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American Poets of the 20th Century

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How to Analyze Poetry

Context of the Poem
Style of the Poem
Title of the Poem
Repetition in the Poem
Opening and Closing Lines of the Poem
Passage of Time in the Poem
Speaker of the Poem
Basic Details of the Poem
Culture
Fantasy versus Reality
Mood and Tone of the Poem
Themes of the Poem
Rhythm of the Poem
Use of the Senses in the Poem
Imagery in the Poem
Language of the Poem
Supplemental Materials
Drawing Conclusions

The Poets

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
H. D. (1886–1961)
Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
Jean Toomer (1894–1967)
Louise Bogan (1897–1970)
Hart Crane (1899–1933)
Allen Tate (1899–1979)
Sterling Brown (1901–1989)
Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
Countée Cullen (1903–1946)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
John Berryman (1914–1972)
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000)
Robert Lowell (1917 — 1977)
Richard Wilbur (1921– )
James Dickey (1923–1997)
Denise Levertov (1923–1997)
A. R. Ammons (1926–2001)
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)
W. S. Merwin (1927– )
James Wright (1927–1980)
Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
Adrienne Rich (1929– )
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
Amiri Baraka (1934– )
Wendy Rose (1948– )
Joy Harjo (1951– )
Rita Dove (1952– )
Cathy Song (1955– )

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The Poets

Robert Frost (1874–1963)

Robert Lee Frost, New England's cherished poet, has been called America's purest classical lyricist and one of the outstanding poets of the twentieth century. Although he is forever linked to the stone-pocked hills and woods of New England, he was born in San Francisco, California, on March 26, 1874. His parents, school headmaster William Prescott Frost and teacher Margaret Isabelle Moodie, had left New England because of post–Civil War politics. After his father's death from alcohol abuse and tuberculosis in May 1885, Isabelle, accompanied by her son and newborn daughter, Jeanie, returned the body to his New England home in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and remained in the East because she lacked the money to return to San Francisco.

Educated at Lawrence High School, Frost thrived in English and Latin classes and discovered a common thread in Virgil's poetry and the romantic balladry of his Scottish ancestors. His grandfather enticed him to enter pre-law at Dartmouth in 1892, but Frost ended any hope of a legal career in the first months. His first published work, "My Butterfly: An Elegy" (1894), earned him a check from the New York Independent and precipitated a self-published collection, Twilight (1894). He married Elinor Miriam White, his high school sweetheart, in 1895, and dedicated himself to poetry.


About the Poet: 1 2 3
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