Katharine Lee Bates was born on 12 August 1859 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and died on 28 March 1929 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Her name is permanently associated with “America the Beautiful,” one of the most familiar and resonant poems in United States culture. Yet the anthem has sometimes obscured the range of the woman who wrote it. Bates was not simply a patriotic versifier who happened to find a m…
“There is no security on this whirring planet where pain is pain, and loss is loss, but where, for our deepest of consolation, though it involves our keenest of grief, love is always love.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Grace Fallow Norton, born on 29 October 1876 in Northfield, Minnesota, and deceased in 1926, belongs to that large and consequential company of American poets whose work was respected in its own moment yet gradually slipped from broad public view. Her surviving reputation rests chiefly on a small body of lyric poetry, especially the 1912 collection Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s, a book whose title alone suggest…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
