Abraham Cowley (1618—1667) is a transitional figure, a poet who tended to relinquish the emotional values of John Donne and George Herbert and grasp the edges of reason and wit.He was more versatile than the early Metaphysicals: He embraced the… Read More ›
George Chapman’s (1559–1634) poetry is unusually diversified. It does not reveal a consistent individual style, technique, or attitude, so that an initial reading does not immediately divulge a single creative mind at work. A skilled experimenter, Chapman tried the Metaphysical… Read More ›
A man with many masters—Donne, Jonson, Giambattista Marino—Thomas Carew (1595 –1640) was slave to none, although as a Cavalier poet he has been generally regarded as one of Jonson’s followers. Like Jonson, Carew commanded many lyric forms, and his lines… Read More ›
In one sense, Thomas Campion (12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was typically Elizabethan: Classical mythology, amorous encounters with either distant courtly ladies or willing country maids, and superficial religious emotions provided his subjects and themes. Although much of… Read More ›
A question that can be asked of any century’s poetry is whether it owes its character to “forces”—nonliterary developments to which the poets respond more or less sensitively—or whether, on the other hand, the practice of innovative and influential poets… Read More ›
The poetry of the sixteenth century defies facile generalizations. Although the same can obviously be said for the poetry of other periods as well, this elusiveness of categorization is particularly characteristic of the sixteenth century. It is difficult to pinpoint… Read More ›
One of William Shakespeare’s (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) great advantages as a writer was that, as a dramatist working in the public theater, he was afforded a degree of autonomy from the cultural dominance of the… Read More ›
Although often considered experimental and sometimes obscure, the poetry of Philip Whalen (20 October 1923 – 26 June 2002) is marked by a directness of expression that matches his concern with directness of experience. The seemingly oblique or broken sentences… Read More ›
Since Diane Wakoski (born August 3, 1937) believes that “the poems in her published books give all the important information about her life,” her life and her art are inextricably related. She states that the poem “must organically come out… Read More ›
Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 – August 17, 1965) wrote a poetry of imagistic and conceptual juxtaposition reminiscent, at times, of Dadaist randomness. He considered true poetry to be “dictated,” and thus removed from the conscious control of the poet…. Read More ›
Although Gilbert Sorrentino (April 27, 1929 – May 18, 2006) is not usually identified with the Beat poets, he was contemporaneous with them and published many as the editor of Kulchur magazine from 1961 to 1963. Significantly, Sorrentino’s first published… Read More ›
Among many evocative statements about his life and work, a particularly crucial one is Gary Snyder’s (born May 8, 1930) claim that As a poet, I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic;… Read More ›
Marie Ponsot’s (April 6, 1921 – July 5, 2019) use of her personal experiences never degenerates into the maudlin, nor does she invoke the circumstances of her life simply for dramatic effect. In Strange Good Fortune: Essays on Contemporary Poets… Read More ›
Kenneth Rexroth (December 22, 1905 – June 6, 1982) wrote in the tradition of contemplative, mystical, visionary, philosophical, and prophetic poets such as William Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Dante, Du Fu, Zeami Motokiyo, and Sappho,… Read More ›
One way to trace the development of Kenneth Patchen’s (December 13, 1911 – January 8, 1972 vast poetic output is to posit a shift from the emphasis on class-consciousness and protest in the poetry of the 1930’s to 1940’s to… Read More ›
Charles Olson’s (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) poetry is political in a profound, not superficial, sense; it does not spend time naming “current events,” but rather devotes itself to defining “the dodges of discourse” that have enabled humanity… Read More ›
Michael McClure’s (October 20, 1932 – May 4, 2020) first published poems were two villanelles dedicated to Theodore Roethke published in the January, 1956, issue of Poetry. The works reveal McClure grounded in the requirements of the villanelle, but in… Read More ›
If Rudyard Kipling’s (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) is the poetry of empire, then Philip Larkin’s is the poetry of the aftermath of empire. Having lived through the divestiture of England’s various colonial holdings, the economic impact of… Read More ›
As presented in Bob Kaufman’s (April 18, 1925 – January 12, 1986) Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, “Abomunist Manifesto” is a sequence of eleven parts. The title plays on The Communist Manifesto (1850) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but in… Read More ›
Anselm Hollo’s (12 April 1934 – 29 January 2013) poetry has a light and airy appearance, with short and sometimes abrupt lines of verse arranged sparingly on the page. While spare, the poems often demonstrate remarkable depth, and while often… Read More ›
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