Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

Stephen Crane was an American novelist, poet, and journalist who is now considered to be one of the most important writers in the vein of American realism. In fiction, Crane pioneered a naturalistic and unsentimental style of writing that was strongly influenced by Crane’s experiences as a journalist. Crane’s most well-known work, The Red Badge of Courage, is almost universally considered to be the first great novel of the American Civil War, due in part to its ability to describe the experience of warfare in vivid, psychological detail. Crane’s other major novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, was less popular in its time, but it, too, is now esteemed as one of the most vivid portrayals of lower-class life in nineteenth century Manhattan in all of American literature. Crane’s focus on realistic stories, which often ended tragically and without a clear sense of resolution, were contrary to the Romantic tastes of his times, and it would not be until the next generation of American realists, such as Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris, that Crane’s immense influence on the development of American literature would become fully apparent.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Now one of the best-known American poets, Emily Dickinson was not known during her lifetime; ten poems were published anonymously, and the rest were published after her death. Dickinson’s poetry resists easy categorization within literary movements. Traditionally Romantic themes such as nature and passion are presented in the startlingly direct—or even blunt—manner of Realism; while not truly Transcendentalist, the poems concern themselves with finding meaning in one’s self, rather than in material possessions or earthly concerns; her unconventional use of language, punctuation, and approximate rhyme (or “slant rhyme’) rejects traditional styles in the way that later Modernists would embrace.  In fact, it was only with the advent of Modernism that Dickinson’s poems received the kind of widespread acclaim for their innovation and daring that would mark her as one of the most significant poets of the 19th century.

Although she spent most of her adult life in seclusion in her family’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson maintained contact with the outside world through her letters, over a thousand of which have survived. After her death, Dickinson’s family published the almost 1800 poems that she had written; most of the poems were not titled, and editors have had to choose how to organize the poems.

The poems often use common meter as a starting point (a pattern of an eight syllable line followed by a six syllable line, sometimes referred to as hymn meter), but develop other patterns—or lack of pattern—from there.

Dickinson’s poems often surprise the reader: the poem “A Bird came down the Walk” begins with a Romantic subject—nature—but switches quickly to a slightly gross realism. Poems such as “Because I could not stop for Death” approach serious subjects with unexpected humor. Her unusual approaches to common themes such as love, death, nature, and identity remain engaging to readers to the present day.

Poems

Just a few of her 1500+ poems are included here. Visit here to read the rest.

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Eliot was born in St. Louis, the youngest of seven children. He attended Smith Academy in St. Louis, and went on to study at Harvard. After finishing his bachelor’s degree, he began his graduate studies. During this time, he focused on Symbolist poetry. He tried to study abroad in Germany in 1914, but left the country early due to the threat of war.

Instead, he went to England, where he met Ezra Pound, who would have a profound influence on Eliot’s work. While Eliot did occasionally return to the United States, he settled in England and eventually became a citizen of the country. It was Pound who helped Eliot publish “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) in Poetry. The poem established Eliot’s reputation as an experimental, intellectual writer.

Eliot possessed an amazing versatility. By the time he was 40, he had published over 20 books, which included volumes of poetry, criticism, and plays. His most notable work is The Waste Land (1922), which explores the disenfranchisement and ennui felt by the post- World War I, Lost Generation. The work is experimental in its fracture perspectives, play with tone and language, and disrupted narrative. His criticism, most specifically works from The Sacred Wood, such as “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1920), constructs a comprehensive literary theory, where the poet is not merely repeating popular ideas, but is interacting with an entire body of literary history, starting with Homer. By the time he won the Nobel Prize in 1948, he was considered one of the most influential writers in the English language.

       S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
       A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
       Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
       Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
       Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
       Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

“The Hollow Men”

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Robert Lee Frost  was an American poet, arguably the most recognized American poet of the twentieth century. Frost came of age during a time when modernism was the dominant movement in American and European literature. Yet, distinct from his contemporaries, Frost was a staunchly un-modern poet. He relied on the same poetic tropes that had been in use in English since poetry’s inception: Rhyme, meter, and formalized stanzas, wryly dismissing free verse by claiming, “I’d just as soon play tennis with the net down.”

Modernist poetry largely abandoned conventional poetic forms as obsolete. Frost powerfully demonstrated that they were not by composing verse that combined a clearly modern sensibility with traditional poetic structures. Accordingly, Frost has had as much or even more influence on present-day poetry—which has seen a resurgence in formalism—than many poets in his own time.

