In the pantheon of American letters, few figures cast as long or complex a shadow as James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Poet, critic, editor, diplomat, and professor, Lowell embodied the intellectual ferment of nineteenth-century New England with a breadth that few of his contemporaries could match. His life spanned the tumultuous decades from the early republic through the Gilded Age, and his voice—whether wielding t…
“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
William Cullen Bryant was born on 3 November 1794 in the rural hill town of Cummington, Massachusetts, and died in New York City on 12 June 1878. During his unusually long life, he became several things at once: one of the earliest American poets to command serious respect at home and abroad, a formidable editor whose newspaper helped shape national political opinion, a translator of Homer, a civic reformer, and a pu…
“The elements of poetry lie in natural objects, in the vicissitudes of human life, in the emotions of the human heart, and the relations of man to man. He who can present them in combinations and lights which at once affect the mind with a deep sense of their truth and beauty is the poet for his own age and the ages that succeed it.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
