Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…
“I am not making a book that will live or a book that will die. I have no thought whether it will live or die. I am for my own sake manifesting myself, looking at myself, encouraging and criticising myself.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace
Edgar Albert Guest was born in Birmingham, England, on 20 August 1881, and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 5 August 1959, fifteen days before his seventy-eighth birthday. During much of his long life, he was among the most familiar poets in the United States. His name appeared daily in newspapers, his verses were memorized in schools and recited at civic meetings, and his books sold in quantities that many more critica…
“But a home cannot be builded always on happiness.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace
