On May 30, 1903, a child was born who would become one of the most celebrated voices of the Harlem Renaissance, yet whose origins remain shrouded in the kind of mystery that seems almost poetic in retrospect. Countee Cullen's exact birthplace has been disputed—some records suggest New York City, others Louisville, Kentucky, and still others Baltimore, Maryland. This uncertainty about his origins would prove oddly fit…
“A survey of the work of Negro poets will show that the individual diversifying ego transcends the synthesizing hue.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
Cale Young Rice was born on 7 December 1872 in Dixon, Kentucky, and died on 24 January 1943 in Louisville, Kentucky. During his lifetime he was a conspicuous, if never wholly central, figure in American letters: a poet of formal accomplishment, a playwright attracted to historical spectacle and moral conflict, a lecturer, traveler, and public literary presence. In the decades around 1900, when American poetry stood b…
“Most people, for example, prefer the beautiful to the ugly, the true to the false, the noble to the base.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
