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US Poet Charles Wright 1935

Charles Wright (born August 25, 1935) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet.

Wright was born in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, and attended Davidson College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Wright has been widely published, winning the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1998 for Black Zodiac. Other works include Chickamauga, Buffalo Yoga, Negative Blue, Appalachia, The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990, Zone Journals and Hard Freight. Wright's work also appears in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts.

Wright has published two works of criticism, Halflife and Quarter Notes. His translation of Eugenio Montale's The Storm and Other Poems won him the PEN Translation Prize in 1979. In 1993, he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for his lifetime achievement. From 1966 to 1983, he taught at the University of California, Irvine. He is now a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Bibliography

  • Outtakes Sarabande, 2010.
  • Sestets Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009.
  • Littlefoot Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007.
  • Scar Tissue Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006. (winner of the 2007 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
  • The Wrong End of the Rainbow Sarabande, 2005.
  • Buffalo Yoga Farrar, Straux & Giroux, 2004.
  • A Short History of the Shadow Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.
  • Negative Blue Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
  • North American Bear Sutton Hoo, 1999.
  • Appalachia Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998.
  • Black Zodiac Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997.
  • Chickamauga Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.
  • Quarter Notes (improvisations and interviews) U of Michigan Press, 1995.
  • The World of the Ten Thousand Things. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990.
  • Xionia Windhover Press, 1990.
  • Zone Journals Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988.
  • Halflife (improvisations and interviews) U of Michigan Press, 1988.
  • The Other Side of the River. Random House 1984.
  • Orphic Songs. Dino Campana (translations) Field Editions, 1984.
  • Country Music/Selected Early Poems Wesleyan University Press, 1982.
  • The Southern Cross Random House, 1981.
  • The Storm and Other Things Eugenio Montale (translations) Field Editions, 1978.
  • China Trace Wesleyan University Press, 1977.
  • Bloodlines Wesleyan University Press, 1975.
  • Hard Freight Wesleyan University Press, 1973.
  • The Grave of the Right Hand Wesleyan University Press, 1970.

His poems in The Best American Poetry series

Year Guest editor Wright's poem Originally appeared in
2005 Paul Muldoon "A Short History of My Life" The New Yorker
2004 Lyn Hejinian "In Praise of Han Shan" Five Points
2002 Robert Creeley "Nostalgia II" Ploughshares
1999 Robert Bly "American Twilight" Partisan Review
1998 John Hollander "Returned to the Yaak Cabin,
I Overhear an Old Greek Song"
Poetry
1988-1997 Harold Bloom "Disjecta Membra" The Best American Poetry 1997
1997 James Tate "Disjecta Membra" American Poetry Review
1992 Charles Simic "Winter-Worship" Field
1991 Mark Strand "Reading Lao Tzu Again in the New Year" Poetry
1990 Jorie Graham "Saturday Morning Journal" Antaeus

The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997

US Poet Robert Peake

Robert Peake’s debut short collection Human Shade was selected for the Lost Horse Press New Poets Series by Marvin Bell. Robert studied poetry at the University of California, Berkeley and in the Master of Fine Arts In Writing Program at Pacific University, Oregon. In the 2010-2011 academic year, he was Senior Poetry Editor of Silk Road Review.

Robert’s poems have received honorable mentions in both the Rattle Poetry Prize and the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest. His work was also a finalist in the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize, a runner up in the 2009 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and received a Pushcart Prize nomination.

His poems have appeared in Aperçus Quarterly, Askew, Barely South Review, California Quarterly, Cider Press Review, Cloudbank, Fairfield Review, The Long-Islander, North American Review, Oregon Literary Review, The Ojai Bubble, PoetryBay, Poetry International, The Raleigh Review, San Pedro River Review, Silk Road, Sugar Mule, the Beyond The Valley Of The Contemporary Poets 2004 anthology and Open Windows–an anthology of award-winning Southern California poets sponsored in part by the NEA. Excerpts of his poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Times and aired on Classical KDB 93.7 FM Santa Barbara.

Robert has been a featured reader at Beyond Baroque in Venice; The World Stage and Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles; The Bell Arts Factory and Artists’ Union Gallery in Ventura; Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard; The Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center; and The Beatrice Wood Center, The Village Jester Pub, and Farmer & Cook in Ojai.

He has given guest lectures on poetry at Mt. St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, The Ojai Center For The Arts, and The Brooks Institute. He also conducted a series of poetry writing workshops for Theater 150 in Ojai.

Robert’s essays and reviews have appeared in Poetry International and the Chicago Sun-Timesonline. He has been interviewed by Ventana Monthly and KPCC Public Radio Los Angeles.

Robert lives in London, England with his wife, Valerie and looks forward to being reunited with his cat, Miranda in August.
What People Are Saying:

“Thank you so much for your talk and reading at the Art Center. I felt elated well into the next day.”

-Liz Grumette, Chairperson,
The Ojai Center For The Arts Literary Branch

“Robert has a calm, focused and direct stage presence that captivated the standing-room-only crowd.”

-Leslie Davis, Correspondent,
The Ojai Post

“When Robert Peake stepped into the spotlight, I knew something important was about to happen. Then he spoke of seduction, and I, too, was seduced by his muse.”

-Frankie Drayus, Correspondent,
LitRave

“Robert Peake, Ojai’s most distinguished poet this century, thinks deeply and writes beautifully about topics that only poetry has the means to bring down to earth.”

-Kit Stolz
“A Change in the Wind“

“Your poems rocked my face off.”

-Mindie Kniss
Pacific University MFA (Nonfiction ’09)

Robert is also the Chief Technology Officer of BraveNewTalent

US Poet Bret Harte 1836

Francis Bret Harte (August 25, 1836 – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.

He was born in Albany, New York, on August 25, 1836. He was named Francis Brett Hart after his great-grandfather Francis Brett. When he was young his father changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte.

An avid reader as a boy, Harte published his first work at age 11, a satirical poem titled "Autumn Musings," now lost. His formal schooling ended when he was 13 in 1849. He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coastal town of Union (now known as Arcata), a settlement on Humboldt Bay that was established as a provisioning center for mining camps in the interior.

The 1860 massacre of between 80 and 200 Wiyots killed at the village of Tutulwat was well documented historically and was reported in San Francisco and New York by Harte. When serving as assistant editor for the Northern Californian, Harte editorialized about the slayings while his boss, Stephen G. Whipple, was temporarily absent, leaving Harte in charge of the paper. Harte published a detailed account condemning the event, writing, "a more shocking and revolting spectacle never was exhibited to the eyes of a Christian and civilized people. Old women wrinkled and decrepit lay weltering in blood, their brains dashed out and dabbled with their long grey hair. Infants scarcely a span long, with their faces cloven with hatchets and their bodies ghastly with wounds." After publishing the editorial, his life was threatened and he was forced to flee one month later. Harte quit his job and moved to San Francisco, where an anonymous letter published in a city paper is attributed to him, describing widespread community approval of the massacre. In addition, no one was ever brought to trial, despite the evidence of a planned attack and references to specific individuals, including a rancher named Larabee and other members of the unofficial militia called the Humboldt Volunteers.

Harte married Anna Griswold on August 11, 1862, in San Rafael, California. From the start, the marriage was rocky. Some suggested she was handicapped by extreme jealousy while an early biographer of Harte, Henry C. Merwin, privately concluded that she was "almost impossible to live with".

His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp", appeared in the magazine's second issue, propelling Harte to nationwide fame.

When word of Charles Dickens's death reached Bret Harte in July 1870, he immediately sent a dispatch across the bay to San Francisco to hold back the forthcoming publication of his Overland Monthly for twenty-four hours, so that he could compose the poetic tribute, "Dickens in Camp". This work is considered by many of Harte's admirers as his verse masterpiece, for its evident sincerity, the depth of feeling it displays, and the unusual quality of its poetic expression.

