"Sidelights"

Thomas Blackburn was a British poet whose troubled life and deep spirituality informed his works. Blackburn's writings reflect his struggles with alcoholism, depression, and failed relationships, as well as his unusually traumatic childhood. As William B. Worthen put it in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Blackburn "used poetry to probe his painful inner world, questioning the difficulty of faith, his problematic sexuality, and the mysterious inspiration offered by nature."

The son of a strict and superstitious Anglican minister, Blackburn grew up deeply tormented by his parents' unorthodox childrearing techniques. His father demanded that he wear a steel clip on his penis at night to prevent nocturnal emissions, and the older man was otherwise obsessed with his son's sexuality and racial inheritance. Not surprisingly, Blackburn sought solace in alcohol and suffered a major breakdown at the age of nineteen. During his treatment and recovery, he began writing poetry to understand both himself and the cosmos. Worthen wrote: "In later life, Blackburn struggled to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his father's abuse and by his mother's impulsive affection, confronting his past both in psychotherapy and in several autobiographical poems."

His health improved, Blackburn began a long tenure as an English teacher, first in...