- Alan Seeger
Alan Seeger, born on
June 22 ,1888 and diedJuly 4 ,1916 , was an American poet who also fought inWorld War I .Life
Born in
New York , Seeger moved with his family toStaten Island 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 brotherCharles Seeger , a noted musicologist, was the father of the American folk singer,Pete Seeger .Seeger entered
Harvard in 1906 after attending several elite preparatory schools, includingHackley School . At Harvard, he edited and wrote for the "Harvard Monthly". After graduating in 1910, he moved toGreenwich Village for two years, where he wrote poetry and enjoyed the life of a young bohemian.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. [James C. Young, "Yeats of Petitpas'," "New York Times", 19 February 1922]
Having moved to the
Latin Quarter ofParis to continue his seemingly itinerant, intellectual lifestyle, onAugust 24 ,1914 , Seeger joined theFrench Foreign Legion so that he could fight for the Allies inWorld War I (the United States did not enter the war until 1917). He was killed in action atBelloy-en-Santerre , 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, "Rendezvous", 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", 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 The work is well done, and so much out of date as to be almost a positive quality.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.Popular culture
A shortened form of Seeger's poem "Rendezvous" was featured in a trailer for the video game "
Gears of War 2 " that debuted duringE3 2008. [ [http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/14232680/gears-of-war-2/videos/gears_of_war2_rendezvous_071408.html Gears of War 2 "Rendezvous" Trailer] ]In the 1993 film
In the Line of Fire , the assassin Mitch Leary (played byJohn Malkovich ) cites "Rendezvous" as presidentJohn F. Kennedy 's favorite. He incorrectly titles the poem by its first line, "I have a rendezvous with death," adding that it is "not a good poem."References
External links
*gutenberg author|id=Alan+Seeger |name=Alan Seeger
* [http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/memoir/Seeger/Harvard.htm Memorial to Seeger by M. A. DeWolfe Howe]
* [http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/ Lost Poets of the Great War]
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