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Tom Willard's avatar

I especially like this week's poet, Michael. I agree with you that the pre-Romantic period of the late-eighteenth century saw the discovery of children as we known them today, though writers today seem increasingly fearful about childhood anxiety. ¶ My undergraduate teacher Judith Plotz made me see the differences of children in paintings and poetry, and she has since then published "Childhood and the Vocation of Poetry" (Palgarve-McMilllan, 2001). Granted, Wordsworth drew on earlier poetry like Henry Vaughan's "The Retreat" in his "Intimations of Immortality," but the children of so much earlier art and literature are mere reflections on their parents.

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Tom Willard's avatar

I am now rereading "The Children's Hour" (Vintage, 2009) by the late A.S. Byatt, set during the turn of the last century, in the time of William Morris and his successors. I like her depictions of children and their elders.

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