1955 in poetry - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish

Irish poetry

The history of Irish poetry includes the poetries of two languages, one in Irish and the other in English. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English, has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to...

or France

French poetry

French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.-French prosody and poetics:...

Events

The Group
The Group (literature)
The Group was an informal group of poets who met in London from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. As a poetic movement in Great Britain it is often seen as a being the successor to The Movement.-Cambridge:...

, a British
English poetry
The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is...

poetry movement, starts meeting in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

with gatherings taking place once a week, on Friday evenings, at first at Hobsbaum's
Philip Hobsbaum
Philip Dennis Hobsbaum was a British teacher, poet and critic.-Life:Hobsbaum was born into a Polish Jewish family in London, and brought up in Bradford, in Yorkshire. He read English at Downing College, Cambridge, where he was taught and heavily influenced by F. R. Leavis...

flat and later at the house of Edward Lucie-Smith
Edward Lucie-Smith
John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith is a British writer, poet, art critic, curator, broadcaster and author of exhibition catalogues.-Biography:Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946...

. The poets gathered to discuss each other's work, putting into practice the sort of analysis and objective comment in keeping with the principles of Hobsbaum's Cambridge tutor F. R. Leavis
F. R. Leavis
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis CH was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for nearly his entire career at Downing College, Cambridge.-Early life:...

and of the New Criticism
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...

in general. Before each meeting about six or seven poems by one poet would be typed, duplicated and distributed to the dozen or so participants.
The Movement
The Movement (literature)
The Movement was a term coined by J. D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, in 1954 to describe a group of writers including Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn, and Robert Conquest...

poets as a group in Britain came to public notice this year in Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...

's anthology New Lines. The core of the group consists of Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

, Elizabeth Jennings
Elizabeth Jennings
Elizabeth Jennings was an English poet.-Life and career:Jennings was born in Boston, Lincolnshire. When she was six, her family moved to Oxford, where she remained for the rest of her life. Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, pp. 98-100. There she later attended St Anne's College...

, D. J. Enright
D. J. Enright
Dennis Joseph Enright was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic, and general man of letters.-Life:He was born in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and educated at Leamington College and Downing College, Cambridge...

, Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

, Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn, born Thomson William Gunn , was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style...

and Donald Davie
Donald Davie
Donald Alfred Davie was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes.-Biography:...

. They are identified with a hostility to modernism and internationalism, and look to Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

as a model. However, both Davie and Gunn later move away from this position.
Henry Rago
Henry Rago
Henry Rago was a poet and editor of Poetry Magazine for 14 years from 1955-1969. He was also a Professor of Theology and Literature at the University of Chicago jointly in the Divinity School and in the New Collegiate Division. His seminars and research explored the relations between poetry and...

http://www.henryrago.com becomes editor of Poetry
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
April – Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

is baptized a Catholic by the chaplain of St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, where Stevens spent his last days suffering from terminal cancer. After a brief release from the hospital, Stevens is readmitted and dies on August 2 at the age of 76.
May 28 – Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

makes a train journey from Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

which inspires his poem The Whitsun Weddings
The Whitsun Weddings (poem)
"The Whitsun Weddings" is one of the best known poems by British poet Philip Larkin. It was written and rewritten and finally published in the 1964 collection of poems, also called The Whitsun Weddings. It is one of three poems that Larkin wrote about train journeys.The poem comprises eight verses...

Beat poets

July 19 – Beat poet Weldon Kees's
Weldon Kees
Harry Weldon Kees was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, jazz pianist, and short story writer...

Plymouth Savoy is found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...

in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

with the keys in the ignition. When his friends go to search his apartment, all they find are the cat he had named Lonesome and a pair of red socks in the sink. His sleeping bag and savings account book are missing. He has left no note. No one is sure if Kees, 41, jumped off the bridge that day or if he went to Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. Before he disappeared, Kees quoted Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...

to friend Michael Grieg, ominously saying that sometimes a person needs to change his life completely.
October 7 – The "Six Gallery reading
Six Gallery reading
The Six Gallery reading was a poetry-reading which occurred at the Six Gallery on Friday, October 7, 1955, at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco....

" takes place in San Francisco with Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...

acting as M.C.
Master of Ceremonies
A Master of Ceremonies , or compere, is the host of a staged event or similar performance.An MC usually presents performers, speaks to the audience, and generally keeps the event moving....

, Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia was an American poet and lecturer. Lamantia's visionary poems were ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic which explored the subconscious world of dreams and linked it to the experience of daily life.-Biography:...

, Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...

, Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

, and Philip Whalen
Philip Whalen
Philip Glenn Whalen was an American poet, Zen Buddhist, and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and close to the Beat generation.-Biography:...

read, and the event includes Allen Ginsberg's
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

first reading of Howl
Howl
"Howl" is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch...

(written the previous summer at Ginsberg's cottage in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

); the reading (1) brings together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

, (2) is the first important public manifestation of the poetry movement and (3) helps to herald the West Coast literary revolution that becomes known as the San Francisco Renaissance
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...

. In the audience a totally drunken Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

refuses to read his own work but cheers on the others, shouting "Yeah! Go! Go!" during their performances.

Works published in English

Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:

Canada
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...

Eldon Grier
Eldon Grier
Eldon Grier was a Canadian poet and artist.Grier was born in London, England and raised in Montreal, Canada. He died at the age of 84 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His father was Charles Brockwill Grier and his mother was Kathleen Phyllis Black Grier. His father was captain in the Canadian army...

, A Morning from Scraps
Irving Layton
Irving Layton
Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made enemies. As T...

, The Blue Propeller. Toronto: Contact Press.
Irving Layton
Irving Layton
Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made enemies. As T...

, The Cold Green Element. Toronto: Contact Press.
Dorothy Livesay
Dorothy Livesay
Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General`s Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.-Life:...

, New Poems. Toronto: Emblem Books.
Sir Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles G.D. Roberts
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts, was a Canadian poet and prose writer who is known as the Father of Canadian Poetry. He was "almost the first Canadian author to obtain worldwide reputation and influence; he was also a tireless promoter and encourager of Canadian literature......

, Selected Poems, edited by Desmond Pacey, posthumously published
Raymond Souster
Raymond Souster
Raymond Holmes Souster, OC is a Canadian poet whose writing career spans almost 70 years. He has published more than 50 volumes of his own verse, and edited or co-edited a dozen volumes of others' poetry...

, For What Time Slays. Toronto: Contact Press.
Miriam Waddington
Miriam Waddington
Miriam Waddington was a Canadian poet, short story writer and translator.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she studied English at the University of Toronto and social work the University of Pennsylvania . She worked for many years as a social worker in Montreal...

, The Second Silence
Wilfred Watson
Wilfred Watson
Wilfred Watson was professor emeritus of English at Canada's University of Alberta for many years. He was also an experimental Canadian poet and dramatist, whose innovative plays had a considerable influence in the 1960s...

, Friday's Child
Anne Wilkinson
Anne Wilkinson
Anne Wilkinson , is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by Brooke Satchwell. She made her first on screen appearance on 19 November 1996. Satchwell quit the role in 1999 and the character departed on 5 April 2000.-Casting:After completing an advert for Just...

, The Hangman Ties the Holly

New Zealand
New Zealand literature
New Zealand literature is essentially literature in English that is either written by New Zealanders, or migrants, dealing with New Zealand themes or places and is primarily a 20th Century creation...

James K. Baxter
James K. Baxter
James Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society.-Biography:Baxter was born in Dunedin to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown and grew up near Brighton. He was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of the British Labour Party. His father had been a conscientious...

:
- The Fire and the Anvil, critical study, based on three Macmillan Brown lectures on poetry at Victoria University in 1954, criticism
- Traveller’s Litany, a long poem published in pamphlet form
J. R. Hervey, She Was My Spring
Kendrick Smithyman
Kendrick Smithyman
William Kendrick Smithyman was an award-winning New Zealand poet and one of the most prolific of that nation's poets in the 20th century.-Family and early life:...

