Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, in the Marches, then part of the Papal States, on 29 June 1798, and died in Naples on 14 June 1837, only weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. His short life produced one of the most searching bodies of poetry and prose in modern European literature. He is often introduced as Italy’s supreme poet of pessimism, and there is truth in the description, but it is insufficient if it…
“Human beings are miserable by necessity, yet determined to believe they are miserable by accident.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Helen Hunt Jackson, born Helen Maria Fiske on 15 October 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and dead on 12 August 1885 in San Francisco, California, lived a life shaped by literary ambition, devastating bereavement, restless travel, and an increasingly fierce commitment to justice for Native peoples. She achieved wide fame in her own century as a poet, essayist, travel writer, novelist, and public intellectual. Today sh…
“As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough—I wrote faster than I would write a letter—two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder
