William Rose Benét was born on 2 February 1886 at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York, and died on 4 May 1950 in New York City. During his lifetime he became known as a poet, editor, critic, anthologist, essayist, novelist in verse, and tireless popularizer of literature. He belonged to a family unusually rich in literary talent: his younger brother was the poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benét, author of John Brow…
“This is the only means I have at present of acknowledging publicly the vast debt I owe to her.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite entered the world on December 6, 1878, in Boston, Massachusetts, a city pulsing with literary ambition and the lingering echoes of abolitionist fervor. He departed it on June 8, 1962, at his home on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, New York, after a brief illness, at the age of eighty-three. In the eighty-three years between those dates, Braithwaite forged a remarkable life as poet, cr…
“What makes an American poetry is a question that has never been and can never be solved by criticism.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Peace