, The Gay Trapeze, Wellington: Handcraft Press

United Kingdom
English poetry
The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is...

W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

, The Shield of Achilles, first published in the United States

Austin Clarke
Austin Clarke
Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke, is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Born in St...

, Ancient Lights
Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...

, Poems
Patric Dickinson
Patric Dickinson
Patric Thomas Dickinson was a British poet, translator from the Greek and Latin classics, and playwright. He also worked for the BBC, from 1942 to 1948. He wrote full time from 1948....

, The Scale of Things
Elizabeth Jennings
Elizabeth Jennings
Elizabeth Jennings was an English poet.-Life and career:Jennings was born in Boston, Lincolnshire. When she was six, her family moved to Oxford, where she remained for the rest of her life. Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, pp. 98-100. There she later attended St Anne's College...

, A Way of Looking
Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

, The Less Deceived, Hessle, East Yorkshire: Marvell Press
Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

, Collected Poems 1955, revisions and reprintings of previously published poems; the book was among eight books of poetry included in "A List of 250 Outstanding Books of the Year" in the New York Times Book Review.
Norman MacCaig
Norman MacCaig
Norman MacCaig was a Scottish poet. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity.-Life:...

, Riding Lights
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

, (pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

of Christopher Murray Grieve), In Memoriam James Joyce
Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...

, Collected Poems. 1928-1953, what he considers his best poems, selected and revised; among eight books of poetry included in "A List of 250 Outstanding Books of the Year" in the New York Times Book Review.
Iain Crichton Smith
Iain Crichton Smith
Iain Crichton Smith was a Scottish man of letters, writing in both English and Scottish Gaelic, and a prolific author in both languages...

, 'The Long River
R.S. Thomas, Song at the Year's Turning, introduction by John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
Charles Tomlinson
Charles Tomlinson
Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE is a British poet and translator, and also an academic and artist. He was born and raised in Penkhull in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.-Life:...

, The Necklace

United States
Poetry of the United States
American poetry, the poetry of the United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies...

A.R. Ammons, Ommateum with Doxology, his first book
W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

, The Shield of Achilles
The Shield of Achilles
"The Shield of Achilles" is a poem by W. H. Auden first published in 1952. The Shield of Achilles is also the title poem of a collection of poems by Auden, published in 1955.-Description:...

, a book of 28 pastoral and devotional poems (his poem of the same name was first published in 1953
1953 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen and Harold L...

); among eight books of poetry included in "A List of 250 Outstanding Books of the Year" in the New York Times Book Review.
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...

, Poems: North & South — A Cold Spring, (Houghton Mifflin); among eight books of poetry included in "A List of 250 Outstanding Books of the Year" in the New York Times Book Review.
Paul Blackburn, The Dissolving Fabric, Highlands, North Carolina: The Divers Press
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal history:...

, Book of Monuments: Poems 1915–1954
John Ciardi
John Ciardi
John Anthony Ciardi was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, he also translated Dante's Divine Comedy, wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, and...

, As If
Robert P. Tristram Coffin, Selected Poems, among eight books of poetry included in "A List of 250 Outstanding Books of the Year" in the New York Times Book Review.
Gregory Corso
Gregory Corso
Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers...

, The Vestal Lady on Brattle and Other Poems
Louis Coxe, The Second Man
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...

, The Complete Poems, three volumes
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, All That is Lovely in Man
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...

, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, three volumes, edited by Thomas H. Johnson; a "definitive edition of the Dickinson poems with variant readings critically compared," according to the New York Times Book Review, which listed it among eight books of poetry included in "A List of 250 Outstanding Books of the Year".
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...

, Pictures of the Gone World
Isabella Gardner, Birthdays from the Ocean, her first collection; among eight books of poetry included in "A List of 250 Outstanding Books of the Year" in the New York Times Book Review.
William Graham (poet), The Nightfishing
Donald Hall
Donald Hall
Donald Hall is an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2006.-Personal life:...

