February 16

Sylvia Townsend Warner was a very interesting woman and was actually very hard to research unless one buys a book.  There are a few internet sites about her, but none go into detail about her life.  In Sylvia's day, poets were mostly men and women wrote un-noticed.  Sylvia was actually studied to be a musician and stated that she became a poet and writer by accident.  Sylvia simply saw a piece of paper one day and thought it so beautiful that she had to write on it.  It was also lucky that a friend introduced her to yet another friend who gave her work to some publishers.  Sylvia married a man, but later separated and became a lesbian.  She wrote about the dark nature in people and often took historical events and gave them the dark twist that she was famous for.  I liked reading Sylvia's poems, especially the ones that were founded in history.  It is truly the greatest insight into how Sylvia thinks when one reads those poems based on fact.  It shows that she sees mostly the honest a raw nature of events and shows that life honestly doesn't always have a happy ending.