Poets Flashcards
A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
1859-1936 English poet y classical scholar - A Shropshire Lad (1896-poetry collection); Last Poems (1922-collection) - Worked as Professor of Latin at Cambridge
“Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more”
Alexander Pope
1688-1744 English poet - The Rape of the Lock (1712-mock epic); An Essay on Criticism (1711); Essay on Man (1732) - Translated The Iliad (1715) y The Odyssey (1726) - Uranian moons Belinda, Ariel, y Umbriel named for characters from Rape of the Lock
“What dire offence from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things!’
Alexander Pushkin
1799-1837 Russian poet y writer - Eugene Onegin (novel-1825); The Captain’s Daughter; Boris Godunov (play-1831); Ruslan and Ludmila - Considered the greatest Russian poet - Great-grandfather was African slave - Fought in 29 duels
“Upon the brink of the wild stream
He stood, and dreamt a mighty dream.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Alfred Tennyson)
1809-1892 British poet - The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854); Idylls of the King (about King Arthur) - Poet laureate during Victorian era - “Nature red in tooth and claw”; “Tis better to have loved and lost” - Made a baron for his literary works
“Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of death
Rode the six hundred”
(Irwin) Allen Ginsberg
1926-1997 American poet from NJ - Howl (1955); America (1956) - Started Beat Movement with Kerouac y Burroughs
“Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night”
Amy Lowell
1874-1925 American poet from Boston Lowell Family - Sister of astronomer Percival, cousin of poet Robert - What’s O’Clock (1925 collection - posthumous Pulitzer) - Imagist school of poetry
“Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.”
Anne Sexton
1928-1974 American poet from MA - Known for her pesonal, confessional poetry - Live or Die (1966 poetry collection - Pultizer); To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960); The Book of Folly (1972)
“I imitate
a memory of belief
that I do not own.”
Carl Sandburg
1878-1967 American poet from IL - Chicago Poems (1916); Cornhuskers; Smoke and Steel - Won 3 Pulitzers: 2 for poetry, 1 for his biography of Lincoln
“Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?”
Carl (Friedrich Georg) Spitteler
1845-1924 Swiss poet - Conrad der Leutnant (1898); Two Little Mysogynists (1907); Olympian Spring (1910) - Nobel Prize for Literature 1919
“Vom Übermut zum Frevel ist der Weg nicht weit.”
(“From exuberance to iniquity the way is not far.”)
Dorothy Parker
1893-1967 American poet y writer from NJ - Best known for her wit and wisecracks, y as founding member of the Algonquin Round Table - Poetry collections: Enough Rope (1926); Sunset Guns (1928) - Worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, until blacklisted for leftist views
“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think”
“If I didn’t care for fun and such, I’d probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn”
Dylan Thomas
1914-1953 Welsh poet - Poems: Do not go gentle into that good night (1951); And death shall have no dominion (1936) - Radio drama: Under Milk Wood (1954) - Stories: A Child’s Christmas in Wales (1952); Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940-short stories) - Reputation as a “roistering, drunken and doomed poet”
“Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”
e e cummings (Edward Estlin)
1894-1962 American poet y author - Wrote autobiographical novel The Enormous Room (1922-about WW1); poem collection Tulips and Chimneys (1923) - Used unusual typography y grammar, and little capitalization, especially pronoun i
“next to of course god america i love you…and so forth”
Edgar Lee Masters
1868-1950 American poet from KS - Spoon River Anthology (1915); The New Star Chamber; The Great Valley
“In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
And you shall know that guest,
And read the authentic message of his eyes.”
Edmund Spenser
1552-1599 English poet - The Faerie Queene (1590), an epic allegory celebrating the Tudor Dynasty y Elizabeth I; The Shepherd’s Calendar (1579)
“The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd,
As by his manners.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
1892-1950 American poet from ME - Sonnets; A Few Figs from Thistles (1920 - “My candle burns at both ends, It will not last the night, But ah, my foes, and oh, my friend, It gives a lovely light!”) - Pulitzer 1923 (3rd woman)
“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain … Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.”
