Summer is one of the happiest seasons at Tweetspeak Poetry, because it is the season of Take Your Poet to Work Day (or, you know, to the beach). It’s one thing to start every day with a poem (we recommend it). But how great would it be to start your day with a poet? On Take Your Poet to Work Day, we encourage people around the world to take their favorite poet to work for the day.
Take Your Poet to Work Day is coming July 20, 2016
To help you play and celebrate with us, we’re releasing poets each week in a compact, convenient format you can tuck in your pocket, tool belt, or lunchbox. We started our celebration three years ago with Sara Teasdale, Pablo Neruda, T. S. Eliot, Rumi, Edgar Allan Poe, and the reclusive Emily Dickinson (for folks who work at home). We even released a full collection, The Haiku Masters: Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. In 2014, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia Plath. And last year, we introduced the Bard of Avon William Shakespeare, beloved poet Maya Angelou, and iconic American poet Robert Frost, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, and America’s poet, Walt Whitman.
Because you can never have too many poets in your lunch box (or your desk drawer), we have a new collection of poets to release this year, including English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Irish poet Seamus Heaney, and English poet and novelist Emily Brontë, Australian poet and activist Judith Wright, and this week, we wrap up our 2016 collection with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Take Your Poet to Work: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Get your own downloadable version of Take Your Poet to Work Day Printable – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that you can print, color and cut out for the big day.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet born in Portland, Maine, at a time when Maine was still part of Massachusetts. His father was a member of Congress while his mother was the daughter of a revolutionary War hero. Longfellow studied at Bowdoin College. After some studies abroad, as well, he returned and taught at Bowdoin, and later at Harvard.
Longfellow’s first wife died during a miscarriage. He later remarried and had several children. His second wife died after sustaining severe burns when her dress caught on fire. Longfellow stopped writing for a time following his wife’s death. He published his first collection in 1831, Outre-Mer. In 1839 he published Voices of the Night followed by Ballads and Other Poems in 1841. He was the most popular poet of his time and his lyric poems, which focused on mythology and legend, had great appeal to the masses. He is remembered for “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Song of Hiawatha, ” among others. Walt Whitman was noted to say that Longfellow’s work “does not deal hard blows.”
He published an additional 7 volumes after the end of the Civil war and before his death in 1882.
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Snow-flakes
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Post and illustrations by Will Willingham. Video by Sonia Joie.
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[…] We’re excited to release our free Take Your Poet to Work Day Coloring Book, updated with our fresh new crop of 2016 poets, including William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Seamus Heaney, and Emily Brontë, Judith Wright, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. […]