This page contains information to help you explore the lives of American poets studied in this course.
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
A brief biography of Robinson (Academy of American Poets)
His life and comments on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
About Robinson and his home in Gardiner, Maine
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
A brief biography of Dunbar (Academy of American Poets)
His life and comments on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Photo Gallery of Dunbar (Paul Laurence Dunbar Digital Collection)
Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)
Biography of Alice (Moore) Dunbar Nelson (Poetry Foundation)
Commentary on Dunbar-Nelson’s poems (modern American Poetry HP)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Petals on a Wet Black Bough: American Modernist Writers and the Orient (Yale Univ.)
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Biography of Eliot and his Nobel Prize for Literature 1948
Biography and Additional Poems from Poets.org
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
The Waste Land T.S. Eliot App on the Apple App Store HP
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern Ameircan Poetry HP)
Sound recordings of Williams readings his poems, recorded 1942-1962
H.D. [Hilda Doolittle] (1886-1961)
Her life along with commentary on her poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Her life along with commentary on her poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
A web-site devoted to exploring influences on Amy Lowell’s imagist poetry
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
About Hughes and music (Poetry Foundation.org)
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
More on Sandburg’s life and career
Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1882-1950)
Her life with commentary on her poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)
Biography from the Academy of American Poets
Her life with commentary on her poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Hart Crane (1899-1932)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Discussion of his poem The Bridge (1930)
More on his life and work (Poetry Foundation)
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
His life with commentary on his poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Hear Lowell read his poem “My Old Flame”
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Commentary on her life and poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Hear Plath read “The Applicant”
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Biography from the Academy of American Poets
Commentary on her life and poems (Modern American Poetry HP)
Frank O’Hara
John Asberry
Kenneth Rexroth
Robert Creeley
Charles Olson
Denise Levertov
A. R. Ammons
Allen Ginsberg
Gregory Corso
Jack  Kerouac
Gwendolyn Brooks
Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)
Audry Lorde
Sesshu Foster
Gary Soto
Rita Dove