On a spring day in 1823, in the small coastal village of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a child was born who would grow to become one of the most original and underappreciated voices in nineteenth-century American literature. Elizabeth Drew Barstow entered the world on May 6, in a town where the rhythms of the sea shaped daily existence and where salt spray and shipbuilding defined the community's character. The second…
“The fire no longer burns as of yore on the altar, the passion has died out, and embers have to be blowed up with the bellows.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
Sara Teasdale was born on 8 August 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri, and died there on 29 January 1933. During her lifetime she became one of the best-known American lyric poets of the early twentieth century, admired for verse that appeared effortless: brief, melodious, emotionally direct, and exquisitely shaped. Her poems spoke of love, solitude, desire, beauty, loss, the changing seasons, and death. Their clarity made…
“We who have seen how poetry has come to our rescue with its delight, its healing, and its new courage in times of stress and sorrow, know that it is an inestimable possession.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
