Articles Index
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich (1929 - 2012) was as much activist and social philosopher as poet, and she was a very great poet, a clear-eyed and eloquent cartographer of women’s lives.
Tsering Woeser
A brief biographical profile of Tsering Woeser, award-winning Tibetan poet and political blogger.
June Jordan
A biographical profile of June Jordan (1936 - 2002), poet, activist, political essayist, teacher at UC Berkeley and founder of Poetry for the People.
Walt Whitman
A reference page on Walt Whitman, quintessential American poet who sang of individual freedom, democracy and the brotherhood of man in the many editions of his compendious masterpiece, Leaves of Grass.
Liu Xiaobo
A reference page on Liu Xiaobo, Chinese poet, literary critic and activist for democracy and free speech, who was imprisoned in 2009 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.
Sappho
A reference page on Sappho, legendary Greek love poet whose work was admired by the ancients, burned in the Middle Ages, and still speaks to us 25 centuries later in the few fragments that remain for us to read.
Robert Burns
A reference page on Robert Burns, the national bard of Scotland and forerunner of the British Romantic poets.
Ezra Pound
Biographical profile of the great Modernist poet Ezra Pound: genius, anti-Semite, author of cantos and translations, he singlehandedly forced Modernism into vaudeville USA, spun language on ear, cut words to bone, edited T.S. Eliot until he said “Truth.”
Amy Lowell
A biographical profile of Amy Lowell, who was born into a prominent New England family, essentially educated herself and became a truly independent woman, Imagist poet, critic and biographer of Keats.
Robert Pinsky
A reference page on Robert Pinsky, poet, critic, sax player, translator of Dante, U.S. Poet Laureate 1997 - 2000 and instigator of the Favorite Poem Project.
Philip Levine
A reference page on Philip Levine, poet of the working class and long-time poetry teacher at California State University Fresno, who was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate in 2011.
W.S. Merwin
A reference page on W.S. Merwin, revered master poet, prolific translator, Buddhist and caretaker of the natural world, and U.S. Poet Laureate in 2010.
Richard Eberhart
A reference page on Richard Eberhart (1904 - 2005), prize-winning poet, laureate, teacher and mentor to generations of poets.
Li Po
A reference page on the classical Chinese poet Li Po (aka Li Bai or Li T’ai Po), who was both a rebel wanderer and a courtier in the T’ang Dynasty, revered together with his contemporary Tu Fu as one of the two greatest of Chinese poets.
Thom Gunn
A reference page on Thom Gunn (1929 - 2004), British expatriate in California, honored and accomplished poet of "anti-poetic" subjects from Elvis to motorcycles to drugs to AIDS.
Langston Hughes
A reference page on Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967), unofficial poet laureate of Black American life and culture, radical democrat at the center of the Harlem Renaissance.
William Stafford
A reference page on William Stafford (1914 - 1993), poet from Kansas & Oregon, conscientious objector, Poet Laureate in 1970 & beloved teacher.
Pablo Neruda
A reference page on Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973), Nobel laureate, diplomat, exile and returned native son of Chile, most respected and beloved Latin American poet, often called “the people’s poet.”
Sylvia Plath
A reference page on Sylvia Plath, brilliant young confessional poet who committed suicide at the age of 30 amid the upheaval of her failed marriage to Ted Hughes, and became a poetic and feminist icon after her death.
Allen Ginsberg
A reference page on Allen Ginsberg, prophetic American bard for the end of the 20th century, father/mother of the Beats, instigator of spoken word, brilliant, incisive critic, and activist for peace, gay rights and marijuana.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
A reference page on Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, the walking history of Russian history, antihistory... the woman whose voice cuts specific and sideblades gender.
Federico García Lorca
A reference page on Federico García Lorca (1899 - 1936), Spain’s most important poet and dramatist of the 20th century, whose work is still beloved for its passion and duende.
Donald Hall
A reference page on Donald Hall, poet and lit professor who married Jane Kenyon and gave up academic security to return to his great-grandfather's New England farm and live entirely as a writer and editor, named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2006.
William Butler Yeats
A reference page on mystical/historical Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), a towering figure in 20th century literature in English, master of traditional verse forms and at the same time idol of the modernist poets who followed him.
William Blake
A reference page on William Blake, visionary poet and artist who created his own mythology, wrote epics and children's rhymes, and made illustrated books that are admired icons centuries after his death.