We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Good metrical rhymed verse, if it’s to grip the imagination and stay readable, has to have, as well as those external formal features, the same dynamo of hidden musical dramatic laws as the apparently free verse. ~ Ted Hughes Poet Ted Hughes stormy private life often overshadowed his poetry, giving him a notoriety that even the most readable and accessible of poets ...
My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own. ~ Thomas Hardy A failed novelist turned poet, Thomas Hardy could be called a writer's writer, his novels and verses read more by other writers than by the public, especially during his lifetime, when the frank sexuality of his novels and the ...
“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” “The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.” “I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks… And ...
During the mid-twentieth century, there was no poet more beloved in the United States than Robert Frost. Considered the unofficial poet laureate of the nation, Frost's poems were more widely read than almost any other poet's work, his poetry was part of every English course in America's curriculum, and not surprisingly, his poetry was among the most familiar lines among ...
Poet, essayist, Transcendentalist and American literary giant, Ralph Waldo Emerson's poetry is still taught as assiduously in the 21st Century as it was during the 19th Century. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. The son of a Unitarian minister who died when he was eight years of age, Ralph Waldo Emerson began writing as a child. After ...
Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry made him the first African-American poet to reach national prominence while also assuring him a place in American literature. Born in 1872 to former slaves, Paul Laurence Dunbar overcame a childhood marked by poverty and discrimination. Dunbar's mother, Matilda, had no formal education but instilled an appreciation for education and literature, particularly poetry, into her children, resulting in Paul ...
John Donne's poetry has transcended both time and language, speaking to readers across ages and continents, as fresh and meaningful today as it was when written. John Donne's life was as interesting and controversial as his poetry. Born in London in 1572 to a well-to-do Catholic family at a time when Catholicism was unpopular in England, John Donne, along with his ...
Almost unknown as a poet in her own lifetime in the Victorian era, Emily Dickinson came to be known as one of the foremost of American poets after her work was rediscovered in the 20th century. Modern readers were able to appreciate what 19th century readers were not; Dickinson's short, often untitled poems, with their unusual rhyming schemes and non-standard ...
Idiosyncratic, utterly original poet e.e. cummings ushered in the modern era of poetry with his idiomatic, conversational verse that captured the beauty of human speech. Edward Estlin Cummings was born in 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was sociology and political science professor at Harvard University, but left Harvard when Edward Estlin Cummings was a small child to become an ordained minister ...
A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge No mere pickpocket, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry often melded recollection and imagination into verse that both borrowed from nature ...
