On a cold November morning in 1861, Julia Ward Howe awoke in her room at Willard's Hotel in Washington, D.C., with verses forming in her mind. She had visited Union Army camps the previous day, witnessing thousands of soldiers preparing for battle while singing "John Brown's Body." Now, in the pre-dawn darkness, words came to her with unusual clarity and force. Rising quietly so as not to disturb her sleeping childre…
“The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Spirituality
Helen Hoyt, born on 22 January 1887 in Norwalk, Connecticut, and dead on 2 August 1972, belonged to the generation of American poets that came of age just as literary modernism was remaking the possibilities of verse. She was a poet, editor, anthologist, and perceptive advocate for new writing, yet her name has often remained at the edges of accounts dominated by more famous contemporaries. That relative obscurity ca…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
