Elizabeth Prentiss, born Elizabeth Payson on 26 October 1818 in Portland, Maine, and dead on 13 August 1878 in Dorset, Vermont, belonged to that important company of nineteenth-century American women whose literary influence was felt most deeply in homes, churches, and private devotional reading rather than in the official institutions of literary prestige. She was a poet, hymn writer, novelist, teacher, minister’s w…
“Whatever may be said to the contrary by others, to me life has been a battle-field, and I believe always will be; but is the soldier necessarily unhappy because he is fighting?”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Tenderness
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…
“He now walks round and round it, so to speak, looking at it from all sides, trying to see which aspect of it is the most vivid.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
