On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman faced a unique challenge. The youngest inaugural poet in United States history, Gorman wanted her poem “The Hill We Climb” to “envision a way in which our country can still come together and can …
Category: Authors and Poets
7 Famous Authors and their Day Jobs
Let’s take a look at a brief history of the behind-the-scenes work of seven renowned writers and their day jobs.
Key Questions to Ask While Reading Keats
Getting started with Keats's work can be daunting, and you'll probably have some questions before you dive in. Fortunately, we have answers.
Recognizing Frederick Douglass
I was eager to see the books that won this year’s Pulitzer prizes and am thrilled with the results. (I mean, a book with trees as characters won the prize for fiction!) But I’m most pleased to see that David …
8 Latin American Authors and Poets You Need to Read
As a student and young reader, I am often inundated with syllabi and must-read lists that beat me over the head with the “essentials.” One can only be told to read Twain, Austen, Faulkner, Dickens, and Hemingway so many times …
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5 Contemporary Poets to Teach in the High School Classroom
Poetry selections in high school are too often limited to a hallowed few—Shakespeare and Petrarch, Whitman and Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and perhaps Billy Collins—if poetry is included at all. While these canonized favorites can enhance any unit of …
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Remembering W. S. Merwin
The poet W. S. Merwin passed away on March 15, marking the conclusion to a long and richly productive life. His body of poetry proves difficult to sum up. Over the course of his seven decades of writing, Merwin changed …
Remembering Mary Oliver
The beloved American poet Mary Oliver (1935–2019) died today, leaving behind a rich and vast body of literary work. Oliver was arguably the most popular poet of her generation, best known for her poems of the natural world. Her style …