Aubade-by Robin Behn
Holy Thursday-by William Blake
How Do I Love Thee?-by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Porphyria's Lover-by Robert Browning
After Hearing Heterosexual Poets in October 1974: What It Seems Like To Write a Male Homosexual Love Poem Now-by Joseph Cady
On the Wounds of Our Crucified Lord-by Richard Crashaw
[Wild nights! Wild nights!]-by Emily Dickinson
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning-by John Donne
Death Be Not Proud-by John Donne
On Neal's Ashes-by Allen Ginsberg
This is About Death-by Allen Ginsberg
Darkness-by George Gordon, Lord Byron
Perhaps the World Ends Here-by Joy Harjo
Easter Wings-by George Herbert
His Return to London-by Robert Herrick
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time-by Robert Herrick
Ode on a Grecian Urn-by John Keats
This Be The Verse-by Philip Larkin
Rites of Passage-by Audre Lorde
A Child Shall Lead-by Audre Lorde
Now That I Am Forever With Child-by Audre Lorde
When the Saints Come Marching In-by Audre Lorde
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars-by Richard Lovelace
114-by Mahadeviyakka
119-by Mahadeviyakka
283-by Mahadeviyakka
336-by Mahadeviyakka
An Horatian Ode-by Andrew Marvell
To His Coy Mistress-by Andrew Marvell
Home-by Greg Miller
Dulce Et Decorum Est-by Wilfred Owen
Ode to Meaning-by Robert Pinsky
A Dream Within a Dream-by Edgar Allen Poe
To Margaret-by Edgar Allen Poe
Gay Love and the Movies-by Ralph Pomeroy
Sestina: Altaforte-by Ezra Pound
What God Did Not Plan On-by Stan Rice
from Twenty-One Love Poems - II-by Adrienne Rich
The Waking-by Theodore Roethke
[Like the very gods in my sight is he]-by Sappho
Sonnet 18-by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 20-by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 97-by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 98-by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 116-by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 1 from Astrophil and Stella-by Sir Philip Sidney
Sonnet 71 from Astrophil and Stella-by Sir Philip Sidney
Miracle Glass Co.-by Charles Simic
After St. Vincent Millay-by Bruce Smith
Abrupt and charming mover-by Stephen Spender
Garden of Prosperine-by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Ulysses-by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night-by Dylan Thomas
Ariettes oubliées III-by Paul Verlaine
Impression du Matin-by Oscar Wilde
The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina-by Miller Williams
The World is Too Much with Us-by William Wordsworth
Australia 1970-by Judith Wright
W.H. Auden: No Information Yet
Robin Behn: No Information Yet
Elizabeth Bishop: (1911-1979) Born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Educated at Vassar. Lived in Key West and, later, in Brazil. In the last years of her life she taught at Harvard. Here distinctive voice was admired by her contemporaries, including Lowell and Jarrell. Her use and renewal of closed forms is amon the most exemplary in the century.
William Blake: (1757-1827) Born in London. He attended art school and was apprenticed as an engraver to the Society of Antiquaries. In 1789 he engraved and published Songs of Innocence. Songs of Experience appeared in 1794.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: (1806-1861) Born in Herefordshire, England. Lived as an invalid until she eloped to Italy with Robert Browning. She lived mostly in Italy where she became an advocate for Italian unification, and died in Florence.
Robert Browning: No information yet
Joseph Cady: No information yet
Geoffrey Chaucer: (c. 1343-1400) Born in London. Was both a courtier and a diplomat. His openness to French and Italian literature, and its effect on his own work, allowed him to influence and change the usage of the English language in poetry.
Wendy Cope: (1945- ) Born in Kent, England. Educated at Oxford. Her first book, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986), was notable for its parodies of classical and contemporary forms. She has taught primary school and masic and was an editor at Contact magazine.
Richard Crashaw: No information yet.
Emily Dickinson: No information yet.
John Donne: (1572-1631) Born in London. Studied law. Worked as a political secretary. Became Dean of St. Paul's later in life and was a celebrated preacher.
B.H. Fairchild: No Information Yet
Allen Ginsberg: (1926-1997) Born in Newark, New Jersey. Studied at Columbia University in the 1940's, where he began the friendships and associations that resulted in the grouping known as the Beat Generation. His first book of poems, Howl (1956), was a radical focus of new energies in American poetry.
Louise Gluck: (1943- ) Born in New York City. Educated at Sarah Lawrence and Columbia. Her first collection, Firstborn, was published in 1968. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1985. The Wild Iris (1992) received the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award. She teaches poetry at Williams College and lives in Cambridge.
