In the vast and often storm-tossed landscape of American literature, certain voices emerge not from the bustling centers of culture, but from the quiet, salt-sprayed margins. Celia Laighton Thaxter, born on June 29, 1835, on the windswept island of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was such a voice—a poet whose work bloomed with the wildflowers of the Isles of Shoals, whose verses carried the rhythm of the Atlantic tides, a…
“Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
