Robert Lee Frost was born on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco, California, at a distance both geographical and imaginative from the New England landscape with which his name would become permanently associated. His father, William Prescott Frost Jr., was a Harvard-educated teacher turned journalist and political aspirant, a man of forceful opinions, Southern sympathies, and unstable prospects. His mother, Isabelle Mood…
“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Peace
Henry David Thoreau was born on 12 July 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, and died there on 6 May 1862, only forty-four years later. During that comparatively brief life he became, almost paradoxically, one of the most durable presences in American letters. He was a poet, essayist, lecturer, surveyor, pencil maker, teacher, abolitionist, amateur scientist, and uncommonly attentive walker. Yet these labels, though usefu…
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Irony, Wonder