Edward Lear
1812-1888 English poet y illustrator - Known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry, esp. his limericks, a form he popularised - The Owl and the Pussycat (1871); A Book of Nonsense (1846)
“They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861 English poet - “How do I love Thee?” (“Let me count the ways” - 1845); Aurora Leigh (1856); Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) - Married Robert Browning, lived in Florence at Casa Guidi - Spinal injury in youth led to laudanum addiction
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”
Elizabeth Bishop
1911-1979 American poet from MA - North & South - A Cold Spring (1956-Pulitzer); Geography III (1976) - Neustadt Intl. Prize 1976 - Poet Laureate of the USA 1949
“The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
1850-1919 American poet - Solitude (“Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone”); Poems of Passion (1883-collection); The Worlds and I (1918-autobiography)
Emily Dickinson
1830-1886 American poet from Amherst, MA - Hope is the Thing With Feathers (1891); I’m Nobody! Who are you? (1891); There is Another Sky; Because I could not stop for Death (1890)
“Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.”
Emma Lazarus
1849-87 American poet from NY - The New Colossus (1883), the poem mounted on the Statue of Liberty
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Eugene Field
1850-1895 American poet from St. Louis - Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (1889); The Duel; Little Boy Blue; Daniel and the Devil - Known as the “poet of childhood”
“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe —
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.”
Ezra Pound
1885-1972 American poet from ID - Ripostes; Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920); The Cantos - Friends with TS Eliot, Frost, Hemingway, Joyce - Worked as translator - Lived in Italy during WWII and supporter Mussolini y Hitler - Imprisoned by American forces
“Who brought this to pass?
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?
Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.”
Federico Garcia Lorca
1898-1936 Spanish poet y playwright - Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter (1937); Blood Wedding (1932-play); Gypsy Ballads (1928-poetry collection); The House of Bernarda Alba (1936-play) - Executed by Nationalist (Franco) forces at age 38
“But now he sleeps endlessly.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.”
Gwendolyn Brooks
1917-2000 American poet from Chicago - A Street in Bronzeville; Annie Allen (1950-Pulitzer); Winnie - First African-American to win Pulitzer - Poet Laureate of Illinois
“Exhaust the little moment.
Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.”
Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862 American author, poet, philosopher from MA - Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854); essay Resistance to Civil Government/Civil Disobedience (1849) - Leading Transcendentalist and abolitionist
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882 American poet from Portland, Maine - Paul Revere’s Ride (1860); The Song of Hiawatha (1855); The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858); The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842); Evangeline (1847) - First American to translate The Divine Comedy
“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
65-8 BCE Roman poet - Odes; Satires; Ars Poetica - Friends with Augustus Caesar’s right-hand man, making him a spokesman for the new regime
“As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.”
James Whitcomb Riley
1849-1916 American poet from IN - Little Orphant Annie (1885); The Raggedy Man (1888) - Known as the “Hoosier Poet” for his dialect works - Influential in fostering the creation of a Midwestern cultural identity y his contributed to the Golden Age of Indiana Literature
“Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep”
John Donne
1572-1631 English poet - Metaphysical movement - Famous lines: “Death be not proud”, “Death thou shalt die”, “the world’s thy jail”, “No man is an island” - Also wrote early erotic poetry - Served as priest in Church of England
“Any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”
John Dryden
1631-1700 English poet - England’s first Poet Laureate (1668) - Absalom and Achitophel (1681); Mac Flecknoe (1682); The Hind and the Panther (1687) - First to state that English sentences should not end in prepositions
“Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings”
John Greenleaf Whittier
1807-1892 American Quaker poet from MA - Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl (1866); The Song of the Vermonters (1838); Maud Muller (1856-quote) - One of the popular group called the Fireside Poets - Remembered particularly for his anti-slavery writings
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”
John Keats
1795-1821 English poet - Wrote many odes - Ode On a Grecian Urn; Ode to a Nightingale; Endymion; To Autumn - Died at 25 from tuberculosis, wrote own epitaph, “here lies one whose name was writ in water”
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep”
John Milton
1608-1674 - English poet - Paradise Lost (1667), Areopagitica (1644), Paradise Regained (1671) - Supporter of English republicanism and Oliver Cromwell
“To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”
Joseph Brodsky
1940-1996 Russian-American poet y essayist from Leningrad - Gorbunov and Gorchakov (1970); To Urania (1988); Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986) - Nobel Prize Lit in 1987 - US Poet Laureate in 1991
Joyce Kilmer
1886-1918 American poet from NJ - Trees (1913 - “I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree”); Main Street - Killed by sniper in Battle of the Marne during WWI
“Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”
Julia Ward Howe
1819-1910 American poet y social activist from NYC - Wrote the song The Battle Hymn of the Republic (1862-used music from song John Brown’s Body) - Poetry collections: Passion-Flowers (1854); Words for the Hour (1857)
Khalil Gibran
1883-1931 Lebanese-American poet - The Prophet (1923-collection of 26 prose poems); Broken Wings (1912-poetic novel) - Wrote in both Arabic y English - One of best-selling poets of all time
Langston Hughes
1902-1967 American poet from MO - A leader of the Harlem Renaissance, known for his “jazz poetry” - Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951-collection); The Weary Blues (1926); The Dream Keeper (1932)
Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron)
1788-1824 British poet - Don Juan (1819-pronounced JEW-en); Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; The Prisoner of Chillon; She Walks in Beauty (“…like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies”) - Leader in Romantic movement - Lived in Italy, Fought in Greek War of Independence - Father of programmer Ada Lovelace
“In secret we met
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.”
Louise Glück
1943- American poet from NYC - The Triumph of Achilles (1985); The Wild Iris (1992 - Pulitzer); Meadowlands (1997) - US Poet Laureate (2003-04) - Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature (2020) “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”
“We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.”
Mary Oliver
1935- American poet from OH - American Primitive (1984-Pulitzer); House of Light (1991); A Thousand Mornings (2012) - Called “far and away, this country’s best-selling poet”
Matsuo Bashō
1644-94 Japanese poet - Considered the greatest master of haiku y renku (comic linked verse) - Worked as a teacher in Edo for a time, then left to wander the Japanese wilderness for inspiration - Oku no Hosomichi (1694 - “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”)
“いざさらば雪見にころぶ所迄 iza saraba / yukimi ni korobu / tokoromade
now then, let’s go out / to enjoy the snow… until / I slip and fall!”
Matthew Arnold
1822-1888 British poet - Dover Beach (1867-“The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair”); The Scholar Gipsy (1853); Culture and Anarchy (1868-essays) - Worked as an inspector of schools
Maya Angelou (Marguerite Annie Johnson)
1928-2014 American author y poet from MO - Recited poem On the Pulse of Morning at Clinton’s inauguration in 1992 - Wrote 7-volume autobiography starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), ending with Mom & Me & Mom (2013) - First African-American female San Francisco streetcar conductor
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
Octavio Paz
1914-1998 Mexican poet y diplomat - Piedra de Sol (1957-“sunstone”); El fuego de cada día (1989); Hijos del aire (1979-“airborn”); El Laberinto de la Soledad (“The Labyrinth of Solitude”) - Nobel Prize in Lit 1990 - Miguel de Cervantes Prize 1981
“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another.”
Ogden Nash
1902-1971 American poet from NY - Well known for his short comic poetry - Candy is Dandy; The Fly; You Can’t Get There from Here (1957)
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
43 BCE - 18 CE - Roman poet - the Metamorphoses; the Amores; Ars Amatoria (“Art of Love”) - Very popular during his time, but mysteriously exiled by Augustus to remote Romania
“Let the man who does not wish to be idle fall in love!”
Pablo Neruda (Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto)
1904-73 Chilean poet - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924); World’s End; On the Blue Shore of Silence - Communist party leader - Nobel Prize for Lit 1971
“I am alone with rickety materials,
the rain falls on me, and it is like me,
it is like me in its raving, alone in the dead world,
repulsed as it falls, and with no persistent form.”
Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872-1906 American poet from OH - Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896); The Haunted Oak (1900); The Sport of the Gods (1902-novel); In Dahomey (1903-musical) - One of first African-American writers to establish an international reputation, y called his race’s poet laureate - Died of tuberculosis at age 33
“And how they wither, how they fade,
The waning wealth, the jilting jade —
The fame that for a moment gleams
Then flies forever, — dreams, ah — dreams!”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822 British poet - Ozymandius; Ode to the West Wind; Adonais (1821); To a Skylark; Prometheus Unbound (1820) - Moved to Italy, y died by drowning - Friend of Lord Byron
“The sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?”
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)
1304-1374 Italian poet from Florence - The Canzionere (Songbook) about “Laura” the mystery woman; The Trionfi (Triumphs) - Famous for sonnets
“You who hear in scattered rhymes the sound of those sighs with which I nourished my heart during my first youthful error, when I was in part another man from what I am now.”
Phillis Wheatley
1754-84 1st published Afr-American female poet - Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773); On being brought from Africa to America - Born in W Africa, enslaved in Boston, achieved emancipation, died in poverty
“Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
- Simon Armitage (2019- )
- Carol Ann Duffy (2009-19)
- Andrew Motion (1999-2009
- First: John Dryden (1668-1688)
United States Poet Laureate (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress)
- Joy Harjo (2019- 1st Native American, Muskogee)
- Tracy K. Smith (2017-19)
- Juan Felipe Herrera (2015-17)
- First: Joseph Auslander (1937-41)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-82 American poet, essayist, y lecturer from Boston - Led the Transcendentalist Movement of mid-1800s - Nature (1836); Self-Reliance - Champion of individualism
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!”
Robert Browning
1812-1889 British poet - Poetry collections: Men and Women (1855-conts. Fra Lippo Lippi, Love Among the Ruins, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came); Dramatis Personae (1864) - Poems: The Pied Piper of Hamelin; Porphyria’s Lover; The Ring and the Book
“You should not take a fellow eight years old
And make him swear to never kiss the girls.”
Robert Burns
1759-1796 Scottish poet - Auld Lang Syne; To a Mouse (“the greatest plans of mice and men “); A Man’s a Man for a’ That - The Bard of Ayrshire - Pioneer of Romantic movement - Very highly regarded in Scotland
“Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e’er I spend
Are spent among the lasses, O.”
Robert Frost
1864-1963 American poet from CA - Collections: A Boy’s Will (1915); North of Boston (1914); Mountain Interval (16) - Poems: Mending Wall; After Apple Picking; The Road Not Taken; Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1922-“These woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep”) - Record 4 Pulitzers for poetry
“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.”
(Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī) Rumi
1207-73 Persian poet y Sufi theologian - Masnavi (1273); The Works of Šams Tabrīzī; It Is What It Is (Fihi Ma Fihi) - One of the most influential in the Muslim world
“Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772-1834 English poet - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798-published in Lyrical Ballads with Wordsworth); Kubla Khan, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment (1816-under influence of laudanum-“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree”) - One of the founders of Romantic Era - Opium addict
“The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.”
Shel Silverstein
1930-99 American poet, songwriter, y author from Chicago - The Giving Tree (1964); Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974); A Light in the Attic (1981) - Wrote the Johnny Cash song A Boy Named Sue, y recorded several albums of songs, winning 2 Grammys
Stephen Vincent Benét
1898-1943 American poet/author - John Brown’s Body (poem-1928 Pulitzer); American Names - Short stories: The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936); By the Waters of Babylon (1937); King of the Cats (1929)
“You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmédy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.”
Stevie Smith (Florence Margaret Smith)
1902-71 English poet - Not waving, but drowning (1957); Novel on Yellow Paper (1936); Over the Frontier (1938); The Holiday
“Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.”
