliot', Order of Merit , was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J....
, Seeger's classmate at Harvard.

Popular culture

A shortened form of Seeger's poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death was featured in a trailer for the video game Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2 is a tactic third-person shooter video game, developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox 360. It is the sequel to Gears of War, and was announced by lead designer Cliff Bleszinski during the February 20, 2008 Game Developers Conference....
that debuted during E3

The E3 Media and Business Summit, formerly known as Electronic Entertainment Expo and commonly known as E3, is an annual trade show for the video game industry presented by the Entertainment Software Association....
2008.

In the 1993 film In the Line of Fire

In the Line of Fire

In the Line of Fire is a 1993 in film Academy Award-nominated thriller film about a Psychopathy who attempts to Assassination the President of the United States of the United States and the United States Secret Service agent who tracks him....
, the assassin Mitch Leary (played by John Malkovich

John Malkovich

'John Gavin Malkovich' is an Emmy Award-winning, two-time Academy Award-nominated United States actor, film producer and film director. Over the last 25 years, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures, including Dangerous Liaisons, In the Line of Fire, Con Air, The Man in the Iron Mask , Rounders , Changelin...
) cites "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" as president John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States, serving from 1961 until John F....
's favorite. He says that it is "not a good poem."

Alan Seeger

Life

Poetry

Popular culture

External links