Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), one of the “greats” of American poetry, was friends with William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore and E.E. Cummings, among many others – and his day job was being a vice president at the Hartford Insurance Company. His achievements went largely unrecognized, however, until the year before his death, when he published his […]
Archives for April 2010
National Poetry Month: Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott published his first poem at age 14 in 1944 (entitled, appropriately enough, “1944, ”); had self-published two volumes of poetry by age 19; and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992.
National Poetry Month: “Ballistics” by Billy Collins
Billy Collins served as U.S. poet laureate for two terms (2001-2003), and New York state poet from 2004-2006. He’s published 12 books of poetry and edited three others. The New York Times has called him “the most popular poet in America, ” and he’s something rather odd in publishing circles – several of his books […]
National Poetry Month: Mona Van Duyn
Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004) received numerous prizes, accolades and recognitions, including becoming the first woman to be named U.S. poet laureate (1992-1993). Her book of poems Near Changes (1990) received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Van Duyn once said, “I believe that good poetry can be as ornate as a cathedral or as bare as […]
National Poetry Month: Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters (1868 – 1950) is best known for his famous book of poetry, Spoon River Anthology (1916), in which 244 voices speak of all the passion and tedium of life, and often death. Visiting Spoon River is to visit a poetic graveyard to read the headstones. Masters produced far more than this work. […]
National Poetry Month: Sara Teasdale and Vachel Lindsay
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was born and raised in St. Louis, and won numerous recognitions for her poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize. She was in love with poet Vachel Lindsay, but married someone else, a local St. Louis businessman. She later divorced her husband but never married Lindsay. Lindsay (1879-1931) was born in Springfield, Illinois, and became […]
National Poetry Month: Nancy Rosback
Nancy Rosback is one of our regular contributions to the (approximately) twice-a-month poetry jams on Twitter. She lives in Oregon, where she and her husband Peter operate Sineann Wines. Her blog is Poems and Prayers, where she posts some of the simplest, and most profound, poems around, about faith and hope and even everyday things like […]
National Poetry Month: Rupert Brooke
We hop back across the Atlantic to England for one of the Great War poets who died during that conflict in Europe. Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915) died in World War I, not from a war wound but from sepsis as the result of an infected mosquito bite. Brooke was connected to the Bloomsbury Group […]
National Poetry Month: Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was a prolific poet, yet fewer than a dozen of her almost 1, 800 poems were published during her lifetime.
National Poetry Month: One from Keats
April is National Poetry Month in the United States and Canada, and what better way to start the celebration with a poem from the Mother Country. Our goal is to post at least once a day during April with poems, articles, reviews and a couple of giveaways. (Note that I said goal; I didn’t say […]