Determined to pursue his literary career, in 1871 he and his family traveled back East, to New York and eventually to Boston, where he contracted with the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000, "an unprecedented sum at the time." His popularity waned, however, and by the end of 1872 he was without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to publish new work (or republish old), delivering lectures about the gold rush, and even selling an advertising jingle to a soap company.

In 1878 Harte was appointed to the position of United States Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany and then to Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London. During the twenty-four years he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing, and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. He died in Camberley England in 1902 of throat cancer and is buried at Frimley.

His wife, by then known as Anna Bret Harte, died on August 2, 1920. Despite being married for nearly forty years, the couple lived together for only sixteen of those years.

Criticism

In his Round the World, Andrew Carnegie praised Bret Harte as uniquely American:

A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet.

Writing in his autobiography four years after Harte's death, however, Mark Twain characterized him and his writing as insincere. He criticized the miners' dialect used by Harte, claiming it never existed outside of his imagination. Twain accused Harte of borrowing money from his friends with no intent to repay and of financially abandoning his wife and children.

Dramatic and musical adaptations of Harte's work

  • Several film versions of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" have been made, including one in 1937 with Preston Foster and another in 1952 with Dale Robertson. Tennessee's Partner (1955) with John Payne and Ronald Reagan was based on a story of the same name. Paddy Chayefsky's treatment of the film version of Paint Your Wagon seems to borrow from "Tennessee's Partner": two close friends—one named "Pardner"—share the same woman. The spaghetti western Four of the Apocalypse is based on "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and "The Luck of Roaring Camp".
  • Operas based on "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" include those by Samuel Adler and by Stanford Beckler.

Other works

Bret Harte's gravestone in the churchyard of St Peter's Church, Frimley, Surrey, England

Inscription on gravestone
  • Plain Language from Truthful James, known also as The Heathen Chinee, was a satire of racial prejudice in northern California, but was embraced by the American public as a mockery of Chinese immigrants, and shaped anti-Chinese sentiment more than any other work at the time.
  • The Stolen Cigar-Case, featuring ace detective "Hemlock Jones", was praised by Ellery Queen as "probably the best parody of Sherlock Holmes ever written".
  • The Society upon the Stanislaus is a tragicomic poem, like Plain Language from Truthful James set in the northern California mining camps, and told by the same narrator, "Truthful James".
  • The Beulah song "Ballad of the Lonely Argonaut" references "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "Outcasts of Poker Flat" and asks, "How does it feel to roam this land like Harte and Twain did?"
  • Nord-Amerika, seine Städte und Naturwunder, sein Land und seine Leute was authored by Austrian Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, with contributions by others including Harte.

Legacy

  • Bret Harte High School in Angels Camp, California
  • Bret Harte Lane in Humboldt Hill, California is named after him.
  • Bret Harte Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois
  • Bret Harte Middle School in San Jose, California
  • Bret Harte Middle School in Oakland, California
  • Bret Harte Middle School in Hayward, California
  • Bret Harte High School in Altaville, California is named after him and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2005
  • Bret Harte Elementary in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
  • A community called The Shores of Poker Flat, California claims to have been the location of Poker Flat, although it is usually accepted that the story takes place further north.
  • Bret Harte Road in Frimley (the town in which Harte was buried) is named after him.
  • Bret Harte Place in San Francisco, California is named after him.
  • In 1987 he appeared on a $5 U.S. Postage stamp, as part of the "Great Americans series" of issues.
  • Bret Harte Lane, Bret Harte Road, and Harte Ave in San Rafael, California.
  • Bret Harte House, at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.
  • Bret Harte Park in Danville, California.
  • The town of Twain Harte, California is named after Mark Twain and Bret Harte.