, Exiles and Marriages
Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes
-Politicians:*Robert Hughes, Baron Hughes of Woodside , British Labour politician, MP for Aberdeen North*Robert Gurth Hughes , British Conservative politician, MP for Harrow West-Sportsmen:*Robert Hughes , of Stamford FC...

, Collected Poems
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role which now holds the title of US Poet Laureate.-Life:Jarrell was a native of Nashville, Tennessee...

, Selected Poems
Josephine Miles
Josephine Miles
Josephine Miles was an American poet and literary critic; the first woman to be tenured in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote over a dozen books of poetry and several works of criticism....

, Prefabrications
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov...

, The Salt Garden
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...

, Poems and Essays
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems
Louis Simpson
Louis Simpson
Louis Aston Marantz Simpson is an American poet. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work At The End Of The Open Road.-Life:...

, Good News of Death
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

, Journey to Love
Journey to Love
Journey to Love is the third jazz funk fusion album by bass guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Stanley Clarke, accompanied by familiar musicians he has often worked with like George Duke and Chick Corea...

Criticism, scholarship, and biography in the United States

Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...

, Prairie-town boy (autobiography; essentially excerpts from Always the Young Strangers)

Other in English

A. D. Hope
A. D. Hope
Alec Derwent Hope AC OBE was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.-Life:...

, The Wandering Islands (Australia
Australian literature
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its literary tradition begins with and is linked to...

)
D. Stewart and N. Keesing, editors, Australian Bush Ballads, anthology (Australia
Australian literature
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its literary tradition begins with and is linked to...

)

France
French poetry
French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.-French prosody and poetics:...

Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

, pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

of Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, Poèmes à Lou, (a revised edition of Ombre de mon amour, published by P. Cailler Vesenaz 1947
1947 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Dorothy Parker divorces Alan Campbell for the first time....

), posthumously published (died 1918
1918 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*Robert Graves marries Nancy Nicholson...

)
Pierre Oster, Le Champ de mai
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain very popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. Some of the movies he wrote are extremely well regarded, with Les Enfants du Paradis considered one of the greatest films of all time.-Life and...

, La Pluie et le beau temps
Victor Segalen
Victor Segalen
Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic....

, Stèles, Peintures, Équipée (see also Stèles 1912
1912 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore takes a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they impress William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others...

)
Jean Tortel, Naissance de l'objet
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...

, pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

of Sami Rosenstock, Le temps naissant

Gujarati

Balumukund Dave, Parikrama, Gujarati
Natvarlal Kuberdas Pandya, Prasun, the author's first collection of poems
Ramnarayan Vishvanath Pathak, Brhat Pingal, a study of the history and structure of Gujarati prosody
Venibhai Purohit, Sinjarav, the author's first collection of poems

Oriya

Krushnachandra Tripathy, Ahuti
Mohan Upendra Thakur, Phuldali
Narendranath Misra, Balarama Dasa O Odia Ramayana, critical study of Balaram Das, the 15th century poet-saint and author of the most popular Ramayana in the Oriya language

Other languages of the Indian subcontinent

Amrita Pritam
Amrita Pritam
Amrita Pritam was a Punjabi writer and poet, considered the first prominent woman Punjabi poet, novelist, and essayist, and the leading 20th-century poet of the Punjabi language, who is equally loved on both the sides of the India-Pakistan border, with a career spanning over six decades, she...

, Sunehure, Punjabi
Birendra Chattopadhyay, Ulukhagdar Kabita, Bengali
Bengali poetry
Bengali poetry is a form that originated in Pāli and other Prakrit socio-cultural traditions. It is antagonistic towards Vedic rituals and laws as opposed to the shramanic traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism...
C. Narayanan Nair, translator, Kannaki-Kovalam, translation into Sanskrit from the Silappadikaram, a Tamil-language poem
Dina Nath Wali, also known as "Almast
Almast
Almast is the only opera by the Armenian composer Alexander Spendiaryan.-History:In 1916 Spendiarian met Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanian, who suggested three of his poems "Anush", "Parvana" and "The Siege of the Tmbouk Castle" as themes for a national Armenian opera. Spendiaryan listened to the...

", Bala Yepari, lyrics on rural themes, mostly in the vatsun
Vatsun
Vatsun is derived from Sanskrit ‘Vachan’ meaning word/speech. This is because it has no particular pattern of versification or rhyme scheme. The metres and rhyme schemes of vatsun are varied, but generally each unit is a stanza of three lines followed by a refrain . Vatsun bears a resemblance to...

form; Kashmiri
Hitanarayan Jha, Kavivar Canda Jha O Wordsworthak prakrtiprem, a comparative study of Chanda Jha and William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

's love of nature; Maithili
Jaswant Singh Neki, Asle Te Ohle, Punjabi
Kalachand Shastri Chingorgban, Manipuri Mahabharat, translation into Manipuri from the Sanskrit Mahabharat, in 20 volumes, published from this year to 1980
1980 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Mark Jarman and Robert McDowell started the small magazine The Reaper to promote narrative and formal poetry....
Krishnakanta Mishra, Maithili Sahityak Itihas, history of Maithili literature
Lekhraj Aziz, Gul Va Khar, study of prosody and the rules of Islamic meters, including examples from various works by modern Sindhi
Sindhi poetry
Sindhi language poetry continues an oral tradition of a thousand years. The verbal verses were based on folk stories. Sindhi is one of the oldest languages of the Indus Valley having own literary colour both in poetry and prose. Sindhi poetry is very rich in thoughts as well as contain variety of...

poets
Ram Nath Shastri, translator, Niti Sataka, translation into Dogri from the Sanskrit poems of Bhartrihari
Sri Naunram Samskarta, Dasa dev, Rajasthani
Sudhindranath Datta, translator, Pratidhvani, translation into Bengali
Bengali poetry
Bengali poetry is a form that originated in Pāli and other Prakrit socio-cultural traditions. It is antagonistic towards Vedic rituals and laws as opposed to the shramanic traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism...

from English, French and German poems, including verses by Shakespeare, Mallarme and Heine
V. R. M. Chettiyar, Kavinan Kural, literary essays on Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

, William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

, Bharatidasan, Mutiyaracan among others; Tamil

Other languages

H. E. Holthusen and F. Kemp, editors, Ergriffenes Dasein: deutsche Lyrik 1900-1950, anthology, Germany
Alexander Mezhirov
Alexander Mezhirov
Alexander Petrovich Mezhirov was a Soviet and Russian poet, translator and critic....

, Возвращение ("Return"), Soviet Union
Giorgos Seferis
Giorgos Seferis
Giorgos or George Seferis was the pen name of Geōrgios Seferiádēs . He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate...

, Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος ΙΙΙ ("Deck Diary III") (Greece
Modern Greek literature
Modern Greek literature refers to literature written in the Greek language from the 11th century, with texts written in a language that is more familiar to the ears of Greeks today than is the language of the early Byzantine literature, the compilers of the New Testament, or, of course, the...

)

Awards and honors

Frost Medal
Frost Medal
The Robert Frost Medal is an award of the Poetry Society of America for "distinguished lifetime service to American poetry." Medalists receive a prize purse of $2,500....

: Leona Speyer
National Book Award for Poetry
National Book Award for Poetry
The National Book Award for Poetry has been given since 1950 and is part of the National Book Awards, which are given annually for outstanding literary works by American citizens...

: Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

, The Collected Poems
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...

: Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

: Collected Poems
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded for a book of verse published by someone in any of the Commonwealth realms. Originally the award was open only to British subjects living in the United Kingdom, but in 1985 the scope was extended to include people from the rest of the Commonwealth realms...

: Ruth Pitter
Ruth Pitter
Emma Thomas "Ruth" Pitter, CBE, FRSL was a 20th century British poet.She was the first woman to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1955, and was appointed a CBE in 1979 to honour her many contributions to English literature.In 1974, she was named a "Companion of Literature", the highest...
Bollingen Prize
Bollingen Prize
The Bollingen Prize for Poetry, which is currently awarded every two years by Beinecke Library of Yale University, is a literary honor bestowed on an American poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement.-Inception and controversy:The...

: Léonie Adams
Léonie Adams
Léonie Fuller Adams was an American poet. She was appointed the seventh Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948.-Biography:...

and Louise Bogan
Louise Bogan
Louise Bogan was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945.-Early years:...
Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets: Rolfe Humphries
Rolfe Humphries
George Rolfe Humphries was a poet, translator, and teacher.-Life:...
Canada:
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...

Governor General's Award, poetry or drama: Friday's Child, Wilfred Watson

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

February 2 – Leszek Engelking
Leszek Engelking
Leszek Engelking - Polish poet, short-story writer, critic, essayist, scholar, and translator....

, Polish
Polish poetry
Polish poetry has a centuries old history, similar to the Polish literature.Three most famous Polish poets are known as the Three Bards: Adam Mickiewicz , Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński ....

poet
April 17 – Erin Mouré
Erin Mouré
Erin Mouré is a Canadian poet and translator of poetry from languages which include, French, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish to English. Her mother Mary Irene was born 1924 in Galicia, Poland and moved to Canada in 1929. Erin’s father is William Moure born in Ottawa Canada in 1925...

, Canadian
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...

poet
April 22 – Marie Uguay
Marie Uguay
Marie Uguay was a French Canadian poet from the province of Quebec.She was born in the former town of Ville-Émard which has now become a district of the city of Montreal....

(died 1981
1981 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Jane Greer launched Plains Poetry Journal, an advance guard of the New Formalism movement....

), French-Canadian
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
May 13 – Mark Abley
Mark Abley
Mark Abley is a Canadian poet, journalist, editor and non-fiction writer.Born in Warwickshire, England, he moved to Canada as a small boy and grew up in Lethbridge, Alberta and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He attended the University of Saskatchewan from which he won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1975. He...

, Canadian
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...

poet, journalist, editor and non-fiction writer
October 19 – Jason Shinder
Jason Shinder
Jason Shinder is an American poet who authored three books and founded the YMCA National Writer's Voice. His last book, Stupid Hope , was released posthumously....

, (died 2008
2008 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* June — the release in the United Kingdom of a new film, The Edge of Love, Dylan Thomas' relationship with two women, starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys *...

), American poet, editor, anthologist and teacher who founded the Y.M.C.A. National Writer’s Voice program, one of the country’s largest networks of literary-arts centers, at one time an assistant to Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
December 23 – Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...

, British
English poetry
The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is...

poet

Also:
- Marilyn Chin
  Marilyn Chin
  Marilyn Chin is an American poet who grew up in Portland, Oregon, after her family immigrated from Hong Kong. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Her awards include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award,...
  
  , American
- Chris Edwards, Australian
- Jennifer Harrison
  Jennifer Harrison
  Jennifer Harrison is a contemporary Australian psychiatrist, poet and photographer.Born in Liverpool, Sydney Jennifer Harrison studied medicine and then specialised in psychiatry...
  
  , Australian psychiatrist, poet and photographer
- Margaret Lindsay Holton
  Margaret Lindsay Holton
  Margaret Lindsay Holton, is a Canadian-born artist and author from Waterdown, Ontario.Lindsay attended primary school at Hillfield Strathallan College in Hamilton, Ontario; high school at M. M. Robinson High School in Burlington, Ontario; with a final high-school year at the Canadian Junior...
- Kim Morrissey
  Kim Morrissey
  Kim Morrissey is a Canadian poet and playwright who lives in London, England. Many of her works examine the role of women in nineteenth century culture, re-imagining the lives of historical figures. She is also part of the Comedy Collective UK...
  
  , Canadian
  Canadian poetry
  - Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
  
  poet and playwright
- Patricia Smith poet, "spoken-word performer", playwright, author, writing teacher
- Yang Lian
  Yang Lian
  Yang Lian is a Chinese poet associated with the Misty Poets and also with the Searching for Roots school. He was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1955 and raised in Beijing, where he attended primary school....
  
  杨炼, Chinese
  Chinese poetry
  Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, which includes various versions of Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Yue Chinese, as well as many other historical and vernacular varieties of the Chinese language...
  
  poet associated with the Misty Poets
  Misty Poets
  The Misty Poets are a group of 20th century Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.They are so named because their work has been officially denounced as "obscure", "misty", or "hazy" poetry...
- William Wall
  William Wall
  William "Bill" Wall is an Irish novelist, poet and short story writer. He was born in Cork City in 1955, but grew up in the coastal village of Whitegate. He received his secondary education at the Christian Brothers School in Midleton. He progressed to University College Cork where he graduated in...
  
  , Irish
  Irish poetry
  The history of Irish poetry includes the poetries of two languages, one in Irish and the other in English. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English, has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to...
  
  novelist, poet and short story writer
- Les Wicks
  Les Wicks
  Les Wicks is an Australian poet, publisher and editor. He has a long list of achievements in writing, publishing and broadcasting. This includes the publication of eight books of poetry.-Life:...
  
  , Australian
- Wang Xiaoni, Chinese
  Chinese poetry
  Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, which includes various versions of Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Yue Chinese, as well as many other historical and vernacular varieties of the Chinese language...
- Dean Young
  Dean Young (poet)
  Dean Young is a contemporary American poet in the poetic lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets,...
  
  , American
- Ouyang Yu
  Ouyang Yu
  Ouyang Yu is a contemporary Chinese-Australian author, translator and academic.Ouyang Yu was born in the People's Republic of China, arriving in Australia in 1991 to study for a Ph. D. at La Trobe University which he completed in 1995. Since then his literary output has been prodigious...
  
  , Australian poet, novelist, writer, translator and academic
- Lisa Zeidner, American

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

January 1 – Mizuho Ōta 太田水穂 pen-name of "Teiichi Ōta" 太田貞, he occasionally also used another pen name, "Mizuhonoya" (born 1876
1876 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* Robert Bridges, The Growth of Love...

), Shōwa period
Showa period
The , or Shōwa era, is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926 through January 7, 1989.The Shōwa period was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor...

Japanese
Japanese poetry
Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

poet and literary scholar (surname: Ōta)
January 19 – Seaforth Mackenzie
Seaforth Mackenzie (author)
Kenneth Ivo Brownley Langwell Mackenzie , was an Australian poet and novelist....

(born 1913
1913 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 8—Harold Monro founds the Poetry Bookshop in London...

), Australian poet and novelist
January 20 – Robert P. Coffin, 62
June 19 – Adrienne Monnier
Adrienne Monnier
Adrienne Monnier was a French poet, bookseller and publisher and an important figure in the modernist writing scene in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.-"La Maison des Amis des Livres":...

, 63 (born 1892
1892 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* William Butler Yeats founds the Irish Literary Society in Dublin....

), French
French poetry
French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.-French prosody and poetics:...

poet and publisher
July 18 – Weldon Kees
Weldon Kees
Harry Weldon Kees was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, jazz pianist, and short story writer...

, 41 (born 1914
1914 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 29 – Yone Noguchi lectures on "The Japanese Hokku Poetry" at Magdalen College, Oxford...

), American poet, was presumed dead (see "Events" section). He was a poet, critic, novelist, short story writer, painter and composer.
August 2 – Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

, 75 (born 1879
1879 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia; or, The Great Renunciation...

), American poet
December 30 – Rex Ingamells
Rex Ingamells
Reginald Charles Ingamells was an Australian poet, generally credited with being the leading light of the Jindyworobak Movement....

(born 1913
1913 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 8—Harold Monro founds the Poetry Bookshop in London...

), Australian, influential in the Jindyworobak Movement
Jindyworobak Movement
The Jindyworobak Movement was a nationalistic Australian literary movement whose white members sought to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry. They were active from the 1930s to around the 1950s...
date not known – Brian Vrepont (born 1882
1882 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* William Allingham, Evil May-Day...

), Australian