Poet, critic and “father of imagism” T. E. Hulme died 108 years ago today.

His biographer Robert Ferguson described the event in The Short Sharp Life of T. E. Hulme:

On 28 September 1917, four days after his thirty-fourth birthday, Hulme suffered a direct hit from a large shell which literally blew him to pieces. Apparently absorbed in some thought of his own he had failed to hear it coming and remained standing while those around threw themselves flat on the ground. What was left of him was buried in the Military Cemetery at Koksijde, West-Vlaanderen, in Belgium where — no doubt for want of space — he is described simply as “One of the War poets.”

26 years before Hulme met his end on the battlefield, Herman Melville died in New York on the same date. Markson in Reader’s Block offers the following brief account:

…12:30 A.M. 104 East 26th Street, New York. Cardiac dilatation, mitral regurgitation, contributing asthenia.

Melville.

…

One has the right to expect ordinary decency even of a poet.