William Rose Benét was born on 2 February 1886 at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York, and died on 4 May 1950 in New York City. During his lifetime he became known as a poet, editor, critic, anthologist, essayist, novelist in verse, and tireless popularizer of literature. He belonged to a family unusually rich in literary talent: his younger brother was the poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benét, author of John Brow…
“This is the only means I have at present of acknowledging publicly the vast debt I owe to her.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
Mark Van Doren came into the world on June 13, 1894, in the small farming community of Hope, Illinois, the fourth of five sons born to Dr. Charles Lucius Van Doren, a dedicated country doctor of Dutch ancestry, and his wife Eudora Ann Butz, a woman of formidable spirit who had once delivered mail on horseback across the open prairies. The Van Doren household pulsed with the rhythms of rural life—plowing fields, tendi…
“Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality
