"Robert Hayden looms as one of the most technically gifted and conceptually expansive poets in American and African American letters. Attending to the specificities of race and culture, Hayden's poetry takes up the sobering concerns of African American social and political plight; yet his poetry posits race as a means through which one contemplates the expansive possibilities of language, and the transformational power of art. An award-winning poet of voice, symbol, and lyricism, Hayden's poetry celebrates human essence....." Click here to read more
"Some of Hardy's problems in London were mundane enough. He complains in his letters of rain, the pea-souper fog, and the dreadful rib-crushing crowds of people in town for the illuminations when the Prince of Wales got married in 1863 .... But what drew him most strongly were the literary ambitions which he had harbored even before coming up to London. He started writing poetry seriously in 1865, and began sending it round to various magazines in 1866 (this was before he had made any similarly serious attempts at writing prose)...." Click here to read more (from the Victorian Web)
"Seamus Heaney was born in April 1939, the eldest member of a family which would eventually contain nine children. His father owned and worked a small farm of some fifty acres in County Derry in Northern Ireland, but the father's real commitment was to cattle-dealing. There was something very congenial to Patrick Heaney about the cattle-dealer's way of life to which he was introduced by the uncles who had cared for him after the early death of his own parents. ..." Click
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"Dorothy Parker Rothschild represented one of the most accomplished feminist and successful literary writers in women’s history. Existing from 1893-1967, she became known as one of the most brilliant writers from the early 1900s. Born in West End, New Jersey, and attaining her success from New York, she became one of the most brilliant writers that revolutionized American thinking then and after. Dorothy Parker lived a full and prosperous life, even though she did not have a happy childhood..." Click here to read more
"Dudley Randall was born 14 January 1914 in Washington, D.C., but moved to Detroit in 1920. His first published poem appeared in the Detroit Free Press when he was thirteen. His early reading included English poets from whom he learned form. He was later influenced by the work of Jean Toomer and Countee Cullen..." Click here to read more
"There is no writer of comparable influence and achievement in so many areas of the contemporary women's movement as the poet and theorist Adrienne Rich. Over the years, hers has become one of the most eloquent, provocative voices on the politics of sexuality, race, language, power, and women's culture. There is scarcely an anthology of feminist writings that does not contain her work or specifically engage her ideas, a women's studies course that does not read her essays, or a poetry collection that does not include her work or that of the next generation of poets steeped in her example...." Click here to read more
"Wordsworth was born in 1770. He lived for eighty years, produced some of English poetry's greatest works and influenced future generations of poets. Most of his life was spent in the Lake District. He was born in Cockermouth (a town in the northern Lakes); educated at Hawkshead Grammar school; and spent much of his adult life in Grasmere and Rydal, right in the heart of the Lake District...." Click here to read more