Sylvia Plath
1932-1963 American poet - The Colossus and Other Poems (1960); The Bell Jar (last work - a novel); Daddy; Ariel (1965) - Posthumous Pulitzer 1982 - Married to Ted Hughes - Suicide at age 30
“Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well”
Ted Hughes
1930-1998 British poet y author - The Iron Man (1968 novel - basis of the 1999 film The Iron Giant); The Hawk in the Rain (1957); Tales From Ovid; Birthday Letters - Poet Laureate 1984
“Now I hold Creation in my foot.
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine”
Thomas Gray
1716-1771 English poet - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), famous for the lines “the curfew tolls the knell of parting day”, “far from the madding crowd”, “kindred spirit” - Also wrote Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes
“To each his suff’rings: all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan,
The tender for another’s pain;
Th’ unfeeling for his own.”
Thomas Moore
1779-1852 Irish poet y songwriter - AKA Anacreon Moore - The Last Rose of Summer (1805); The Minstrel Boy (song-1779) - The literary executor of Lord Byron’s will, responsible for burning his memoirs after his death
“‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone”
Tomas Tranströmer
1931-2015 Swedish poet - For the Living and the Dead (1989-collection); The Sorrow Gondola (1996-collection); The Half-Finished Heaven; Windows and Stones - Nobel Prize in Lit 2011
“Above ground,
in tropical flood, earth’s greenery
stands with lifted arms, as if listening
to the beat of invisible pistons”
T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
1888-1965 American-British poet - Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939-basis for musical Cats); The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915); Four Quartets (1945); The Waste Land (1922-“April is the cruelest month”, “fear in a handful of dust”) - Nobel 1948 - Moved to Britain in 1927, renounced US citizenship
“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)
70-19 BCE Roman poet - the Eclogues (or Bucolics); the Georgics; the epic Aeneid (19 BCE-the national epic of Ancient Rome about Aeneas’ travels after the Trojan War)
“Happy the man, who, studying nature’s laws,
Thro’ known effects can trace the secret cause.”
Wallace Stevens
1879-1955 American poet from PA - Harmonium (1923); Transport to Summer (1947); The Auroras of Autumn (1950); Collected Poems (1955-Pulitzer) - Worked as an insurance company executive in Hartford, CT
“After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.”
Walt Whitman
1819-1892 American poet - Poetry collection Leaves of Grass (1855-updated many times), which incl. poems “When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloomd” (about Lincoln), “O Captain! My Captain” (1865-also about Lincoln), “Song of Myself”; Drum Taps (about Civil War)
“Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten’d, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible,”
W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
1865-1939 Irish poet - The Tower (1928); The Winding Stair (1933); Sailing to Byzantium - 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature, first Irishman - Founded The Abbey Theatre - Friends with Tagore and Ezra Pound - Served as senator for Irish Free State 1922-28
“No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.”
W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
1907-1973 British-American poet - Funeral Blues (1936); Spain (1937); The Age of Anxiety (1948); September 1 1939 (“A Low Dishonest Decade”) - Pulitzer in Poetry (1948)
“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come”
William Blake
1757-1827 British poet - Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789); Jerusalem (1808-“and did those feet in ancient time”); The Tyger (1794-“burning bright”) - “Little lamb who made thee?”; “see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower”
“Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime”
William Cullen Bryant
1794-1898 American poet from MA - Thanatopsis (1811-“Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams”-about accepting death - written when he was 17) - Long-time editor of New York Evening Post
William (Topaz) McGonagall
1825-1902 Scottish poet - Widely considered the worst poet in history, which earned him great fame in his time - The Tay Bridge Disaster (1879); The Famous Tay Whale (1883)
“Beautiful railway bridge of the silv’ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.”
William Wordsworth
1770-1850 English poet from the Lake District - I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (aka Daffodils-1802); Lyrical Ballads (1798); The Prelude (1850); Tintern Abbey (1798); Ecclesiastical Sonnets; The River Duddon; Guide to the Lakes (1810) - One of the founders of Romantic movement - Poet Laureate (1843-50)
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”
