It’s the birthday of Robert Frost (1874-1963, #nicelonglife), whose poetry embodied rural New England and the “rough-hewn individuality of the American creative spirit” and who won, frankly, a pant load of Pulitzers (four), more than any other poet. Frost was born in San Francisco, California, but his journalist father died in 1885 of tuberculosis and [...]
It’s the birthday of poet Richard Wilbur (1921-2017, #nicelonglife), who throughout his illustrious career was praised for his technical virtuosity and courtly style but was also at times criticized for his technical virtuosity and courtly style. So if you liked Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, you maybe didn’t like Richard Wilbur. Wilbur was born in [...]
It’s the birthday of W.H. Auden (1907-1973), now considered, depending on who you ask, to be the third greatest of the three great English poets of the 20th century (behind T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats) or the first greatest of those three great English poets or possibly the second greatest but I haven’t run [...]
It’s the birthday of poet, essayist, and memoirist Mary Karr (b. 1955), probably most famous for her three bestselling memoirs, The Liars’ Club (1995), Cherry (2001), and Lit (2009). Karr was born in Groves, Texas, and there she had a hair-raising childhood marked by neglect, alcoholic parents, and a mentally unstable mother who once tried [...]
It’s the birthday of the early 20th century poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), whose philosophy can be summed up as pro-nature, anti-humanity, resonating (however unintentionally) with a later 20th century thinker who said, “People. They’re the worst” (Jerry Seinfeld). Jeffers was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and received a crazy-good education in classics and the Bible, due [...]
It’s the birthday of poet Anne Stevenson (b. 1933), about whose distinctive style it has been said, “Reading her, one is seldom if ever reminded of any other poets” (X. J. Kennedy). Stevenson was born in Cambridge, England, but mostly grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New Haven, Connecticut, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, depending on where [...]
It’s the birthday of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886, #diedtooyoung), whose poetry broke all sorts of rules while expressing bold and original ideas, and who is beloved by college students everywhere for the fact that nearly all (but not quite) of her poems can be sung to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Dickinson [...]
It’s the birthday of journalist and poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918, #diedtooyoung), best known for a single poem, “Trees” (1913), which begins, “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.” His memory also lives on in the Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest held every year at Columbia University, [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for November 28, 2018 It’s the birthday of poet, artist, and engraver William Blake (1757-1827), one of the most original of the Romantic Poets and someone who saw 100% more angels than most people do. Blake was born (and later died) in London to James and Catherine Blake. He was one of [...]
It’s the birthday of poet and critic Allen Tate (1899-1979), whose poetry was somewhat formal, intellectual, and rooted in the South, and who looked exactly like someone your parents would have bought life insurance from. Tate was born in Winchester, Kentucky, and attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville. While there, he joined a group of poets [...]
It’s the birthday of the great lyric poet who wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” (To which math and science reply, “Preach.” See an interesting article on this here.) John Keats (1795-1821) was born in London, the oldest of four. His father ran [...]
It’s the birthday of Louis Untermeyer (1885-1977), a poet, editor, and highly popular speaker best known as an anthologist who had a tremendous influence over poetry in the 20th century, introducing students to a wide variety of American poets and promoting the idea that poetry is accessible, not elitist. Untermeyer was born in New York, [...]