Austrian Poet Nikolaus Lenau 1802 – 1850

Nikolaus Lenau was the nom de plume of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau (25 August 1802, Schadat, near Temesvár, Hungary – 22 August 1850, Oberdöbling, near Vienna), was a German language Austrian poet.

He was born at Schadat near Temeschwar in Hungary, now Lenauheim, Romania. His father, a Habsburg government official, died at Budapest in 1807, leaving his children in the care of their mother, who in 1811 married again. In 1819 Nikolaus went to the University of Vienna; he subsequently studied Hungarian law at Pozsony (Bratislava) and then spent the best part of four years in qualifying himself in medicine. Unable to settle down to any profession, he had already begun to write verse; and the disposition to sentimental melancholy inherited from his mother, stimulated by disappointments in love and by the prevailing fashion of the romantic school of poetry, descended into gloom after his mother's death in 1829.

Soon afterwards, a legacy from his grandmother enabled him to devote himself wholly to poetry. His first published poems appeared in 1827, in Johann Gabriel Seidl's Aurora. In 1831 he went to Stuttgart, where he published a volume of Gedichte (1832) dedicated to the Swabian poet, Gustav Schwab. Here he also made the acquaintance of Ludwig Uhland, Justinus Kerner, Karl Mayer and others; but his restless spirit longed for change, and he determined to seek for peace and freedom in America.

In October 1832 he landed at Baltimore and settled on a homestead in Ohio. He also lived six months in New Harmony, Indiana, with a group called the Harmony Society. But the reality of life in the primeval forest fell lamentably short of the ideal he had pictured; he disliked the Americans with their eternal English lisping of dollars (englisches Talergelispel); and in 1833 he returned to Germany, where the appreciation of his first volume of poems revived his spirits.

From then on he lived partly in Stuttgart and partly in Vienna. In 1836 appeared his Faust, in which he laid bare his own soul to the world ); in 1837, Savonarola, an epic in which freedom from political and intellectual tyranny is insisted upon as essential to Christianity. In 1838 his Neuere Gedichte proved that Savonarola had been the result of a passing exaltation. Of these new poems, some of the finest were inspired by his hopeless passion for Sophie von Löwenthal, the wife of a friend. In 1842 appeared Die Albigenser, and in 1844 he began writing his Don Juan, a fragment of which was published after his death.

Soon afterwards his never well-balanced mind began to show signs of aberration, and in October 1844 he was placed under restraint (after jumping out of a window one morning and running down a street, while shouting "Revolt! Freedom! Help! Fire!" ) for the rest of his life. He died in the asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna and was buried in the cemetery of Weidling, near Klosterneuburg.

On his grave is the replica of an open book with an extract from one of his poems (An Frau Kleyle) inscribed on the lefthand page, while on the righthand page there is the final stanza from his poem Vergangenheit. The city of Stockerau in Lower Austria has proclaimed itself the "Lenau City", because Nikolaus Lenau went on extensive walks in the alluvial forests next to Stockerau and the Danube and was inspired to write one of his most famous lyric poems, "Schilflieder", during this time. He has various streets and squares named after him in Vienna and the surrounding area.

Lenau's fame rests mainly upon his shorter poems; even his epics are essentially lyric in quality. His excellent poem, "Herbst", expresses the sadness and melancholy he felt after his sojourn in the United States and his strenuous travels across the Atlantic to return to Europe. In it, he mourns the loss of youth, the passing of time and his own sense of futility. The poem is archetypal of Lenau's style and culminates with the speaker dreaming of death as a final escape from emptiness. He is the greatest modern lyric poet of Austria, and the typical representative in German literature of that pessimistic Weltschmerz which, beginning with Lord Byron, reached its culmination in the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi.

Lenau's Sämtliche Werke were first published in 4 vols. by Anastasius Grün in 1855, but there are several more modern editions, as those by Max Koch in Joseph Kürschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur of 1888 (vols. 154 and 155), and E. Castle (2 vols., 1900).