Newest Study Guides

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...

Christopher Okigbo was a Nigerian-born poet of the twentieth century. He was born during 1932 and died during 1967. He possessed a diverse taste in literature and culture, which largely influenced his poetic talent. For example, he drew...

A.E. Housman may well cast a longer shadow over the history of poetry than any other writer who published just thin collections during his lifetime. Those two collections link the 19th century to 20th century. The 1896 release of A Shropshire Lad...

Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan and has recently completed a stint as Poet Laureate, beginning in 2009. She was the first openly LGBTQ poet (Duffy is bisexual) to hold this...

With Meditations on First Philosophy (published in 1647), Descartes revolutionised Western philosophy, having a profound impact on society from the sciences to the arts. As such, Meditations is said to be a seminal - and arguably the first - text...

Born in Coventry, England in 1922, Philip Larkin belongs to the particular group of poets who maintained a steady job bringing in a reliable income while devoting his creative energy to his literary pursuits. Larkin’s 9-to-5 job for most of his...

Gerard Manley Hopkins lived from 1844 to 1889, and in 1858 he officially became a member of the Jesuit Order. The decision may have turned out well for him, but the world lost an unknowable surplus of great poetry as Hopkins made the fateful...

Cathedral was published in September of 1983. It was Carver's third and final major-press publication of all-new stories in his lifetime. Though Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories would follow in 1988, that book was comprised...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of the most well known and respected Victorian writers. She began writing poetry at the age of six and entered the literary tradition in 1830s. Her works have been considered formative entries in the expansion of...

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman was to the manor born among the Bostonian elites in 1821. He would eventually establish long-term correspondences with such literary elites of New England as Hawthorne and Longfellow. While attending Harvard, his tutor...