blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Poetry seems to have been woven into the DNA of Stephen Vincent Benét. Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on July 22, 1898, Benét was the youngest child of Colonel James Walker Benét and Frances Neill Rose Benét. Both of the elder Benéts were avid readers with a keen appreciation for poetry. Frances Benét herself wrote poetry, and Stephen said of his father, "[he] was interested in everything from Byzantine Emperors to the development of heavy ordnance and was the finest critic of poetry I have ever known."

It was a winter night filled with poetry and jazz - a fateful night in which Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes. They were both attending a University of Cambridge party held at the Women's Union in Falcon Yard. The party was a celebration of the release of the first issue of the student written and published literary journal, St. Botolph's Review.

In her journal, Plath described the party as "very bohemian, with boys in turtleneck sweaters and girls being blue-eye-lidded or elegant in black." Jazz played loudly in the background while party goers shouted poetry to one another over the din of noise. Even though she'd come to the party with a date, Plath's eyes immediately fell on Ted Hughes, and their attraction was instant.

Say it with me: “Listen my children and you shall hear/ Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Chances are you’ve read the poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride.” You may have even memorized some of it. The poem’s author, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is considered one of the greatest American poets, even some 130 years after his death. Beyond just “Paul Revere’s Ride,” though, is Longfellow’s overarching ability to write within a historical context. In doing so with such success, he made his poems timeless. Through them, he shows us just how powerful the written word can be in inspiring a culture and a nation with tales and lessons from times past.

Unlike other literary forms that we can date to precise texts and time periods, it’s a challenge to pinpoint the earliest work of poetry. In one form or another, poetry has been around for thousands of years. However, we might think of the epic poem as the first instance of poetry, appearing as early as the 20th century B.C. Jumping hundreds of years ahead, we might turn, then, to the sonnet form and its early appearance in the 13th century. Before moving into more modern poetic forms, it’s important to consider Restoration poetry of the 17th century and the satirical verses of John Dryden and Alexander Pope. 

Pulitzer Prize winner, Wallace Stevens, published his first book of poetry when he was forty-four years old. He was awarded two National Book Awards for his poetry, both when he was a septuagenarian. Stevens won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Collected Poems, the same year of his death, at age 75. He lived one of those rare lives in which artistic and conventional success were intertwined. He graduated from Harvard Law School and after a career as a lawyer, became an executive at a Connecticut insurance company. He kept the position for the majority of his life, and readily defended his stable occupation. He once remarked to a newspaper reporter, "It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job." 

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888.  A Nobel laureate, The New York Times described his writing as giving "new meaning to English-language poetry,” Due to a congenital double hernia, T. S. Eliot spent much of his childhood reading rather than running around with other children. His family eventually moved to New England where he attended Harvard. At age 22, he moved to Paris; four years later, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood.  He later claimed, “To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."

Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize in 1996 "for poetry that with ironic precision uncovers the laws of biology and historical mechanisms in fragments of human reality." Indeed, irony is a point of distinction in her work. Her poems are at once simple and yet complex. They are told engagingly from diverse perspectives, and are consistently endowed with her distinguished wit and cleverness.

Thanks to high-school classrooms around the world, many of us are familiar with Dante Alighieri and the first of portion of his epic poem The Inferno, which chronicles man’s descent into Hell. However, this poem is part of a much larger work known as the Divine Comedy, which tells then of man’s travel through purgatory and finally into the gates of paradise. This work is widely considered the most important piece of Italian literature ever written.

May 31, 1819 marks the birth of one of the nation’s most influential poets! Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, New York, the second of nine children to parents Walter and Louisa Whitman. He grew up in a family that would struggle financially throughout much of his childhood. When Whitman was three years old, his family left their ever-shrinking farm for what they hoped would be the riches of New York City.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was hailed for her ability to compose moving poetry on subjects varying from politics and nature, to the rebellion of youth. She began her writing career at a young age and quickly rose to fame in 1912, when her poem “Renascence” was first published. Her beautifully written poetry and plays captivated audiences and indisputably displayed her talent, which would honor her in being the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize.

In the spring of 1936, Millay began working on a new piece, a play in blank verse called Conversations at Midnight. Meanwhile, she travelled to Sanibel Island, Florida, where she was able to relish in the warmth and change of scenery. However, while she was on the beach looking for seashells, the Palms Hotel caught fire and burned to the ground. Her manuscript was destroyed along with the hotel. Devastated, Millay returned home to Steepletop, where she would begin to rewrite the play from memory. The complete second draft, including revisions and new additions, was published in 1937.