W, Diane Wakoski to C.D. Wright

Wakoski is a long-time postmodern icon, one of “the nation’s most significant poets” who responded to the Poetry Society of America’s question, “What is American about American poetry?” In her considerable body of work, poems like “Red Bandanna” are Beat-perfect. Catch her dark humor in her selected poems, Emerald Ice (Black Sparrow Press, 1988).

Fast-speaking woman, daughter cum mother of the Beats, founder of the “Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics” at Naropa, historian of Jove (Iovis), definer of Marriage, Mother of Actual, Waldman’s an Inspiration. There’s a great poem & action foto at Bohemian Ink & a page full of good stuff at the Museum of American Poetics.

Biographical note and links for George Wallace, guest author at About.com Poetry.

He’s a Beat survivor who has published zines since the 60’s: Showcase, Lemmings (70’s), Minotaur (80’s and 90’s) and since his retirement, he edits Baker Street Irregular. His poems appear online in The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks.

Native American poet & novelist James Welch was of Blackfoot/Gros Ventre heritage, a “writer’s writer” in the Montana literary community, mentor to Sherman Alexie & author of Fools Crow & Riding the Earthboy 40. He died too young (at the age of 62) in 2003.

Known as a poet’s poet, Beat innovator (he was at the famous Six Gallery reading), & the most genuine & gentle of men, Philip Whalen was ordained a Zen priest in 1973 and died in 2002. Jacket Magazine #11 has a gathering of memoirs & poems.

Mark Other Place is a beautiful online chapbook sampling of Whalen’s poems with drawings by Nancy Davis at Big Bridge, which also has a bibliography of Whalen’s publications.

America’s first black poet, Phillis Wheatley came from West Africa to New England as a slave, learned English, Greek & Latin, was the toast of the town in Boston when her first broadside was published, & died alone in a boarding house at 31.

Walt Whitman was the quintessential American poet who sang of individual freedom, democracy and the brotherhood of man in the many editions of his compendious, self-published masterpiece, Leaves of Grass (of which you can find selections in our library).

The most complete online collection of everything pertaining to WW is at the Walt Whitman Archive, which even has an mp3 of the wax cylinder recording of Whitman’s voice reading four lines from “America.”

In the Library of Congress’ American Memory digital collection, you can leaf through Whitman’s notebooks, see his thoughts in his own hand.

Williams made his first public impact as co-writer & star of Slam, the “raw poem of a movie” that meshed prison documentary, poetry slam & melodrama in 1998. In 2001, he went up against Sherman Alexie in the World Heavyweight Poetry Bout at the Taos Poetry Circus, then lost his title to Pat Payne in 2002.

Read the poems first, always. Ten of Dr. Williams’ are posted on his page at AAP, including the famous “The Red Wheelbarrow” & a RealAudio recording of “To Elsie” in WCW’s own voice. AAP also has lots of background info on the Imagists, the Objectivists & the Modernists, to put Williams’ pithy poems into a broader historical context.

For background, biography & commentary on Williams’ work, visit Modern American Poetry’s Williams collection, Ben Johnson’s Modernism page on Williams & the PBS Voices & Visions feature, which includes a video clip of “The Great Figure.”

Mark Ynys-Môn has created a Web shrine to the notoriously naughty 17th century poet of love & rude satire.

Laid-back Larry Winfield is half-poet, half-musician, half unknown artist in Hong Kong, and just one more reason why Chicago is the leading city in the bareknuckles brawl that is the Poetry world these days. He also stirs hornets at Poetry Agonistics, but these stings are salved by sweeeeeet honey.

A brief biographical profile of Tsering Woeser, award-winning Tibetan poet and political blogger.

The poet of solitude, Koon Woon has lived on the other side of madness, has returned with gentleness, humble humor, Whitman condensed talking to a goldfish. Ah. Please read The Truth in Rented Rooms, the Best Book of Poetry 1998.

Our reference page on William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), whose theory of poetry began the Romantic movement in English poetry at the end of the 18th century, and whose poems immortalize the sublime landscapes of his beloved Lake District.

If you can’t find the Wordsworth poem you want in our library , Bartleby.com has the complete text of his poetical works . Representative Poetry On-Line at the University of Toronto has his preface to Lyrical Ballads and Walter Pater’s essay on Wordsworth, and The Wordsworth Variorum Archive displays the various published versions...

The first edition (1798) of the two poets’ “experiments... to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure” is online at the University of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center.

Her poems stop at the fence so you can catch up, then soldier forward, words alone, you come to. She is Collaborator, Poet Laureate of Rhode Island, of Arkansas, publisher of Lost Roads. “Tours” was in The United States of Poetry and “Oneness” is at the DIA Center for the Arts Readings in Contemporary Poetry site.