Maxwell Bodenheim's life reads like one of his own feverish poems—raw, defiant, laced with startling imagery, and shadowed by a restless hunger for freedom that both illuminated and destroyed him. Born into the humid anonymity of a small Southern town, he rose to become the self-crowned King of Greenwich Village bohemians during the glittering, gin-soaked Jazz Age, only to tumble into poverty, ridicule, and a violent…
“The greater part of present-day rhymed verse is devoid of escaping freshness and vitality.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Decadent Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…
“A poet's affair is with God, to whom he is accountable, and of whom is his reward: look elsewhere, and you find misery enough.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
