It’s the birthday of poet Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004), the first woman to serve as poet laureate of the United States. Her poetry often examines domestic life and married love and is witty, precise yet warm, and full of literary references. (NB: the post of poet laureate of the U.S. was officially established in 1985; [...]
It’s the birthday of poet Robert Browning (1812-1889), known for his brilliant dramatic monologues and for marrying Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the sly and running off with her to Italy, like you do. Browning was born in Camberwell, England. His father was a clerk in the Bank of England but also collected rare books, more [...]
It’s the birthday of poet and novelist May Sarton (1912-1995), known for writing about solitude, the many forms of love, and the search for self-understanding, topics she also explored in her highly popular journals. You think you know a thing or two about solitude? May Sarton ate solitude for BREAKFAST. Sarton was born Eleanor Marie [...]
It’s the day most commonly celebrated as the birthday of William Shakespeare (b. 1564), best known as, oh, I don’t know, just THE GREATEST DRAMATIST OF ALL TIME. While Shakespeare’s plays and poetry have unparalleled influence and popularity worldwide 400 years after he lived, he does have his detractors. Among the haters are Voltaire, Tolstoy, [...]
It’s the birthday of poet and Black Arts Movement member Etheridge Knight (b. 1931), whose literary career was launched when he wrote his first volume, Poems from Prison (1968), while serving an eight year sentence for armed robbery. Knight was born in Corinth, Mississippi, dropped out of school at 16, spent some time in the [...]
It’s the birthday of two Irish authors who both won the Nobel Prize in Literature, playwright and critic Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). One of them, Beckett, moved to Paris in 1928 and spent much of his life there, even joining the French resistance in 1941. Heaney, while eventually teaching a great [...]
It’s the birthday of the brilliant and erratic 18th century poet Christopher Smart, whose reputation sank in his own lifetime when he spent years locked up for madness. (He got a lot of writing done during those years. Who’s crazy now?) Many of us today associate him most strongly with the section of his poem, [...]
It’s the birthday of Charles Baudelaire, possibly the most important and influential European poet of the 19th century, although not, to be strictly honest, someone you would ever have turned to for sound financial advice. But when he wasn’t busy running his inheritance into the ground in record time, Baudelaire was writing prophetic art criticism, [...]
It’s the birthday of Richard Eberhart, born in Austin, Minnesota, in 1904, the most prominent poet you’ve never heard of. (You’ve heard of him? Good for you. Pat on the back.) Eberhart wrote lyric poetry with the sensibilities of a Romantic but in a modern style (short lines, irregular rhythms, and maybe he rhymes and [...]