Joseph Trumbull Stickney, known almost always as Trumbull Stickney, was born on 20 June 1874 in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Boston on 11 October 1904. His brief life, ending when he was only thirty, has encouraged the familiar image of the doomed young poet whose promise exceeds his surviving achievement. That image is not wholly wrong, but it is too simple. Stickney was not merely a promising lyricist interrupt…
“You refer to the last thing excavated on classic soil, my own torso. It proves not to be an antique at all, but a work of a New England sculptor who was wrecked in a dory off the Peloponnesian Coast.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Born on December 8, 1828, in Charleston, South Carolina, Henry Timrod was a poet whose verse would come to embody the soul of a region in anguish — the American South during and after the Civil War. Though he lived only thirty-nine years, his life was a tapestry woven with threads of profound beauty, relentless hardship, and unyielding devotion to art. A man of delicate health, financial instability, and deep emotion…
“And so this is Death! the struggle has come at last. It is curious to watch it. It appears like two tides—two tides advancing and retreating, these powers of Life and Death!”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality