Archive for Poets

William Carlos Williams

Posted in Hillside Cemetery (Lyndhurst) with tags , on October 12, 2020 by Cade

September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963

“The purpose of an artist, whatever it is, is to take the life, whatever he sees, and to raise it up to an elevated position where it has dignity.”

William Carlos Williams was a literary superhero: Mild-mannered physician by day, generation-influencing poet by night. Williams was raised in a Dominican/Puerto Rican home in New Jersey where mostly Spanish was spoken. But, it was his deft use of the English language that became his legacy. A leader in the Modernist and Imagist movements of poetry, Williams’ economical use of words in popular poems such as “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This Is Just To Say” became imagist classics…though he and his contemporaries, like Ezra Pound, had “moved on” from the movement by the time the poems were published. Continue reading →

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Emily Dickinson

Posted in West Cemetery (MA) with tags , , on July 15, 2019 by Cade

dickinson1
December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines MELANCHOLY as “depression of spirits : dejection”

See also: Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born, lived her entire life, and died in Amherst, Massachusetts. From a young age, Emily was troubled by and consumed with the idea of death. Losses throughout her life – beginning with her cousin and close friend, Sophia, when she was 14 – piled on and Dickinson withdrew more and more from social life as the decades went on. She was known later in life as a recluse who corresponded copiously with friend and relatives both near and far – some of whom she never met in person. Continue reading →

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Posted in Glasnevin Cemetery with tags , , on June 12, 2018 by Cade

July 28, 1844 – June 08, 1889

“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was temporally a Victorian poet, but due to his innovative use of language, alliteration, meter and rhyme, he is widely considered one of the first modernist poets. His use of “sprung rhythm” – a term he coined to shake off the restrictive nature of the conventional meters in English poetry at the time – varied the accent syllables in his verses and allowed him to construct and rhyme freely. His work was a precursor to the free verse movements of the 20th century. A Jesuit priest who grew up in an incredibly artistic family, Hopkins’ work regularly focused on religion and nature…often at the same time.

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Posted in Mt. Auburn Cemetery with tags , , on February 28, 2014 by Cade

longfellow1February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a popular American Romantic poet whose lyrical poems often depicted historic or mythological narratives. Perhaps his most famous work is “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

Longfellow was born in Portland, ME and attended Bowdoin College. He spent many years abroad in Europe and learned a number of languages. This would lead to him becoming one of the more important translators of the 19th Century. In fact, he was the first American to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy. Though his works were met with popular success, his life was filled with tragedy. Continue reading →

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William S. Burroughs

Posted in Bellefontaine Cemetery with tags , , , on December 26, 2013 by Cade

burroughs1February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997

William Seward Burroughs II was a highly influential and controversial American writer of novels, essays, short stories and poems. His love of subversion and satire coupled with his outlandish personal experiences made him one of the more colorful and unique voices of the 20th Century. A prominent member/founder of the Beat movement, his most famous works include Naked Lunch, Junkie and Queer. Burroughs was well involved with fellow Beats Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, at times living with one or the other in various New York and Paris locales. He was also big into drugs. Like heavy, heroin and morphine-type drugs. Continue reading →

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Henry David Thoreau

Posted in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (MA) with tags , , , , on October 9, 2013 by Cade

thoreau1July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,”

Henry David Thoreau is best remembered as a writer of poems, essays and books and for his leadership in the Transcendentalist movement. He famously removed himself from the grid – if such a thing existed in the 1800’s – and wrote about his intentionally simple life in the woods in his most popular work. Walden. But nothing about him was “simple.” Continue reading →

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e.e. cummings

Posted in Forest Hills Cemetery with tags , on September 25, 2013 by Cade

cummings1October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962

                   [cummings (edward estlin)
poems prodigy age8harvard]                wrote plays also
modern style (syntax
be damned)  ambulance corps, the great
war (spy?)
hated war
loved france

             personal tragedy
controversy
transcendental
(stroke)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Posted in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (MA) with tags , , , on August 6, 2013 by Cade

emerson1May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882

One of the leaders of the American Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson was an important poet, lecturer and essayist.  In addition to his popular essay collections that centered on self-reliance and an intellectual approach to God and the soul, he published a number of poems, most notably “The Rhodora” and “Concord Hymn” about the battles of Lexington and Concord, the beginnings of the American Revolutionary War.  He had close friendships with fellow Transcendental contemporaries like Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman and was a major influence on both personally and in their writings. Continue reading →

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Jack Kerouac

Posted in Edson Cemetery with tags , , , on March 12, 2013 by Cade

kerouac1

March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969

Jack Kerouac was an author and pioneer of the “Beat Generation.” His most famous novel is arguably 1951’s On The Road, which features the basic blueprint for what would become the post-war “Beat” culture of seeking out how to live and navigate life.  Kerouac, along with fellow “Beats” Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs,  would inspire a generation of those seeking to find answers to all the questions life brings.

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