Edgar Albert Guest was born in Birmingham, England, on 20 August 1881, and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 5 August 1959, fifteen days before his seventy-eighth birthday. During much of his long life, he was among the most familiar poets in the United States. His name appeared daily in newspapers, his verses were memorized in schools and recited at civic meetings, and his books sold in quantities that many more critica…
“I do the same kind of jingles that James Whitcomb Riley used to write. All he tried to be was sincere.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace
William Carlos Williams was born on 17 September 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey, and died there on 4 March 1963. Few American writers made such a compelling argument, through both their lives and their art, that poetry could be found not in a remote ideal realm but in the streets outside one’s door, in a patient’s anxious face, in a backyard garden, in a refrigerator, or beside a muddy chicken yard. He was a physicia…
“The poet is the happiest of men.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Peace
