It’s the birthday of poet, memoirist, and essayist Donald Hall (1928-2018), U.S. poet laureate from 2006-2007 and one of the most important poets of his generation. He’s best known as a rural poet who focused on the natural world and used simple language that nonetheless often had a surrealistic effect. Hall was born and raised [...]
Today is the birthday of William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), one of those people who thought he could be both a successful doctor and a brilliant poet and writer, and who turned out to be right. Among his accomplishments were becoming chief of pediatrics at a general hospital in Paterson, New Jersey, winning the National Book [...]
Today is the birthday of poet Mary Oliver (b. 1935), whose poetry usually focuses on the natural world and who has been called one of America’s finest poets (and best-selling poets). Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, a few miles southeast of Cleveland. She had a deeply unhappy childhood (abusive father, neglectful mother), and [...]
Today is the birthday of Elinor Morton Wylie (born Elinor Hoyt, 1885-1928), whose novels and poetry were very popular in her short lifetime, though she was as famous for her “ethereal beauty and personality” as she was for her literary works. (I struggle with that too. It’s a burden.) Wylie was born in Somerville, New [...]
It’s the birthday of Swedish journalist and novelist Stieg Larsson (1954-2004), who died at 50 of a heart attack before seeing his three enormously popular crime novels, the Millennium series, published. The novels—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007)—have [...]
It’s the birthday of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), considered by many to be the greatest poet of his generation and the quintessence of the Victorian age. Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire, England, the fourth of twelve children. His father was a bitter, mentally unstable, hard drinking rector who poisoned the atmosphere of the home but [...]
It’s the birthday of the peasant poet John Clare (1793-1864), who after early success fell out of fashion, was disappointed in love, experienced financial hardships, and spent about 27 years in insane asylums. (NB: It’s true that a lot of the great poets die young, but I think the insane asylums more than make up [...]
It’s the birthday of a number of interesting poets and authors, one of whom is Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), considered Russia’s greatest poet. Pushkin had a turbulent political and personal life, living in exile for several years because of his political views, and his masterpiece, Evgeny Onegin (1833), features a character who dies in a duel—foreshadowing [...]
It’s the birthday of two American poets, one of whom, Walt Whitman (1819-1892), is so famous and highly revered that he threatens to completely overshadow Poet Number Two, Al Young (b. 1939), who is also a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. (Did Walt Whitman write any screenplays? No, he totally did not.) Whitman was born on [...]
It’s the birthday of two Russians who both won the Nobel Prize in Literature but whose lives in the Soviet Union followed very different trajectories: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905-1984), a card-carrying Communist (seriously: he joined the Communist Party in 1932 and he meant it so I bet he had a card in his wallet saying [...]
It’s the birthday of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), now revered as a great poet after being ditched by the Romantics for the unRomanticness of his style and his tendency to be a teensy bit cruel, although elegantly so. Pope was born in London, England, to newly Catholic parents who soon moved the family to Binfield, [...]
It’s the birthday of major poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), whose poetry changed considerably throughout her lifetime in both content and style, moving away from “the restrained and formal” to more personal poems in free verse. Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was Arnold Rice Rich, the chairman of pathology at The Johns Hopkins [...]