Ten Poets for the Group Presentations

17th century
John Donne (1572(?)-1631; England)
Worldly and religious poems. A “brittle” genius, with a singular command of English.
(Poets to consider including: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Herbert, & others.)

18th century
Alexander Pope (1688-1744; England)
Swift’s best friend. A tiny, persecuted Catholic. Ed. Shakespeare & Homer. Wicked satirist.
(Poets to consider including: Swift, Shakespeare, Marvel, & others)

William Blake (1751-1827; England)
Poet, philosopher, and illustrator. A strange, visionary man. “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright…”
(Poets to consider including: Christopher Smart, Coleridge, prose philosophers, & others)

19th century
William Wordsworth (1770-1850; England)
Influential founder of British (and, in effect, American) Romanticism. Poetical giant.
(Poets to consider including: Coleridge, Emerson (infl. by W.W.), and others)

John Keats (1795-1821; England)
Dies young. To many, the greatest lyrical voice after Shakespeare. Ethical & musical. Subj. of recent film, Bright Star.
(Poets to consider including: Shelley, Byron, and others)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892; England)
Imposing voice in late British Romanticism. Poet Laureate of England. The ultimate Victorian poet.
(Poets to consider including: Both Brownings, and others)

20th century
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939; Ireland)
Irish cultural revivalist; reluctant 20th c. patriot. Loved Maude Gonne. Symbolist. Nobel laureate.
(Poets to consider including: Irish bards, J.M. Synge (playwright), Lady Gregory, Pound, others)

T.S. Eliot (1920s & ‘30s; U.S.A. / England)
American ex-patriot in London. Mental health issues. First great Modernist. Lit. Crit. Nobel Prize.
(Poets to consider including: Whitman, Twain (prose), Pound, Shakespeare, others.)

Elizabeth Bishop (1940s and ‘50s; U.S.A.)
Brilliant lyrical “link” between Romanticism and 20th c. Wry genius. Extraordinary voice, wit, beauty.
(Poets to consider including: Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Hart Crane, Whitman, others)

Seamus Heaney (1960s-‘90s; Ireland & USA)
Outstanding Irish poet, along with Derek Mahon (whom SH calls “the best”). Nobel Prize. Harvard. Beowulf translator!!
(Poets to consider including: Mahon (required!), Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Ted Hughes, others)