Anne Spencer was a poet whose verses captured the quiet fire of resilience, the lush beauty of the natural world, and the sharp edges of racial and gender injustice in early twentieth-century America. Born in the rolling farmlands of Virginia at a time when the shadow of slavery still lingered over Black lives, she forged a literary legacy that transcended her geographic isolation from the bustling heart of the Harle…
“I write about some of the things I love. But have no civilized articulation for the things I hate.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Longing
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing