Not everyone can go from being an 11 year-old runaway to an internationally recognized poet and songwriter. Yet, Rod McKuen did just that. Although he never really garnered many accolades for his musical performances, his song writing netted over 1,500 songs and the sale of over 100 million record albums. In the poetry realm, McKuen [...]

Some of us aren’t very good about talking about loss. In many of our modern, sophisticated cultures, we’ve forgotten how to deal with loss — grieving is a underdeveloped concept. We are actually too busy to grieve and deal with loss. Mostly when we talk about ‘loss’ our thoughts go to the death of family [...]

I first learned of Roger McGough when I was working on my teaching certification. One of my mentors told me about a rather frightening poem that McGough had composed regarding how frustrated teachers might sometimes be tempted to behave in the classroom. Of course, the poem was intended as a witty, albeit dark, satire, not [...]

Alexander Pope’s witty and pointed poetic satire brought him infamy during his lifetime. It has also made critical evaluation of Pope in the years since his death more prone to interpretation based on the critic’s personal feelings about such satire than perhaps any other poet in history. Pope was born the only child of Alexander [...]

Irish balladeer, singer, and poet Thomas Moore gained fame in the first half of the nineteenth century both as a poet and as a society figure whose scandalous behavior may have overshadowed his talents. Thomas Moore was born in 1779 in Dublin, Ireland, over his father’s grocery business. Moore was one of the first Catholic [...]