George Gordon, Lord Byron: No information yet
Thom Gunn: No information yet
Joy Harjo: (1951- ) Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In Mad Love and War (1990) received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Her many honors include the William Carlos Williams Award and fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She also performs her poetry and plays saxophone with her band, Poetic Justice. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
George Herbert: (1593-1633) Born in Wales. Educated at Westminster and Cambridge. He took orders and served in the parish of Bemerton until his death. Most of his verse was included in The Temple, a collection of poems on religious themes.
Robert Herrick: No information yet.
John Keats: (1795-1821) Born in London. He was apprenticed to an apothecary, then studied to be a surgeon. He passed his examinations but abandoned this career in favor of poetry. His sonnet on Chapman's Homer was published in 1816. He died of tuberculosis.
Philip Larkin: (1922-1985) Born in Coventry. Educated at Oxford. Served for many years as Librarian of Hull University. His first collection, The North Ship, appeared in 1945. He also published two novels and a book on jazz.
Audre Lorde: (1934-1992) Published ten volumes of poetry and five works of prose. An internationally recognized activist and artist, she received many honors and awards, including honorary doctorates from Hunter, Oberlin, and Haverford Colleges, and in 1991 was named New York State Poet.
Richard Lovelace: No Information Yet
Mahadeviyakka: (12th century) Born and lived in the Karnataka region in southern India. Was one of the preeminent poet-saints of the Virasaiva (militant devotees of Siva) bhakti sect of this region. Initiated by a Saiva guru at the age of ten. Proceeded to put the principles of her personal religion to practice by leaving a royal husband and voicing her passionate thoughts on God, love, and the world in vacana poems.
Andrew Marvell: (1621-1678) Born in Yorkshire, England. Educated at Hull Grammar School and Cambridge. In 1653 he became tutor to Cromwell's ward, William Dutton, and in 1657, assistant to Milton in the Latin secretaryship. After the Restoration he entered Parliament and wrote many satires and pamphlets.
Greg Miller: Born in Kentucky. Received his doctorate in English from the University of California, Berkeley. His primary research interest is in seventeenth-century British literature and church history. Dr. Miller received his M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University and his B.A. in French Literature and Political Science from Vanderbilt University. Currently serves as Associate Professor in the English department at Millsaps College, Jackson, MS.
Wilfred Owen: (1893-1918) Born in Oswestry, England. Educated at Birkenhead Institute and then the Technical School in Shrewesbury. He served in the British Army during World War I. He wrote extensively on anti-war themes while recuperating from shell shock, but returned to battle in 1918 and was killed one week before Armistice.
Petrarch: (1304-1374) Born in Arezzo. Studied law at Montpellier and Bologna for a brief period following father's prodding. Well received at Avignon by the brilliant and refined society that moved around the papal court. His life followed a pattern of moral dissipation followed by spiritual conflict and repentance such as in Dante's. Known primarily for his love poetry written to a young woman named Laura who became an image of spiritual and passionate love for him.
Robert Pinsky: (1940- ) Born in New Jersey. Educated at Rutgers and Stanford. In addition to his poetry he has published Mindwheel (1987), a computer novel. Appointed U.S. Poet Laureate in 1997. Among his many honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, Poetry magazine's Oscar Blumenthal Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award. He teaches at Boston University.
Plato: (429-347 B.C.) Born in Athens, Greece. Came from an aristocratic family and considered a political career as a young man. Student of Socrates. Wrote the only surviving records of his mentor. Execution of Socrates disgusted him with politics. Attempted to influence rulers but failed. Founded a philosophical school, the Academy, in 385 B.C..
Edgar Allan Poe: No Information Yet
Ralph Pomeroy: No Information Yet
Ezra Pound: (1885-1972) Born in Hailey, Idaho. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College. His reputation was established by the publication of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: Life and Contacts in 1920. A poet and editor of great influence, he radicalized the concept of renewing poetic forms, often through an eloquent subversion of traditional practice.
Stan Rice: No Information Yet
Adrienne Rich: (1929-) Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she was educated at Radcliffe and won the yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her first book. In 1997 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets' Tanning Prize for outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. She has also received a MacArthur Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. She was active in the anti-war movement and edited the journal Sinister Wisdom.
Theodore Roethke: (1908-1963)Born in Saginaw, Michigan. Studied at the University of Michigan and Harvard. Taught in a number of colleges and universities. Often wrote in closed forms with a commanding rhetoric and distinctive cadence.
