Donald Hall (1928 – ) attended the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference when he was 16, the year he published his first work. Over his career, he’s published numerous works of poetry; written several works of non-fiction, including two biographies; written several children’s books; edited numerous anthologies and textbooks; written short stories; and was named U.S. […]
Search Results for: "national poetry month"
National Poetry Month: Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich (1929 – ) is no stranger to controversy. During the 1960s, her poetry became more confrontational, exploring women’s issues, racism and the Vietnam War. In 1973, she published Diving Into the Wreck, which won the National Book Award for poetry and which Rich shared with her fellow nominees Alica Walker and Audre Lord. […]
National Poetry Month: Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) wrote 14 books of poetry, three books of poetry in translation, innumerable plays that have been published in some 11 works, letters, short stories, novels – an incredibly productive and creative career. All of his work, collectively and individually, represent a profound chronicle of African-American life from the 1920s to […]
National Poetry Month: Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) is another writer whose poetry, like Walt Whitman and Robert Frost’s, could qualify him as “America’s Poet.”
National Poetry Month: Louise Gluck
A native of New York, Louise Gluck has written numerous books of poetry (including A Village Life: Poems, reviewed here last November), won the Pulitzer Prize and a host of other awards and prizes, and in 2003 became the U.S. Poet Laureate and the judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. In 2008, she […]
National Poetry Month: John Ashbery
John Ashbery (1927 – ) has won just about every poetry prize there is to win: the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poésie (the first English-language poet to win), the Bollingen Prize, the English […]
National Poetry Month: Gary Soto
Need poetry teaching resources? Check out our collection of poets, poems, and poetry classroom discussions led by poets and professors.
National Poetry Month: Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) published her first poem in a children’s magazine when she was 13; by 17, she had some 75 published poems in her portfolio. At 33, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the first African-American to achieve that honor. In 1985, she was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress. […]
National Poetry Month: Wendell Berry’s “Leavings”
Author, poet and essayist Wendell Berry has been known for talking walks on Sunday mornings, walks that he uses for both observation and meditation. Most of Leavings: Poems is a kind of historical record of those walks, poems that observe, poems that are a meditation, and sometimes poems that are both. It is a beautiful […]
National Poetry Month: L.L. Barkat
I met L.L. Barkat because I had a bike crash and broke several ribs. It took a few days to figure out that I had broken bones (and a partially collapsed lung), and leaving a few nights later for the emergency room, I grabbed Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places from my […]
National Poetry Month: Robert Frost
If there are any poems I can remember studying in school, they are “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, ” “The Road Not Taken”and “Mending Wall, ” all by Robert Frost (1874-1963). While Walt Whitman has been called “American’s Poet, ” Frost has been called America’s most beloved poet. So much has been said […]
National Poetry Month: Maureen Doallas
Maureen Doallas is one of our regular contributors to the Tweetspeak Poetry-sponsored poetry jams on Twitter. She writes beautiful words, and not just poetry. She blogs at Writing Without Paper, where she covers poetry, art and culture in general – and covers them comprehensively and with great depth and insight. Below are two of Maureen’s poems. […]
National Poetry Month: Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) has been called “America’s Poet.” When he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 (and he kept revising and republishing it for a long time), he changed the direction of American poetry and letters. For decades, some of his poems were memorized in schoolrooms across the United States. Time […]
National Poetry Month: Wallace Stevens
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 […]
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 […]