In the vast and often storm-tossed landscape of American literature, certain voices emerge not from the bustling centers of culture, but from the quiet, salt-sprayed margins. Celia Laighton Thaxter, born on June 29, 1835, on the windswept island of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was such a voice—a poet whose work bloomed with the wildflowers of the Isles of Shoals, whose verses carried the rhythm of the Atlantic tides, a…
“This very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Sara Teasdale was born on 8 August 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri, and died there on 29 January 1933. During her lifetime she became one of the best-known American lyric poets of the early twentieth century, admired for verse that appeared effortless: brief, melodious, emotionally direct, and exquisitely shaped. Her poems spoke of love, solitude, desire, beauty, loss, the changing seasons, and death. Their clarity made…
“I have been guided from first to last by their enjoyment or their boredom.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
