Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’
Pound, Ezra
by Robert E. Kibler (2000) POUND, EZRA [LOOMIS] (1885-1972). Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho. As an expatriate living in Europe, Pound’s experiments with translation and poetic form resulted in his vivid translation of the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poem “The Seafarer” (1911) and in the imagist style of his long poem, the Cantos (1970). The Cantos…
Read MorePoe, Edgar Allan
by Joan Tyler Mead (2000) POE, EDGAR ALLAN (1809-1849). Edgar Allan Poe, best known for his tales of Gothic horror, was a writer of poetry, short and long fiction, an unfinished drama, criticism, literary theory, essays, and a “cosmological prose poem.” His more than seventy short fictions include “ratiocinative” tales, comical pieces, hoaxes, imaginary landscape sketches,…
Read MorePlath, Sylvia
by Claire J. Keyes (2000) PLATH, SYLVIA (1932-1963). Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, and her family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, a seaside suburb, in 1936, where she lived until they moved inland to Wellesley in 1942. Her childhood by the Atlantic was significant in developing her nautical consciousness, and she makes many references to the…
Read MorePercival, James Gates
by Bernard F. Engel (2000) PERCIVAL, JAMES GATES (1795-1856). Though he often mentioned the ocean in his poetry, James Gates Percival made little use of direct observation. As state geologist for Connecticut, he mapped the landforms along the Atlantic and Long Island Sound. But in verse he seldom drew on this knowledge. He followed instead the…
Read MoreYang, Jeffrey
by Jaehyun Jeong (2015) YANG, JEFFREY (1974-) Jeffrey Yang is an American poet, translator, and editor best known for his books of poetry An Aquarium (2008) and Vanishing-Line (2011). Born in Escondido, California, Yang attended the University of California San Diego. With an initial interest in pursuing the sciences, Yang graduated with a double major in Animal Physiology/Neuroscience and English…
Read MoreWilliams, William Carlos
by Robert E. Kibler (2000) WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS (1883-1963). Although modern poet, novelist, and essayist William Carlos Williams once said that all of his art came out of the work-yard of his lifelong home in Rutherford, New Jersey, where he practiced medicine, that is not altogether true. He also traveled upon, and wrote about, the…
Read MoreWhittier, John Greenleaf
by R. D. Madison (2000) WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF (1807-1892). A Quaker abolitionist and poet, John Greenleaf Whittier epitomizes the poet of rural life. With his New England contemporaries, however, he had little relish for straying far from the reach of the sea breeze. Sea motifs and imagery enter his earliest poetry from unexpected sources, such as…
Read MoreWhitman, Walt
by Philip A. Greasley (2000) WHITMAN, WALT[ER] (1819-1892). Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, near Huntington on northwestern Long Island. With almost two centuries of ancestral residence on the island and some seafaring tradition in his family, Whitman was naturally attuned to the ocean and its related occupations. Not until 1848 did he venture for…
Read MoreWalcott, Derek
by Jill B. Gidmark (2000) WALCOTT, DEREK [ALTON] (1930-2017). Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in literature, Derek Walcott identifies in his life and work two primary inspirations: the Caribbean Sea and his mixed-race heritage. Born and raised in the harbor city of Castries, St. Lucia, grandson of two white men and two black women, Walcott…
Read MoreVukelich, George
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) VUKELICH, GEORGE (1927-1995). “[I]t was good to be on the Great Lakes,” wrote George Vukelich in 1955 to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal, after a spell as an ore boat deckhand. This sentiment pervades much of his work, including his only novel, Fisherman’s Beach (1962); collections of his newspaper…
Read MoreUpdike, John
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) UPDIKE, JOHN [HOYER] (1932-2009). John Updike is the author of over fifteen novels and an impressive body of shorter fiction, poetry, and criticism, much of which has been published in The New Yorker. Born in Pennsylvania, he has lived on the Massachusetts coast since 1957. His fiction typically chronicles the suburban…
Read MoreThaxter, Celia Laighton
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) THAXTER, CELIA [LAIGHTON] (1835-1894). Celia Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Thomas and Eliza Laighton, who moved to the Isles of Shoals, nine miles off the coast of New Hampshire, when Celia was five years old. They eventually settled on the largest of the islands, Appledore, where they built and…
Read MoreStoddard, Elizabeth
by Elizabeth Schultz (2000) STODDARD, ELIZABETH [DREW BARSTOW] (1823-1902). Iconoclastic novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet, Elizabeth Stoddard was born in the coastal town of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, the daughter of its foremost shipbuilder and maritime merchant. Both the fluctuations of her father’s maritime fortunes and the constant presence of the sea during her childhood had…
Read MoreStevens, Wallace
by Nancy Prothro Arbuthnot (2000) STEVENS, WALLACE (1879-1955). Wallace Stevens is one of the most influential American poets of the twentieth century, whose central concern is with the relationship of the human imagination and the world of physical reality. Stevens grew up in Pennsylvania and attended Harvard College and then New York Law School, graduating…
Read MoreSnyder, Gary
by Anthony Hunt (2000) SNYDER, GARY [SHERMAN] (1930- ). Born in San Francisco, Gary Snyder grew up among the forests, mountains, and shores of the Pacific Northwest. A graduate of Reed College (1951), Snyder first went to sea during the summer of 1948 and later spent eight months from September 1957 to April 1958 as an…
Read MoreSimms, William Gilmore
by Norman E. Stafford (2000) SIMMS, WILLIAM GILMORE (1806-1870). William Gilmore Simms was born in Charleston, South Carolina, where he spent most of his life. He was, with the exception of Edgar Allan Poe, the most significant author of the antebellum South. Beginning as a lawyer, Simms soon turned to his true love, writing, and became…
Read MoreSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
by R. D. Madison and Victoria Brehm (2000) SCHOOLCRAFT, HENRY ROWE (1793-1864). Born in upstate New York, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was trained as a glassmaker. Like many Americans of his age, however, as a young man Schoolcraft went west, where his knowledge of mineralogy led eventually to his appointment to the 1820 expedition to the…
Read MoreSargent, Epes
by Mary Malloy (2000) SARGENT, EPES (1813-1880). A Boston newspaperman and son of a Gloucester sea captain, Epes Sargent is best remembered as the author of the lyrics of one of the best-known nautical songs of the nineteenth century. In addition to American Adventures by Land and Sea (1841) and other works meant for a…
Read MoreSantayana, George
by Bernard F. Engel (2000) SANTAYANA, GEORGE [JORGE AUGUSTIN NICOLAS RUIZ DE] (1863-1962). The Spanish-born American idealist-philosopher George Santayana drew on his frequent Atlantic crossings in forming concepts of the world and himself. He also used shipboard experience when developing abstract argument and inventing the analogies, metaphors, and imagery that make his writing accessible to the…
Read MoreSandburg, Carl
by Philip A. Greasley (2000) SANDBURG, CARL [AUGUST] (1878-1967). Carl Sandburg, poet, historian, journalist, novelist, labor organizer, folksinger, and collector of American dialect, was born to Swedish immigrant parents in Galesburg, Illinois. Sandburg early understood the beauty, power, and destructiveness of water. He experienced the sea through service in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War and…
Read MoreRich, Adrienne
by Claire J. Keyes (2000) RICH, ADRIENNE [CECILE] (1929-2012). The author of twenty books of poems and four prose works, Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore. “Diving into the Wreck” (1972), a poem frequently anthologized, contains her fullest, most dramatic reference to the sea. In this poem, the speaker gives up her old notions of power…
Read MoreRatigan, William O.
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) RATIGAN, WILLIAM 0. (1910-1984). Born to a Great Lakes steamboat engineer in Detroit and later adopted by an Ottawa tribe chief, William Ratigan called Michigan his home. This Great Lakes historian’s writings celebrate ordinary Americans who made big names for themselves. His books are seasoned with Lakes poetry, often his…
Read MoreOlson, Charles
by Ralph Maud (2000) OLSON, CHARLES [JOHN] (1910-1970). The poet Charles Olson was born and raised in the inland city of Worcester, Massachusetts, but the family always spent summers in the fishing port of Gloucester; widowed in 1935, his mother provided a permanent base there for Olson. It thus became the location where much of Olson’s…
Read MoreOliver, Mary
by Ted Olson (2000, rev. ed. 2019) OLIVER, MARY (1935-2019). A popular and highly acclaimed American poet, recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Mary Oliver composed numerous lyric poems set on coastal Cape Cod. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Oliver began writing poems when a teenager. After briefly attending Ohio State University,…
Read MoreNemerov, Howard
by William E. Tanner (2000) NEMEROV, HOWARD [STANLEY] (1920-1991). Howard Nemerov was born in New York City and died in University City, Missouri. He served as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force before joining the U.S. Air Force for the last two years of World War II. Upon discharge, he worked as associate…
Read MoreNelson, Marilyn
by Kelly Bushnell and Christian Loriel Lucas (2022) NELSON (WANIEK), MARILYN (1946—). Poet and translator Marilyn Nelson (Waniek) was born in Cleveland in 1946. She received her BA from the University of California, Davis, her MA from the University of Pennsylvania, and her PhD from the University of Minnesota. She is Professor Emerita at the…
Read MoreMoore, Ruth
by Tina M. Aronis (2000) MOORE, RUTH (1903-1989). Ruth Moore was born on Gott’s Island, Maine, where she lived for thirteen years before moving to the mainland to continue her education. She graduated from New York State College for Teachers in 1925 but did not pursue a teaching career. She worked for a time in New…
Read MoreMoore, Marianne
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) MOORE, MARIANNE [CRAIG] (1887-1972). A member of the generation of poets that included T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore was highly regarded by her contemporaries for poetry that was metrically unique and that characteristically subjected her close observations of the physical world to the transforming power…
Read MoreMerwin, W.S.
by Michael P. Branch (2000) MERWIN, W[ILLIAM]. S[TANLEY]. (1927-2019). Born in New York City and educated at Princeton University, W. S. Merwin has lived and worked in France, Portugal, Majorca, New York, and, in later years, Hawai’i. The author of four books of prose and the translator of eighteen books of poetry and prose, Merwin has…
Read MoreMeredith, William
by Daniel W. Lane (2000) MEREDITH, WILLIAM [MORRIS] (1919-2007). With nine volumes of poetry to his credit, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems (1987) and the National Book Award-winning Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems (1997), William Meredith is also known for his critical studies and translations. While his earliest works…
Read MoreLowell, Robert, Jr.
by Sally C. Hoople (2000) LOWELL, ROBERT, JR [TRAILL SPENCE]. (1917-1977). Robert Lowell, the son of a naval officer, recalled in the poem, “Commander Lowell: 1887-1950” (Life Studies, 1959) how his father, in his postnaval life, would boom “Anchors Aweigh” in the bathtub and would frequent the Sunday Yacht Club and the Maritime Museum at Salem,…
Read MoreLowell, James Russell
by Brendan A. Rapple (2000) LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL (1819-1891). James Russell Lowell, poet, literary and social critic, editor, abolitionist, scholar of comparative literature, Harvard professor, diplomat, and consummate traveler, frequently crossed the Atlantic to visit Britain and the Continent. On 12 July 1851, he sailed from Boston in the bark Sultana on his first trip to…
Read MoreLongfellow, Henry Wadsworth
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807-1882). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, at a time when that seaport was second in New England only to Boston in total tonnage engaged in maritime trade. Close to half a century later, in the poem “My Lost Youth” (1855)–his reminiscences of those early days–Longfellow’s…
Read MoreLodge, George Cabot
by Dana L. Peterson (2000) LODGE, GEORGE CABOT (1873-1909). Son of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and acquaintance of Edith Wharton, Henry James, and his own biographer, Henry Adams, the poet and verse dramatist George Cabot Lodge was well acquainted with the sea. Growing up in the coastal Massachusetts town of Nahant and, as an adult, summering…
Read MoreLindbergh, Anne Morrow
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) LINDBERGH, ANNE MORROW (1906-2001). Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born in 1906 in Englewood, New Jersey. Her father, Dwight Whitney Morrow, was ambassador to Mexico when Charles Lindbergh visited Mexico City in 1928, soon after he had completed his famous solo transatlantic crossing. Lindbergh and Anne Morrow met in Mexico City, and…
Read MoreLincoln, Joseph Crosby
by Susan Raidy Klein (2000) LINCOLN, JOSEPH C[ROSBY]. (1870-1944). Joseph C. Lincoln, the descendant of a long line of a seafarers, was a prolific author of best-selling verses, stories, and novels that portrayed life along the shore of Cape Cod with nostalgia and humor. The son of Captain Joseph and Emily (Crosby) Lincoln, the author was…
Read MoreLieberman, Laurence
by Erika J. Waters (2000) LIEBERMAN, LAURENCE [JAMES] (1935- ). Four years at the College of the Virgin Islands in the 1960s were critical years for poet Laurence Lieberman, for it was then that he discovered the Caribbean. Since those formative years, from his home in the Midwest, Lieberman has systematically traveled to nearly every Caribbean…
Read MoreLarcom, Lucy
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) LARCOM, LUCY (1824-1893). Lucy Larcom was a prolific and highly regarded writer of descriptive and religious verse, short fiction, and inspirational prose in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born on the Massachusetts North Shore in Beverly, she lived and worked as a young girl in the Lowell mills, taught…
Read MoreJewett, Sarah Orne
by John F. Hussey (2000) JEWETT, SARAH ORNE (1849-1909). Sarah Orne Jewett was born and raised in South Berwick, Maine, a dwindling shipping and manufacturing center. As a girl she listened to her paternal grandfather’s tales of life as a sea captain, skirting the embargo of 1807; some fifty years later South Berwick still reviled…
Read MoreJeffers, Robinson
by Gregg Allen Walker (2000) JEFFERS, [JOHN] ROBINSON (1887-1962). Robinson Jeffers, best known for his verse narratives set on California’s rugged northern coast, was born in Pennsylvania. In 1903 he moved with his family to Los Angeles and entered Occidental College, where he studied geology, astronomy, and biblical literature, graduating in 1905. In 1913, after graduate…
Read MoreHughes, Langston
by Christopher C. De Santis (2000) HUGHES, [JAMES MERCER] LANGSTON (1902-1967). Langston Hughes, the prolific African American writer whose work in multiple genres endeared him early in his career to the black American community and later to a broad, international readership, first prepared to set sail in 1922, when he signed on as a messboy aboard…
Read MoreHowells, William Dean
by Udo Nattermann (2000) HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN (1837-1920). A native of Ohio, William Dean Howells began to work in his father’s printing shop at age nine. A self-taught student of languages and literature, he early entered a career in journalism. After writing a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln, Howells was appointed American consul to Venice, where…
Read MoreHolmes, Oliver Wendell
by Stephen Curley (2000) HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL (1809-1894). Oliver Wendell Holmes, a writer and distinguished academic physician, spent his life around Boston. He was the social leader of a group of intellectual luminaries that included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his day a well-known wit and after-dinner speaker, Holmes…
Read MoreHine, Ephraim Curtiss
by Thomas Farel Heffernan (2000) HINE, EPHRAIM CURTISS (1818?-1853). Sailor and author raised in Genoa, New York, Ephraim Curtiss Hine is best known today as the model for the nautical poet Lemsford in Herman Melville’s novel White-Jacket (1850). Melville, who was Hine’s shipmate on the frigate United States during 1843-1844, treats the poet in the novel…
Read MoreHayden, Robert
by Fred M. Fetrow (2000) HAYDEN, ROBERT [EARL] (1913-1980). A long-neglected African American poet, Robert Hayden (born Asa Bundy Sheffey) climaxed his career with two successive terms as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (1976-1978), the position now known as poet laureate. His ten volumes of poetry show a consistent interest in African…
Read MoreHarte, Bret
by Nathaniel T. Mott HARTE, [FRANCIS] BRET[T] (1836-1902). Born in Albany, New York, Bret Harte rose to literary prominence as editor of the Overland Monthly (first pub. 1868), a San Francisco-based magazine of western lore. In this forum Harte produced his best sketches, stories, and poems, including “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (August 1868), “The…
Read MoreHarper, Michael S.
by Fred M. Fetrow HARPER, MICHAEL S[TEVEN]. (1938-2016). Few of Michael S. Harper’s challenging poems draw upon the sea for either setting or theme, but when his strong interest in history intersected with even stronger feelings about racial justice, he infrequently employed sea imagery for thematic impact. For example, one of his most quietly dramatic…
Read MoreGreen, Paul
by David R. Pellegrini (2000) GREEN, PAUL [ELIOT] (1894-1981). A prolific playwright and poet whose literary career spanned several decades and genres, Paul Green is remembered chiefly for his dramatizations of southern folklore and customs and the plight of the African American in particular, in such plays as In Abraham’s Bosom (first perf. 1927; pub.…
Read MoreGardner, John
by William Crisman (2000) GARDNER, JOHN [CHAMPLIN] (1933-1982). The son of a dairy farmer, John Gardner had no important personal connection with the sea. Indeed, his maritime novella, The King’s Indian (1972, in a volume of the same name), a modern Ancient Mariner story about a Captain Dirge and the whaler Jerusalem seeking the Vanishing…
Read MoreFuller, Margaret
by Robert Beasecker (2000) FULLER, [SARAH] MARGARET (1810-1850). Born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, Margaret Fuller was the eldest of nine children. Her father, a lawyer and congressman, educated her at home, and under his demanding regimen she developed her remarkable intellectual gifts. She later taught school in Boston, where she met Ralph Waldo Emerson and entered…
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