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Blake, William The English writer William Blake (1757-1827) was considered a visionary, one of the early proponents of what came to be called Romanticism. Over the years, Blake's work evolved from light, comfortable poems to intense, sometimes frightening, work dealing with his excessive spirituality and what he considered to be messages from heaven. His most well-known collections are "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience". One interesting thing about Blake is that he illustrated, printed and published all of his own books. Web:
Brooks, Gwendolyn While she was still in her early thirties, African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) won a Pulitzer Prize for her second book "Annie Allen". Throughout a lifetime of creation, Brooks' work has matured and evolved, but one recurring theme is the exhortation that one must be responsible, both personally and socially. When something is wrong, it's not enough to admit guilt; one must also be accountable for one's actions. Brooks has made a career out of being passionate and plain-spoken. Consider one of her most famous poems "The Mother" (1945), which deals with the emotional conflicts of abortion: "Abortions will not let you forget / You remember the children you got that you did not get..." Web:
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was a renowned British poet who married another renowned British poet (Robert Browning). Her most noted works are "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (a series of love poems written to her husband), "Casa Guidi Windows" and "Aurora Leigh". Web:
Browning, Robert Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a British poet, celebrated for his dramatic monologues. One of the most well-known monologues (inflicted on countless high school English students) is "My Last Duchess", in which the speaker describes his previous wife and her shortcomings, and leaves us wondering exactly how she met her end. Browning was the husband of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who he met after admiring her poetry and corresponding with her by letter. (He was the one to whom she wrote "Sonnets from the Portuguese".) My favorite Browning poem is "Pippa's Song" from the long, dramatic poem "Pippa Passes". The poem is short, but it always makes me feel good. ("The year's at the spring, / And day's at the morn; / Morning's at seven; / The hill-side's dew-pearled; / The lark's on the wing; / The snail's on the thorn; / God's in his Heaven - / All's right with the world!") Web:
Byron, Lord (George Gordon) The English poet Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was... well... Byronic: a dark, brooding, passionate man, who devoted himself to the pleasures of life, especially sensual pleasures. Byron is remembered as one of the great Romantic poets, especially with respect to his epic masterpiece "Don Juan". The life of Byron is the story of an insatiable satyric reprobate, who scampered from one dalliance to another only to stop long enough to write magnificent poetry. I particularly like the beginning of his poem "She Walks in Beauty": "She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that's best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes..." Web:
Cummings, E.E. Cummings (1894-1962) was an American poet who ignored many of the conventions of standard written English. For example, he rarely used capital letters (which is why you will often see his name written, erroneously, as "e.e. cummings"), and his use of punctuation and spacing was idiosyncratic and exact. (I imagine he drove his copy editor crazy.) Cummings wrote on many different subjects, including love and the failings of public institutions. Web:
Dickinson, Emily Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830-1886) was a prolific American poet. Her verse is characterized by style, wit and imagery. Dickinson was a recluse who stayed in her house most of the time, writing poetry. Although she wrote a great many poems, Dickinson was virtually unpublished until after her death. Web:
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Eliot, T.S. I have a friend named Mark, a urologist, who transplants kidneys for a living. I remember once, when we were kids, Mark read the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and was so overwhelmed that he called me on the phone and read me the entire poem. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-born British poet, playwright and essayist, whose most important themes were the revitalization of religion and the emptiness of modern life. Aside from the Prufrock poem, Eliot is best known for his poem "The Wasteland" and his play "Murder in the Cathedral". To this day, I still remember the beginning of "Prufrock" as Mark read it to me: "Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table" (which seems to explain his appeal among urologists). Web:
Frost, Robert Robert Frost (1874-1963) was one of the foremost American poets of the twentieth century. Frost used traditional poetic forms and metrics, which makes his work particularly attractive to someone like me who likes poems that rhyme. Much of what Frost wrote centered upon life in New England, where he lived. However, he is celebrated for writing about universal human themes, which he did with great skill and deceptive simplicity. As an example, consider these lines from two of Frost's best-known poems. "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening": "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep..." And from the "The Road Not Taken": "...two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference." Is that hot stuff, or what? Web:
Hughes, Langston American writer, Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was the shining light of the Harlem Renaissance (a black cultural movement of the 1920s and 1930s, centered in Harlem, New York City). Hughes, a leading figure in American letters, was a world traveler who came to be known as the "poet laureate of Harlem". His work -- poems, novels, stories, plays, essays, newspaper columns, and histories -- were the foremost depiction of the black experience in the United States of his time. As such, he served as a link between Art and the community, inspiring black writers, not only in America, but around the world. Hughes's first collection of poetry was "The Weary Blues" (1926). In later years, he published two autobiographies, "The Big Sea" (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956). His most famous lines of poetry are from "Harlem" (1951): "What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" Web:
Keats, John Although John Keats (1795-1821) lived only 25 years, he is considered to be one of the the most renowned of the English Romantic poets. If you have ever heard the line, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever", you have experienced Keats: it is the first line of his poem "Endymion" (1818). His other well-known works include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) and "Ode to a Nightingale" (1819). Web:
Neruda, Pablo Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) is a Chilean poet who won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda's real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He was born in the town of Parral, Chile, the son of a railway employee and a teacher. Neruda was a prolific writer. On his sixtieth birthday, he published "Memorial de Isla Negra", a five-volume collection of autobiographical poetry. Much of his poetry is political in nature. For example, in 1939, Neruda published an epic poem "Canto General", consisting of 250 poems collected into fifteen literary cycles that deal with the nature, people and history of South America. Neruda is also known for his love poetry, written to his wife Matilde. Web:
Plath, Sylvia Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was an American poet whose work is characterized by its intense imagery and highly personal quality. Her most famous work, "The Bell Jar", is an autobiographical novel. Plath possessed a rare writing skill and sensitivity. She wrote her first poem at the age of eight, and throughout her schooling achieved a great deal of critical recognition. However, she was also a deeply troubled woman and committed suicide at the age of 30, after the breakup of her marriage. Perhaps because of her notoriety and unfortunate demise, Plath became popular among young women in the early '70s, along with the growth of the feminist movement. Even today, Plath's work is required reading in most courses of women's literature. Web:
Pushkin, Aleksandr If you live in America, a country in which poetry does not play a big part in the body politic of popular culture, it's hard to understand the enormous affection Russians have for Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837). Pushkin is considered the greatest Russian poet of the 19th century, and perhaps, of all time -- the father of classical Russian literature. Among his best-known works are "Boris Godunov" and "Eugene Onegin". Although his work necessarily loses something in the translation, you may enjoy looking at it. (From the short poem "In the Worldly Steppe...": "The spring of youth is speedy and rebellious, / It boils and runs, and ripples in a blaze...") Web:
Shelley, Percy Bysshe Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English Romantic poet, celebrated for his highly crafted lyrical poems. Among his most well-known works are "To a Skylark", "Ode to the West Wind" and "Ozymandias". Throughout his life, Shelley had a strong belief in reason, arguing that it was possible for humanity to evolve into perfection. As such, Shelley spent years fighting against religion and promoting political freedom. For example, at the age of 20, he was expelled from Oxford University for collaborating on a pamphlet promoting atheism. Shelley was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (who wrote "Frankenstein"). He married her 1816, after his first wife, whom he had abandoned two years earlier, drowned herself. Ironically, eight years later, Shelley himself died of drowning while sailing in Italy. Web:
Tennyson, Alfred Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) was an English poet who became Poet Laureate in 1850. He was a strong spokesman for Victorian values and is known for his excellent use of language and mastery of poetic technique. Some of his famous poems are "The Lady of Shalott", "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "In Memorium". The last is a beautiful elegy written after the death of a close friend. I have always liked one of the verses, which I found particularly inspirational: "I held it truth, with him who sings / To one clear harp in divers tones, / That men may rise on stepping-stones / Of their dead selves to higher things." Web:
Whitman, Walt American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a restless creator, a tormented homosexual in a world of heterosexuals, a man of the people, whose poems, stories and newspaper articles represented the earliest appreciation of the American being. Whitman was a pioneer of free verse (poetry unconfined by rhyme or meter), and his work overflowed with visual and emotional impressions. Whitman spent the early years of his adult life as a wandering journalist. Later, during the Civil War, he served as an Army nurse. At the age of 36 (rather late for a poet), Whitman published his first major work, "Leaves of Grass" (1855), a collection of poems that he would expand and reissue, under the same title, seven more times throughout his life. Although Whitman's work was widely praised, many of his readers were shocked at the coarseness of his language and his explicitness of his ideas. To me, Whitman's personal sense of ambiguity is best illustrated by the lines from his early poem "Song of Myself": "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)." Visually, Whitman's image is best-known from the photographs of him in his old age, resplendent in a large, flowing white beard that bespoke both wisdom and competence (but then, it is well-known that the wisest and most competent writers generally do have beards). Web:
Wordsworth, William William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English poet who became Poet Laureate in 1843. Wordsworth and his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote a book called Lyrical Ballads which introduced romanticism into England. Web:
Yeats, William Butler William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish writer who is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Yeats wrote many short plays (such as "The Countess Cathleen") and was one of the founders of the Irish National Theatre Company. As a young man, Yeats wrote a great deal of love poetry. As he grew older, he began to infuse his work with more and more complex symbolism (sort of like real life only more interesting). In 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Web:
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