Varpness AP Lit. Poet Backgrounds for Test

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Maya Angelou

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  • Renowned author and civil rights activist

  • First Black female director

  • Raped by mother's BF (Mr. Freeman) --> Mute for 5 years

  • Freeman was jailed for 1 day, then killed by her uncles

  • Her autobiography (Caged Bird Sings) details her traumatic childhood, racism, and self-discovery

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Ezra Pound

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  • Controversial poet, supporter of Mussolini/Fascism

  • Made radio broadcasts for Italian gov't during WWII --> labeled a traitor by US

  • Surrendered to US forces, held in military detention camp

  • Deemed unfit for trial (mental illness), incarcerated at St. Elizabeths Hospital for 12+ years

  • Married to Dorothy Shakespear but had 50-year affair with Olga Rudge

  • Wife, mistress, and daughter (Mary) lived together at times

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1
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Maya Angelou

  • Renowned author and civil rights activist

  • First Black female director

  • Raped by mother's BF (Mr. Freeman) --> Mute for 5 years

  • Freeman was jailed for 1 day, then killed by her uncles

  • Her autobiography (Caged Bird Sings) details her traumatic childhood, racism, and self-discovery

2
New cards

Ezra Pound

  • Controversial poet, supporter of Mussolini/Fascism

  • Made radio broadcasts for Italian gov't during WWII --> labeled a traitor by US

  • Surrendered to US forces, held in military detention camp

  • Deemed unfit for trial (mental illness), incarcerated at St. Elizabeths Hospital for 12+ years

  • Married to Dorothy Shakespear but had 50-year affair with Olga Rudge

  • Wife, mistress, and daughter (Mary) lived together at times

3
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Emily Dickinson

  • Reclusive poet, nearly 1,800 poems discovered after death by sister

  • Possible agoraphobia, but debated

  • Poetry themes: death, isolation, immortality, nature

  • Death certificate: Bright's disease (kidney ailment), but likely heart failure from hypertension

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  • Celebrated poet, chronic pain, dependent on laudanum/morphine from a young age

  • Secretly married poet Robert Browning, against controlling father's wishes

  • Father (Edward Moulton-Barrett) disowned her, never forgave her

  • Last word: "Beautiful" (responding to husband's inquiry about how she felt)

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Robert Frost

  • Won 4 Pulitzer Prizes (1924, 1931, 1937, 1943)

  • Recited "The Gift Outright" at JFK's inauguration (couldn't read his new poem due to sun's glare)

  • Attended Dartmouth and Harvard, didn't graduate (illness, felt profs didn't get his work)

  • Wife (Elinor Miriam White) died of heart failure in 1938

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Sylvia Plath

  • The Bell Jar: semi-autobiographical novel about her mental illness, hospitalization

  • Treated for depression at McLean Hospital (1953), insulin shock therapy, ECT

  • Married Ted Hughes (1956)

  • Died by suicide (1963): gas oven; likely due to mental health struggles, separation from Hughes (his affair with Assia Wevill), and her literary struggles

  • Wevill also died by suicide (1969) via gas oven, also killing her 4-year-old daughter

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Sharon Olds

  • Confessional poet: family, sexuality, body, trauma, politics

  • Pulitzer Prize (2013) for Stag's Leap

  • Controversy: explicit about private experiences (sexuality, abuse, bodily functions)

  • Published first book (Satan Says) at 37 (1980)

  • Teaches at NYU, NY State Poet Laureate (1998-2000)

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E.E. Cummings

  • Avant-garde poet: experimental with language, structure, syntax

  • Harvard: BA (1915), MA (1916)

  • WWI: ambulance driver in France

  • Imprisoned 3.5 months (with friend): suspicion of espionage, anti-war views, lack of hatred for Germans, letters about low morale of French troops

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William Butler Yeats

  • 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature

  • Proposed to Maud Gonne 4 times --> rejected

  • Proposed to her daughter, Iseult Gonne --> rejected

  • Speculation he was Iseult's father (no evidence)

  • Married Georgie Hyde-Lees at 51 (she was 25)

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Lord Byron (George Gordon)

  • Born into financial difficulty, later inherited title and estates

  • Extravagant spending, significant debts throughout his life

  • Generous, donated to Greek revolutionary cause

  • Bisexual: evidence in letters, journals, etc.

  • Lover Lady Caroline Lamb called him "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" (after tumultuous public affair)

  • Close, intimate relationship with half-sister Augusta Leigh --> speculation of incest

  • Rumors of incest with half-sister contributed to his self-imposed exile from England

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: masterpiece about guilt, sin, redemption, nature

  • Addicted to opium (laudanum)

  • Famous phrases: "albatross around one's neck," "water, water, everywhere," "sadder and wiser man"

  • Kubla Khan: about creative power of imagination, inspired by historical accounts of Kubla Khan

  • Died: heart failure, complicated by opium addiction