Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’
Frost, Robert
by Haskell Springer (2000) FROST, ROBERT [LEE] (1874-1963). Though Robert Frost was not a nautical writer, he did treat the sea as a subject in several poems. Best known among these are “Once by the Pacific” (1926), “Neither Out Far nor in Deep” (1934), and “Sand Dunes” (1926), and they also include “The Discovery of…
Read MoreFreneau, Philip
by Ted Olson (2000) FRENEAU, PHILIP [MORIN] (1752-1832). An “occasional” poet born in New York City, Philip Freneau during his long life wrote lyric and narrative poems on a wide range of subjects. Since he spent many years working on ships, a sizable number of these concern the sea. Freneau in 1768 entered the College…
Read MoreFerrini, Vincent
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) FERRINI, VINCENT (1913-2007). Vincent Ferrini was born into a blue-collar, immigrant family struggling to earn a living in the shoe factories of Lynn, Massachusetts. His first volume of poems, No Smoke (1941), records the depression-era deprivations of his early years. A reluctant graduate of high school, Ferrini read voraciously from the…
Read MoreEliot, T. S.
by Matthew D. Childs (2000) ELIOT, T[HOMAS]. S[TEARNS]. (1888-1965). T. S. Eliot, perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century, was born on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. Educated at Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Oxford, he became a British subject in 1927 and received the Nobel Prize in literature in…
Read MoreEberhart, Richard
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) EBERHART, RICHARD [GHORMLEY] (1904-2005). Richard Eberhart is the author of some twenty-six volumes of poetry, from A Bravery of Earth (1930), to Maine Poems (1989). Throughout his career he has utilized nautical images and themes, many of which derive from his immediate experience of the sea. A precise observer for…
Read MoreDunbar, Paul Laurence
by Fred M. Fetrow (2000) DUNBAR, PAUL LAURENCE (1872-1906). Best known for the dialect poetry suggested by the titles of his four published volumes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, the son of former slaves, also wrote a number of short stories and novels. His interest in the sea as a metaphorical medium is best exemplified in a…
Read MoreDoty, Mark
by Cara Murray (2011) MARK DOTY (1953- ). From his birth in 1953 until age seventeen, when he left his parents’ home in Tucson, Arizona, Mark Doty moved frequently. In Firebird (1992), Doty’s memoir of childhood, he recalls living in seven houses in seven years. Although he spent much of his twenties in Iowa, where…
Read MoreDoolittle, Hilda
by Gregg Allen Walker (2000) D[OOLITTLE]., H[ILDA]. (1886-1961). H. D., a poet, novelist, dramatist, and translator whose works often incorporate sea imagery, was born in Pennsylvania. Childhood visits to the seacoasts of Rhode Island and Maine first inspired H. D., best known for her imagist poetry, to write about the sea. “Hermes of the Ways”…
Read MoreDickinson, Emily
by Jane Donahue Eberwein (2000) DICKINSON, EMILY [ELIZABETH] (1830-1886). Although the great American poet Emily Dickinson is frequently quoted as saying she “never saw the Sea” (P 1052), it seems probable that the reclusive native of Amherst, Massachusetts, may have glimpsed the Atlantic coast on her occasional girlhood trips to Boston or when she and…
Read MoreDickey, James
by Brian Anderson (2000) DICKEY, JAMES [LAFAYETTE] (1923-1997). James Dickey, noted poet, novelist, and critic, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. During World War II, he served in a night-fighter squadron in the South Pacific. In the late 1940s he attended Vanderbilt University, during which time he also began writing and publishing poems. He received a…
Read MoreDey, Richard
by Leah Feldman (2013) DEY, RICHARD (1945-) is an American poet born in 1945 who writes of New England and the West Indies. As a teenager he sailed in the Schooner Tabor Boy out of Marion, Massachusetts. After serving in the US Army as a journalist in Washington DC, he graduated from Harvard College in…
Read MoreDana, Richard Henry, Sr.
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) DANA, RICHARD HENRY, SR. (1787-1879). Richard Henry Dana Sr. was born into a prominent Cambridge, Massachusetts, family. He was educated at Harvard, leaving without a degree in 1807. He studied law and passed the bar in 1811 but showed little interest in practicing law. In 1814 he collaborated with others to establish…
Read MoreCreeley, Robert
by Donald Yannella (2000) CREELEY, ROBERT [WHITE] (1926-2005). Robert Creeley’s most sustained and important piece of sea writing is his 1963 novel The Island. Although his work only infrequently focuses on the sea or even uses it as background, the center section of the poem “Here” (1969) is a crafted and compressed articulation of some central ideas…
Read MoreCrane, Stephen
by Matthew Evertson (2000) CRANE, STEPHEN (1871-1900). Stephen Crane’s first extended trip at sea ended in a shipwreck less than thirty-five hours after he left the Florida coast, forcing Crane and three other crew members to struggle toward land for almost thirty hours, crammed into a small dinghy, inches removed from the rough and chilly…
Read MoreCrane, Harold Hart
by Donald Yannella (2000) CRANE, [HAROLD] HART (1899-1932). Critical opinion remains divided about the quality of Hart Crane’s best-known and longest poem, The Bridge (1930), but it appears that it will continue to hold a solid place in the canon of American literature. Ten of the fifteen separate poems that constitute The Bridge, its most vital section, were…
Read MoreCoxe, Louis O.
by Robert Shenk (2000) COXE, LOUIS O[SBORNE]. (1918-1993). Louis O. Coxe was a student in Allen Tate’s Creative Arts program at Princeton when Pearl Harbor occurred. Having grown up in Salem, Massachusetts, Coxe joined the navy. He came to regard his wartime service at sea as the central experience of his life. Coxe’s naval service…
Read MoreConnell, Evan S., Jr.
by Jeffrey Cass (2000) CONNELL, EVAN S[HELBY]., JR (1924-2013). Born in Kansas City and educated at Dartmouth, Columbia, and Stanford, Evan S. Connell Jr. remains best known for his novels Mrs. Bridge (1959) and Mr. Bridge (1969). Connell wrote the screenplay of the 1990 film adaptation that combined these two titles; it was directed by James Ivory and starred…
Read MoreColcord, Lincoln Ross
by Parker Bishop Albee Jr. (2000) COLCORD, LINCOLN ROSS (1883-1947). Lincoln Ross Colcord, author of sea fiction and maritime historian, was born at sea aboard the bark Charlotte A. Littlefield, commanded by his father, Lincoln Alden Colcord of Searsport, Maine. Colcord spent much of his first fourteen years aboard deepwater vessels, an experience that instilled in…
Read MoreClampitt, Amy
by Richard Dey (2014) AMY CLAMPITT (1920–1994). Born and raised on a small farm in Iowa, this poet, who was best known for her highly cultured work, wrote a few extraordinary sea poems. Here are lines from the first: …
Read MoreByles, Mather
by John T. Shawcross BYLES, MATHER (1707-1788). Congregational minister, sermonizer, and poet, Mather Byles was the grandson of Increase Mather. Among his publications are two notable volumes, Poems on Several Occasions (1744) and Poems. The Conflagration. . . The God of Tempest and Earthquake (1755). The first collection includes his major piece, “Hymn at Sea,” which was set to…
Read MoreBurland, Brian
by Richard J. King BURLAND, BRIAN [BERKELEY] (1931-2010). Born in Bermuda, educated in England and Canada, and living a good part of his life in the United States, Brian Burland has written several maritime novels. Son of a yacht builder, Burland went to sea when he was twelve aboard a vessel of the British merchant…
Read MoreBryant, William Cullen
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN (1794-1878). William Cullen Bryant was born and raised in the back country of western Massachusetts, where an early talent for versifying displayed in religious, sentimental, and satiric poems culminated in the publication in the North American Review of his best-known poem, “Thanatopsis” (1817). Thereafter, editions of his poems appeared regularly,…
Read MoreBishop, John Peale
by Boyd Childress (2000) BISHOP, JOHN PEALE (1892-1944). A colleague and friend of such literary giants as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmond Wilson, Ernest Hemingway, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Allen Tate, John Peale Bishop was a secondary figure in letters, writing essays, fiction, and poetry. He was a member of the Princeton circle that featured…
Read MoreBishop, Elizabeth
by Hugh Egan (2000) BISHOP, ELIZABETH (1911-1979). Elizabeth Bishop, American poet for whom the coastlines of North and South America served as powerful sources of inspiration, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father died when she was eight months old, and her mother, after suffering mental breakdowns, was permanently institutionalized by the time Bishop was…
Read MoreBerryman, John
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) BERRYMAN, JOHN (1914-1972). Born John Smith in Oklahoma, John Berryman assumed the name of his stepfather after his own father committed suicide. Berryman’s best-known work is the poetic sequence of 77 Dream Songs, published in 1964, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968) continued the Dream…
Read MoreAldrich, Thomas Bailey
by Frank Rotsaert (2000) ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY (1836-1907). Thomas Bailey Aldrich, known chiefly as the author of The Story of a Bad Boy (1869), edited Every Saturday (1866-1874) and The Atlantic Monthly (1881-1890) and also wrote poems, short stories, and five novels. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Aldrich lived for brief periods in the seaports of New York and New Orleans,…
Read MoreAiken, Conrad
by John T. Shawcross (2000) [AIKEN, CONRAD POTTER], “SAMUEL JEAKE JR.” (1889-1973). A friend and contemporary of T. S. Eliot, Conrad Aiken divided his time between England and the United States before settling in Massachusetts in 1947. He used the pen name “Samuel Jeake Jr.” during 1934-1936 as the London correspondent for the New Yorker, although…
Read MoreAdams, Bertram Martin
by Bert Bender (2000) ADAMS, BERTRAM MARTIN [BILL ADAMS] ( 1879-1953 ). Bill Adams was born in England to American parents. He left college to go to sea at age seventeen in a career that lasted four or five years and logged seven passages around Cape Horn. Before his sailing career was ended by ill…
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