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
In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…
“Faith, I think does pass, and Love, but Knowledge abideth. Let us seek Knowledge. At least let us shun emotion as we would hell, for which it is a synonym.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
