Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in a modest farmhouse in West Hills, on Long Island, New York, into a working-class family that embodied the restless energy and struggles of early America. He was the second of nine children born to Walter Whitman, a carpenter and farmer of English descent who wrestled with financial instability, and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, whose Dutch heritage brought a touch of earthy prac…
“not merely to rule, to repress disorder, &c., but to develop, to open up to cultivation, to encourage the possibilities of all beneficent and manly outcroppage”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
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…
“Honesty is the best poverty.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Imagist Poets, Love Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