Sappho: (630 B.C.-?) Born on the isle of Lesbos off the coast of Asia Minor. Very little known about her life. Was married and had a daughter. Spent most of her life on Lesbos. Her lyric poems were so admired in the ancient world that a later poet called her the tenth Muse. The themes of her work are those of a Greek woman's world--girlhood, marriage, and love, especially the love of young women for each other and the poignancy of their parting as they leave to assume the responsibilities of a wife. Only have one (or possibly two) of her complete short poems and a collection of quotations from her work by ancient writers.
William Shakespeare: (1564-1616) Born in Stratford-on-Avon. Celebrated in the centuries after his death chiefly as a playwright, his early formal verse--from sonnets to lyrics--deserves close attention. He was a powerful, emotive formalist. His work in the sonnet was profoundly influential on the development of the form.
Sir Philip Sidney: (1554-1586) Born in Kent, England. Educated at Shrewesbury and at Oxford. An innovative and exemplary sonneteer, he was also interested in putting classic meters into verse.
Charles Simic: (1938- ) Born in Yugoslavia. Educated at University of chicago and NYU. His family moved to the United States in 1949. The World Doesn't End (1989) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He served with the U.S. Army and has taught at California State College and University of New Hampshire.
Bruce Smith: No information yet.
Stephen Spender: (1909-1995) One of a circle at Oxford University that included Isherwood and Auden, he became fascinated by Germany and spent time there before World War II. Reluctant to dwell on homosexual themes to any great extent and distanced himself from the soical and political aspects of the homosexual rights movement, maintaining that such a focus limits rather than inspirits a writer.
Algernon Charles Swinburne: No Information Yet.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: No Information Yet.
Dylan Thomas: (1914-1953) Born in Swansea, Wales. Published his first book, 18 Poems, when he was nineteen. His elaborate lyrics were celebrated in his lifetime. He traveled and gave readings widely in the United States and died in a New York hospital.
Paul Verlaine: No information yet
Wang Wei: (699-761) Born in China. Child of an aristocratic family. Served in various posts in the imperial government, both in the capital and in the provinces. One of the founders of Chinese landscape painting. His poetry shows his continuing interest in the organization of space and how it changes with a moving viewer. Grew increasingly attracted to Buddhism in his later years and eventually took vows as a Buddhist layman.
Oscar Wilde: No information yet
Miller Williams: (1930- ) Born in Arkansas. Received a master's from the University of Arkansas. Has worked in chile and at the University of Mexico. Wrote the Inaugural Poem for President Clinton's second term inauguration. Among his many honors are the Amy Lowell Award and the Prix de Rome for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches at University of Arkansas and is founding director of University of Arkansas Press.
Selected publications: The Complete Poems 1927-1979 (1983); The Collected Prose, Robert Giroux, ed. (1984); One Art: Letters of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Giroux, ed. (1994); Biographical and critical works: Becoming a Poet, David Kalstone (1989); Elizabeth Bishop: The Biography of a Poetry, Lorrie Goldensohn (1992)
Selected publications: The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, David V. Erdman and Harold Bloom, eds. (1982). Biographical and critical works: William Blake, Martin K. Nurmi (1976); Blake, Peter Ackroyd (1995).
Selected publications: Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Helen A. Clarke and Charlotte Porter, eds. (1900). Biographical and critical works: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gardner B. Taplin (1957); Aurora Leigh: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Margaret Reynolds, ed. (1995)
Selected publications: The Riverside Chaucer, Larry D. Benson, ed. (1987). Biographical and critical works: Chaucer and His Readers: Imagining the Author in Late-Medieval England, Seth Lerer (1993)
Selected publications: Serious Concerns (1992)
Selected publications: Complete Poetry, Jehn t. Shawcross, ed. (1967). Biographical and critical works: Life and Letters of john Donne, Edmund gosse (1899); John Donne: A Life, R.C. Bald (1970)
Selected publications: Siesta in Xbalba and Return to the States (1956); Empty Mirror: Early Poems (1961); Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958-1960 (1961); Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems, 1986-1992 (1994); Journals Mid-Fifties 1954-1958 (1995); Selected Poems 1947-1995 (1996). Biographical and critical works: Towards a New American Politics: Essays and Interviews, Ekbert Faas, ed. (1978); Ginsberg, Barry Miles (1989).
Selected publications: Descending Figure (1980); The Triumph of Achilles (1985); Ararat (1990); Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994); The First Four Books of Poems (1995); Vita Nova (1999). Biographical and critical works: The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H.D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Gluck, Elizabeth Dodd (1992)
Selected publications: What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979); She Had Some Heroes (1983); secrets from the Center of the World (1989); The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994); A Map to the Next World (2000)
Selected publications: The Temple, F.E. Hutchinson, ed. (1939). Biographical and critical works: George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets, Mario A. Di Cesare, ed. (1978).
