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…
“Never having been one to think all subjects and forms proper for poetic consideration, I regard these jazz poems as interlopers in the company of the truly beautiful poems in other sections of the book.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
In the sun-dappled streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings entered the world with a quiet promise of rebellion that would one day shatter the conventions of American poetry. Known to family and friends simply as Estlin, and to the world as E.E. Cummings—or, in the lowercase stylings that publishers later adopted for his name—he would become one of the twentieth century’s most…
“I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Imagist Poets, Love Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