Frost endured much personal hardship, and his verse drama, “A Masque of Mercy” (1947), based on the story of Jonah, presents a deeply felt, largely orthodox, religious perspective, suggesting that man with his limited outlook must always bear with events and act mercifully, for action that complies with God’s will can entail salvation. “Nothing can make injustice just but mercy,” he wrote. Frost’s enduring legacy goes beyond his strictly literary contribution. He gave voice to American, and particularly New England virtues.

https://youtu.be/vrBHd41YqTc

Joy Harjo (1951-)

Joy Harjo (born in Tulsa, Oklahoma) is a critically acclaimed poet and musician, drawing on American Indian history and storytelling tradition. She is a member of the Mvskoke (aka. Muscogee, or Creek) nation; her father was a member of the Mvskoke tribe, and her mother was Cherokee, French, and Irish. In her work, she incorporates the history, myths, and beliefs of Native America (Creek in particular) as well as ideas that concern feminism, imperialism and colonization, contemporary America, and the contemporary world. Related to Native American storytelling is a sense of all things being connected, which often shapes her work. Inspired by the evolving nature of oral storytelling and ceremonial tradition, she integrates various forms of music, performance, and dance into her poetry, and has released award-winning CDs of original music. Her first volume of poetry was The Last Song (1975), and her other books of poetry include How We Became Human—New and Selected Poems (2004), The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994), and She Had Some Horses (1983). Her CD releases include Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears (2010) and Winding Through the Milky Way (2008).

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

A leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance in the United States, Langston Hughes developed an international reputation for his poetry. Hughes spent his childhood in the Midwest; he was born in Joplin, Missouri, but he also lived in Lincoln, Illinois and Cleveland, Ohio. As a young man, he began a college education at Columbia University, but withdrew to travel as a merchant seaman. He eventually completed his education at Lincoln University.

Hughes is particularly known for his perceptive portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote prolifically and in a variety of genres–poems, plays, short stories, and novels. A significant feature of his work is the influence of jazz on his poetry, particularly in Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). Hughes also mentored other young poets and writers like Ralph Ellison. In 1926, he articulated the purpose of young black writers and poets in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”: “The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful . . . If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.”

Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice Hall, 1973) that Hughes “differed from most of his predecessors among black poets … in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people.” Hughes considered himself to be, indeed, a “people’s poet” who elevated the black aesthetic while confronting racism and stereotypes in his work.

Listen to Hughes reciting “Mother to Son”:

Marge Piercy (1936-)

Marge Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Bert (Bunnin) Piercy and Robert Piercy. While her father was presbyterian, she was raised Jewish by her mother and maternal grandmother who gave Piercy the Hebrew name of Marah.

On her childhood and Jewish identity, Piercy said: “Jews and blacks were always lumped together when I grew up. I didn’t grow up ‘white.’ Jews weren’t white. My first boyfriend was black. I didn’t find out I was white until we spent time in Baltimore and I went to a segregated high school. I can’t express how weird it was. Then I just figured they didn’t know I was Jewish.”

Piercy was involved in the civil rights movement, New Left, and Students for a Democratic Society. She is a feminist, environmentalist, marxist, social, and anti-war activist. In 1977, Piercy became an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), an American nonprofit publishing organization that works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

Piercy is the author of more than seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon Is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999). She has published fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her current (and third) husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir. 

Piercy’s poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often centered on feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to social change—what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world). It is rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.

Piercy reading “To Be of Use”

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is most famous for her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar and her advancements in confessional poetry building on the work of Robert Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass. Plath has been widely researched and followed since her controversial suicide. She has gained fame as one of the greatest poets of her generation. Widely read throughout the world, Sylvia Plath has risen to iconic status because of her emotional poetry dealing with loss and depression, and has thus touched many people struggling with the same feelings. In 1982, Plath became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for The Collected Poems.

An interview with Sylvia Plath:

Alberto Rios (1952-)

“Alberto Ríos, Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, is the author of eleven books and chapbooks of poetry, including The Theater of Night—winner of the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award—three collections of short stories, and a memoir about growing up on the border, Capirotada. His book The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body was a finalist for the National Book Award. Ríos is the recipient of numerous accolades and his work is included in more than 300 national and international literary anthologies.  He is also the host of the PBS program Books & Co. His work is regularly taught and translated, and has been adapted to dance and both classical and popular music. Ríos is a University Professor of Letters, Regents’ Professor, and the Katharine C. Turner Chair in English at Arizona State University. In 2017, he was named director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. His most recent book is A Small Story About the Sky.”

Alberto Rios Reading “Nani”:

Rios reading “A House Called Tomorrow”:

Rios reading “Don’t Go Into the Library”:

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a lyrical poet and playwright and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. During her own time, Millay was almost as famous for her unusual, Bohemian lifestyle and opinions on social matters as she was for her actual poetry. During much of her career she lived the life of a minor celebrity. In time, however, critical estimation of her poetry has caught up with her celebrity, and in recent decades it has become increasingly clear just how important Millay is for the history of early twentieth-century American literature.