Selected publications: Selected Letters, Lionel Trilling, ed. (1951); Poetical Works (1958). Biographical and critical works: Keats, J.M. Murry (1955); John Keats, W.J. Bate (1963); Keats, Andrew Motion (1998)
Selected publications: The Less Deceived (1955); The Whitsun Weddings (1964); High Windows (1974); Collected Poems (1988). Biographical and critical works: Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, Andrew Motion (1993)
Selected publications: Coal (1976), The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, Our Dead Behind Us, The Black Unicorn [from Coal, Audre Lorde (1976; reissued in 1996)]
Selected publications: Speaking of Siva, A.K. Ramanujan, ed. (1973) [from Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Maynard Mack, ed. (1995)]
Selected publications: The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, H.M. Margoliouth, ed. (1963). Biographical and critical works: Andrew Marvell, Augustine Birrell (1973); Andrew Marvell Companion, Robert Ray (1998)
Selected publications: Iron Wheel, (1998); Rib Cage, (2001)
Selected publications: Collected Poems (1931, 1963, 1973); Collected Letters, Harold Owen and John Bell, eds. (1967)
Biographical and critical works: Petrarch and His World, Morris Bishop (1963); Petrarch, Nicholas Mann (1984); Petrarch the Poet: An Introduction to the Rerum Volgarium Fragmenta, Peter Hainsworth (1988); Petrarch's Genius: Pentimento and Prophecy, Marjorie O'Rourke (1991) [from Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Maynard Mack, ed. (1995)]
Selected publications: An Explanation of America (1979); History of My Heart (1984); The Want Bone (1990); The Inferno of Dante (1994); The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996)
Biographical and critical works: Plato, the Man and His Work, A.E. Taylor (1927); Plato's Thought, G.M.A. Grube (1935); Plato for the Modern Age, R.S. Brumbaugh (1962) [from Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Maynard Mack, ed. (1995)]
Selected publications: The Cantos of Ezra Pound (1921); Personae: Collected Poems (1926); The Confucian Analects (1951); Literary Essays, T.S. Eliot, ed. (1954); Collected Early Poems (1976); Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, Omar Pound and Robert Spoo, eds. (1999). Biographical and critical works: A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound, Humphrey Carpenter (1988); The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Ira B. Nadel, ed. (1999)
Selected publications: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984 (1984); An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (1991); Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970 (1993); Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose: Poems, Prose, Reviews, and Criticism, Albert Gelpi and Barbaara Charlesworth Gelpi, eds. (1993); Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (1995); Midnight Salvage (1999). Biographical and critical works: Five Temperaments, David Kalstone (1977)
Selected publications: The Far Field (1964); Collected Poems (1966); Selected Letters, Ralph J. Mills, Jr., ed. (1968). Biographical and critical works: A concordance to the Poems of Theodore Roethke, Gary Lane, ed. (1972); Theodore Roethke: An American Romantic, Jay Parini (1979)
Critical works: The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, David A. Campbell (1985); Greek Lyric Poetry, C.M. Bowra (1961); A History of Greek Literature, A. Lesky (1966) [from Norton Anthology of World Literature, Maynard Mack, ed. (1995)]
Selected publications: Love Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (1957); Concordance, Martin Spevack, ed. (1973). Biographical and critical works: Shakespeare's Lives, Samuel Schoenbaum (1970).
Selected publications: The Poem of Sir Philip Sidney, william Ringler, ed. (1962); An Apology for Poetry (1965). Biographical and critical works: Life of Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville (1971); The Making of Sir Philip Sidney, Edward Berry (1998)
Selected publications: Selected Poems: 1963-1983 (1985); The Uncertain Certainty: Essays and Interviews (1985); Walking the Black Cat (1996); Orphan Factory: Essays and Memoirs (1997); Jackstraws: Poems (1999)
Selected publications: World Within World (1951); The Temple (1929, 1988); Collected Poems, 1928-1953 (1953?) [from Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature, Byrne R.S. Fone, ed. (1998)]
Selected publications: Collected Poems (1952); collected Prose (1969). Biographical and critical works: The Life of Dylan Thomas, constantine Fitzgibbon (1965); Dylan Thomas: His Life and Work, John Ackerman (1996)
Biographical and critical works: The Poetry of Wang Wei, Pauline Yu (1980); Wang Wei, Marsha Wagner (1981) [from Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Maynard Mack, ed. (1995)]
Selected publications: Adjusting to the Light: Poems (1992); Some Jazz a While (1999). Biographical and critical works: Miller Williams and the Poetry of the Particular, Michael Burns, ed.