Born on September 25, 1967, American poet Erin Belieu has been writing memorable poems for years. Belieu has written four books of poetry and her poems have been published in several well known magazines. Belieu was also a former managing editor and took the role of a poetry editor in other well known magazines. Belieu has had a remarkable education, regarding poetry and earning several degrees from three universities, as well. Belieu has also exceeded in teaching. She has taught at Washington University, Boston University, Kenyon College, and Ohio University. In addition to that, Belieu is one of the directors of the creative writing program at Florida State University, and an artistic director of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference. She also co founded and co directs an organization that supports women’s creativity in literary arts, along with Cate Marvin, who is also an American poet. Erin Belieu is one of the best and most successful American poets. …show more content…
Belieu graduated from Central High School, and later studied poetry at the University of Nebraska. Belieu also studied poetry at Ohio State University and Boston University. In addition to studying poetry at those schools, Belieu also received degrees. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (BFA) from the University of Nebraska, a Master of Fine Arts degree (MFA) from Ohio State University, and a Master of Arts degree (MA) from Boston University. Her poems have been published in several magazines including The New Yorker, New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Slate, The Rumpus, Willow Springs, and Yale Review. In addition to that, Belieu has also been the managing editor and poetry editor for AGNI magazine for five years, and is the founding editor of the magazine Hotel Amerika. Belieu’s poems have been chosen four times for the Best American Poetry
Paula Gunn Allen was an American Indian Poet that was the middle child of five siblings. She grew up on the Cubero Land Grant Reservation in New Mexico where she started her early education at St. Vincent Academy, followed by attending Missions School until the seventh grade at San Fidel in Pueblo town. She furthered her education by attending Colorado’s Woman’s College. Paula obtained her B.A. in 1966 and her M.F.A. in 1968 at the University of Oregon, that led to her receiving her Ph. D at the University of New Mexico in 1976. Paula was best known as the best Poetic, Novelist, and Critic. She wrote six volumes of poetry including her poem Recuerdo.
Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, to KeziahWims Brooks and David Anderson Brooks. Brooks’ family didn’t have much income. Her father David Brooks was a janitor. Keziah Brooks, Gwendolyn’s mother was a school teacher. Soon after Gwendolyn was born her family moved away from Kansas. The Brooks family relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where Brooks remained the rest of her life. Brooks, as a child, loved to read. She was encouraged by her family and friends to do so. She spent most of her childhood immersed in her writing. Gwendolyn became a published poet at an early age. At age 13, Brooks’ poem Eventide was published. Her poem appeared in “American Childhood.” Brooks’ poems were frequently published in the Chicago Defender. At age 16, Brooks had written over seventy poems (J.Williams 28).In Brooks’ early years of writing she spoke on a lot. She talked about racial discrimination and praised African American heroes. Also, Brooks satirized both blacks and whites (A.williams1). In 1993, Gwendolyn meet poet James Weldon Johnson and writer Langston Hughes. The two influenced Brooks’ writing tremendously. The influence lead her to write over seventy poems (Bloom 12).
Sharon Creech’s childhood memories, college experiences, and creative brain significantly affected her writings. She rarely thought of being an author growing up, but as time progressed, she began to really think about it. Creech first became interested when she entered college and something sparked her career. She wrote multiple books with her much thought and creativeness leading her to an outstanding writing career.
In this essay I am going to discuss two poems. "Woman Work" written by Maya Angelou, is about a woman who works all the time and just wants to rest. The second poem is called "overheard in County Sigo" written by Gillian Clarke which is about a married woman having a conversation with her friend about her life and looking back at what her ambitions were.
Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up in a small town in Maine. She was always encouraged by her mother to pursue her writing and musical talents. She finished college and moved to New York City where she lived a fast-paced life pursuing acting and play writing. Her liveliness, independence, and sexuality inspired her writing styles and gave her poetry a freshness that no others had. She is famous for writing sonnets like “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.”
and various other short stories published in the New Yorker and other writing journals. Having graduated from Northwestern University and Columbia University’s MFA program, her talent in short fiction stories has not gone unrecognized. Her first critically acclaimed novel was nominated for the Pulitzer award in Fiction, and she has also won a number of other prestigious awards such as the New Yorker’s 20 under 40. Writing fiction helps with “reconnecting with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.” (Russell)
It is a way to crucially engage oneself in setting the stage for new interventions and connections. She also emphasized that she personally viewed poetry as the embodiment of one’s personal experiences, and she challenged what the white, European males have imbued in society, as she declared, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
As every well-read person knows, the background in which you grow up plays a huge role in how you write and your opinions. Fuller grew up with a very strict education, learning multiple classic languages before she was eight years old. Fern grew up with writers all throughout her family and had a traditional education and saw first hand the iniquities of what hard-working had to contend with. Through close analysis of their work, a reader can quickly find the connections between their tone, style, content, and purpose and their history of their lives and their educational upbringing.
"College of Arts and Sciences." The Writing Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. .
Gwendolyn Brooks is the female poet who has been most responsive to changes in the black community, particularly in the community’s vision of itself. The first African American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize; she was considered one of America’s most distinguished poets well before the age of fifty. Known for her technical artistry, she has succeeded in forms as disparate as Italian terza rima and the blues. She has been praised for her wisdom and insight into the African Experience in America. Her works reflect both the paradises and the hells of the black people of the world. Her writing is objective, but her characters speak for themselves. Although the idiom is local, the message is universal. Brooks uses ordinary speech, only words that will strengthen, and richness of sound to create effective poetry.
Gwendolyn Brooks once said “I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it, and experiencing the challenge”. For some, writing may not be enjoyable or easy, but for Brooks writing was her life. Gwendolyn Brooks not only won countless awards, but also influenced the lives of several African Americans.
Leonard, K. D. (2009). African American women poets and the power of the word. The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature, 168-187.
Rita Dove has written many different kinds of poetry. She also wrote books, short stories plays and all types of literature. This essay will focus on specifics of her writing by analyzing three pieces of poetry that Rita Dove has written. The works we will be looking at are In the Old Neighborhood, My Mother Enters the Work Force, and The Bistro Styx. Through these three works you will see examples of Rita Dove’s use of home in her poetry, her use of figurative devices such as similes and metaphors, and you will see Dove’s view on children coming of age in different ways.
Marianne Moore’s most popular poem, which is also her most ambiguously titled poem, is called “Poetry.” In this poem Moore decisively strayed away from her conventional writing style of contrariety and the bizarre, but it does seem to share other characteristics of her earlier poetry. Moore’s apparent purpose in writing “Poetry” was to criticize the present social outlook on the entire idea of poetry, to come up with a universal definition of poetry and of genuine poetry, and ultimately to convince those who dislike poetry of its benefits. She attempted to present this criticism and definition by means of blatant irony, and even though she desperately wants to describe the seemingly trivial activity of poetry, she fails to provide a definition that is not caught up in the negative.
Lindberg, Laurie. "Wordsmith and Woman: Morag Gunn's Triumph Through Language." New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Ed. Greta M. K. McCormick Coger. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. 187-201.