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John Cornford’s most anthologized poem is “Full Moon at Tierz” No poet ever wants to have their entire body of work boiled down to just one single expression of their talent, but the inescapable truth is that if you get “Full Moon at Tierra” then...

Although perhaps best known for his essays and satiric prose, renowned Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift was also a prolific poet. Born into a literary family in Dublin, Ireland, in 1666. From an early age, Swift received an intense and demanding...

Alice Munro is a renowned Canadian short story writer who recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The fluidity of her works is said to have been a pathbreaking form in the legacy of short story writing, having transformed the way short stories...

E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” is the inspiration for what remains the most performed ballet in the world. That inspiration is second hand, however, for the story told in the Christmastime tradition, The Nutcracker ballet...

The spring and summer of 1742, the interval between Thomas Gray's return from abroad and hs establishment at Peterhouse (Cambridge) witnessed a remarkable spell of creative activity. The sights and sound of the Buckinghamshire countryside inspired...

Educated at Rutgers and Stanford Universities, Robert Pinsky was influenced by a number of ideas and movements, perhaps above all else that of musicality. As a keen player of the saxophone in his youth, Pinsky created poetry that has a detectable...

Who is Robert Herrick and why should anyone want to read his poems? Dramatist, poet, literary critic and owner of one of the all-time great names in the creative arts Algernon Swinburne labeled Herrick as, quite simply, “the greatest songwriter...

Mary Wroth’s cycle of sonnets Pamphilia to Amphilanthus consists of 83 sonnets and 20 songs. Each of the entries in the cycle are written from the point of view of Pamphilia which in its original Latin means something along the lines of full of...

An important figure in the New Formalism poetry movement - which argued for a return to metrical and rhyming verse - Mark Jarman was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1952. As with the output of so many writers, Jarman's oeuvre has been influenced by...

What could be worse than being referred to by more than one renowned literary critics over the course of several centuries as one of the most tedious and wearisome poets in the long history of English literature? Also being one of the most...

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950 and educated at Michigan State and Bowling Green State universities, Carolyn Forche is a prolific poet and translator. Her victory in the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition with her debut collection...

In 1955, A.R. Ammons self-published his first collection of poems in a volume titled Ommateum. Five years later, he sold the 16th copy of his book. Working his way steadily up the ladder of success at his father-in-law’s company producing...

Thomas Campion did not begin as a poet. In fact, Campion at one time was a law student. He was also a doctor. In addition to writing verse, he composed both the prose and music for masques. Even as a poet, there was a distinct evolutionary...

Paul Verlaine is usually mentioned in the same heady breath as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé. Or, put another way, Verlaine is considered one of the greatest French poets of 19th century. Like another great talent in the France of the 1800’s—...

Michael Field was the composite pen name for 19th century British writers Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper. Bradley was born in 1846 and Cooper, her niece, was born in 1862. After the health of Cooper's mother began to fail, Bradley...

The Piazza Tales were published by Herman Melville between 1853 and 1856. A short novel titled Israel Potter appeared in 1855 and two years later was followed by what would prove to be the last novel published while Melville was still living....

With a life stretching from 1807 to 1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is the quintessential 19th century American. Maturing too late to belong to the 1700’s and dying too early to be influenced by the transformative changes of the turn of 20th...

Despite not attending the institution which gave the movement its name, Denise Levertov is commonly associated with the Black Mountain Poets who members include Charles Olson and Robert Duncan. One poet who is not considered a member of the Black...

Charlotte Turner Smith was a renowned English poet of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She was born during 1749 and died during 1806. Her poetic work was written and published during the Romantic era. The Romantic era was comprised of...

One of the most important names in the world of 20th century Modernist literature, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) is practically as famous for what he did when not writing poetry as he is for what resulted when he set to work writing verse. Stevens...

One of the stand-out Modernists, T.S. Eliot's poetry is rich, innovative and occupies a prominent position in the history of English literature. Perhaps less-well known is his prose, which is equally interesting and significant in terms of the...

T.S. Eliot is perhaps the most influential modernist poet and one of the most eminent poets in the English canon. In 1948, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Eliot's personal life, growing urbanization and the advent of World War I were...

Born of Russian Jewish parents, the poet Howard Nemerov won a host of prizes - including the Pulitzer and Bollingen Prizes - during a long and distinguished career at the top table of America's poetry circuit.

A life-long practitioner of formalist...

The collective verse of Frank O’Hara is a definitive exhibition of concept that if you want to be a writer, the most important thing you can be doing at any given time is writing. Many of the poems that O’Hara set to paper were composed during...