Millay lived and wrote during the early decades of the twentieth-century, a period in which the literary Modernism of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound dominated American poetry. Millay, however, was a distinctly un-Modern poet whose works have much more in common with those of Robert Frost or Thomas Hardy; her poetry is always formal, masterfully written to the strictures of rhyme and meter. During her times a number of poets and critics argued fiercely over the form poetry should take in the rapidly changing times of the twentieth-century; Millay, for her part, was not particularly vocal in these debates, because her works speak for themselves.

Millay proved that the old forms could retain their validity in a changing world. Her sonnets are often considered to be the finest written in the twentieth-century, and her short, lyrical poems are unrivaled for their elegance and musicality. Millay’s influence extends to a number of poets of the latter twentieth-century, Elizabeth Bishop notably among them. Millay’s poetry provides a glimpse at another form of poetry, full of sweetness and light, that remained stable and clear throughout the turmoil of Modernism.

Millay reads “Love is Not All”:

Millay reads “Ballad of the HarpWeaver”

May Swenson (1913-1989)

Anna Thilda May “May” Swenson was an American poet and playwright. Harold Bloom considered her one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century.

The first child of Margaret and Dan Arthur Swenson, she grew up as the eldest of 10 children in a Mormon household where Swedish was spoken regularly and English was a second language. Although her conservative family struggled to accept the fact that she was a lesbian, they remained close throughout her life. Much of her later poetry works were devoted to children (e.g. the collection Iconographs, 1970). She also translated the work of contemporary Swedish poets, including the selected poems of Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer.

May Swenson reads her poem, “Still Turning”:

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Dylan Marlais Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh poet who is widely considered one of the most influential English-language poets of the twentieth-century. Although Thomas wrote during the heyday of Modernism, his poetry was radically different from anything produced by the Modernists. Writing deeply personal works fueled by his own troubled emotional life, Thomas produced verse in a highly idiosyncratic style, choosing words often for sound rather than sense and using innovative meters and rhyme schemes similar to those found in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, whom Thomas greatly admired. Along with Yeats, Thomas’ sonorous and personal style of poetry tinged with his own knowledge of Welsh language and folklore helped to precipitate the Celtic Revival in British literature. Often considered to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century in terms of the sheer beauty of his language, Thomas’ influence extends to the present among poets like Seamus Heaney, who attempts to capture the music of ancient poetry in the vocabulary of the present-day.

Listen to Thomas reciting his poem:

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Walt Whitman is considered to be one of the most influential and significant 19th century American authors. He was born on Long Island in 1819 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, receiving a limited education. His family was poor and he had to stop going to school when he was eleven to help earn money for his large family of nine children of which he was the second oldest. Because of this, Walt was largely self taught. One of Whitman’s first jobs was working as an apprentice for a Long Island newspaper called the Patriot. This is where he was introduced to the printing press and typesetting. From there, he worked various jobs such as a printer, school teacher, reporter, and editor across the country.

Eventually he settled into writing poetry and self-published his work Leaves of Grass, which was inspired by his travels across America and his admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson and his writing. While there were countless poets before him, and possibly even more after, Whitman stands alone in his own category when it comes to establishing a place in American literature. His unique ideals and way of commanding the words of his poems has a certain rough elegance that is rare among poets, let alone other poets of his time. His fearlessness when it came to expressing certain more “taboo” themes (such as sex) gives his writing an unmistakable and unmatchable edge, pushing him through the decades to persevere as one of America’s most talented and unique poets.

Attributions:

• “Maya Angelou” from New World Encyclopedia licensed CC BY SA.
•  “Elizabeth Barrett Browning” adapted from Compact Anthology of World Literature II: Volume 5 and licensed under CC BY SA.
•  “Robert Browning” adapted from Compact Anthology of World Literature II and licensed under CC BY SA.
• “Stephen Crane” from New World Encyclopedia, licensed under CC-by-sa 3.0 License. 
•  “Emily Dickinson” adapted from Compact Anthology of World Literature II: Volume 5 and licensed under CC BY SA.
• “T.S. Eliot” from Compact Anthology of World Literature II and licensed under CC BY SA.
• “Robert Frost” from New World Encyclopedia licensed CC BY SA.
• “Joy Harjo” from Compact Anthology of World Literature II and licensed under CC BY SA.
• “Langston Hughes” adapted from Compact Anthology of World Literature II and licensed under CC BY SA.
• “Marge Piercy” adapted from “Marge Piercy” and licensed under CC BY SA 3.0.
• “Sylvia Plath” from New World Encyclopedia licensed under CC BY SA.
• “Alberto Rios” biography excerpted from Yavapai College Literary Southwest introduction. 
• “Edna St. Vincent Millay“ from New World Encyclopedia licensed under CC BY SA.
• “May Swenson” licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
• “Dylan Thomas” from New World Encyclopedia licensed under CC BY SA.
• “Walt Whitman” in Open Anthology of Early American Literature” licensed CC BY 4.0.