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Elizabeth Bishop 22
- Wrote less but MASTERED poems
- Ingenuous, reticent, forwent strain or pretenses--> she is NOT merely agreeable.
- Clarity, detail, tonal control, description-->mystery.
- Nova Scotia childhood, Brazil adulthood...imagination.
- Born in Warcester, Masachusetts.
- Dad DIED. Mom MENTAL.
- Raise by relatives in New England and Canada.
- Lived all over the place.
- Taught at Harvard.
- Won the PULITZER PRIZE (1956) and NATIONAL BOOK AWARD (1970)
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Anne Sexton 304
- Suburban HOUSEWIFE and MOM.
- PSYCHIATRIST suggested writing--recover mental breakdown.
- Born in Newton, Massachusetts.
- Taught at Boston University
- CONFESSIONAL-->SURREALISTIC VOICE.
- Honest, bold, morbid.
- PULITZER PRIZE (1967)
- SUICIDE (1974).
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Frank O'hara 204
- Baltimore, raise in Massechusetts.
- Served in Navy.
- Studied at Harvard and University of Michigan.
- Moved to New York.
- Needed subway or other side that PEOPLE DON'T TOTALLY REGRET LIFE.
- Staffed at Museum of Modern Art.
- Playwright, critic.
- Epicenter of NEW YORK SCHOOL.
- Fresh, RANCID NOURISHMENT, hybrid high and low cultures.
- GO ON YOUR NERVE.
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Denise Levertov 178 (more)
- Writes about what is under the hand...INNER EXPERIENCE, BUT TRUE.
- Dad's ancestry Hasidic Russian rabbi.
- Mom's ancestry Welsh mystic.
- Born in England...home-schooled.
- U.S. immigrant 1948
- Aesthetics of WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, ROBERT DUNCAN, and ROBERT CREELEY.
- Political
- INNER HARMONY, EXTERNAL CHAOS.
- City life, sexual turmoil, domestic rounds, natural world, mythic-->ordinary.
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Allen Ginsberg 225
- BEST KNOWN POET OF HIS GENERATION.
- Social Force.
- New Jersey--educated at Columbia.
- LEADING FIGURE OF THE BEAT MOVEMENT. (1950'S)
- "Howl" and "Kaddish" made him famous.
- Political activist: flower power, LSD, gay rights...
- Journalistic, improvisatory, "thought-breath" poetry.
- His own subject. Moods, opinions, drugs, homo.
- Young and old appeal.
- Tradition of old-time, Emerson, Whitman, etc.
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W.S. Merwin 256
- Born in New York. Son of Minister. Raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
- Princeton University.
- Europe...translated and wrote.
- 1968 back to US...refused academic career.
- Lots of publications.
- PULITZER PRIZE (1971) BOLLINGEN PRIZE (1979)
- EARLY WORK: Traditions of English Romantic poetry...mythis, emblematic, rhetorical.
- LATE WORK: austere, impersonal, disjunctive, surrealistic.
- Poetry= unpredictable resonance, like an echo.
- Political conscience in poetry-->SOCIETY's triumphs symbolize DEATH.
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John Ashbery 274 (more)
- PARADIGMS OF COMMON EXPERIENCE.
- Minds memories and desires while hearing world's buzzing.
- Experience of experience and the way it filters through him.
- Can have lots of tones, all explore how we make meaning.
- MOST INNOVATIVE ... experimental and traditional.
- Farmboy from NY.
- Harvard and Columbia.
- Lived in Paris-->translator and art critic.
- Taught creative writing and Brooklyn College.
- PULITZER PRIZE, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD, NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD (1976).
- BOLLINGEN PRIZE (1985).
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Gary Snyder 359 (more)
- ARCHAIC VALUES
- Holds history and wilderness in mind. -->approach true measure of things.
- Stand against imbalance and ignorance of our times.
- Born San Francisco, raised near Seattle.
- Anthropology from Reed College. Oriental Languages Berkeley.
- Seaman, logger, forester.
- Studied Buddhism in Japanese monasteries.
- Traveled Japan and India.
- PULITZER PRIZE (1975).
- BOLLINGEN PRIZE (1997).
- Rhythm follows thought and work.
- ZEN TRAINING-->Inner world, before language, before custom, before culture.
- ALSO naturalist-->world's random and ritualized details.
-
Philip Levine 311
- POET OF DESOLATION
- Born in Detroit.
- Assembly man for Ford. Railroad shipper 1950's.
- Wayne State University. University of Iowa.
- Teaches at California State University at Fresno.
- NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS AWARD 1979
- PULITZER PRIZE 1995
- Voice for the voiceless.
- Political and elegiac.
- SPANISH CIVIL WAR focus of assault on injustice.
- Emotional intensity and control.
-
Mary Oliver 409
- MOST ACCOMPLISHED CONTEMPORARY NATURALIST.
- What world is, how and why it works.
- Born in Ohio. Now in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
- PULITZER PRIZE 1984
- NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 1992
- Poetry = EPIPHANIES
- Sees herself in other things.
- MEDITATIVE POET.
- Validity of nature...mortal limits.
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I saw the best minds of my generation
Allen Ginsberg
-
Suuuuuuuuuuper long lines
Allen Ginsberg
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rabbit so soft! a handful of intangible ash with fished ignited eyes
Elizabeth Bishop
-
a weak mailed fist clenched ignorant against the sky
Elizabeth Bishop
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I have gone out, a possessed witch
Anne Sexton
-
A woman like that is...
Anne Sexton
-
I have nothing against life
Anne Sexton
-
like carpenters...which tools? not why build?
Anne Sexton
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I will get off at 4:19 ...I don't know the people who will feed me.
Frank O'Hara
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Very casual story like (mimicked in class)
Frank O'Hara
-
everyone and I stopped breathing
Frank O'hara
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it is leviathan and we in its belly
Denise Levertov
-
thigh and tongue are heavy with it, it throbs in the teeth.
Denise Levertov
-
when making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.
Gary Snyder
-
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out of, from, come
Philip Levine
-
barbed wire fence
Mary Oliver
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power came down on a yellow thread
Mary Oliver
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in the darkness they wondered if they could do it and knew that they had to do it
Mary Oliver
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