poet

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Taylor Swift Is Related to an Actual Tortured Poet

Guess who's related to Emily Dickinson?

(Newser) - Taylor Swift has a rather interesting sixth cousin, three times removed. Ancestry.com gives Today the scoop that dangling out on the songstress's family tree is another bit of American royalty: Emily Dickinson. "Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th-century English immigrant (Swift's ninth great-grandfather and...

Anti-War Poem Brings Seven-Year Sentence

Moscow court sends poet to prison for public performance against Ukraine invasion

(Newser) - A Russian poet was given a 7-year prison sentence Thursday for reciting verses against Russia's war in Ukraine, a punishment imposed during a relentless Kremlin crackdown on dissent. Moscow's Tverskoi District Court convicted Artyom Kamardin on charges of making calls undermining national security and inciting hatred, which related...

Israel Releases Palestinian Poet of New Yorker, NYT Fame

Mosab Abu Toha was seized at military checkpoint while trying to evacuate: family

(Newser) - The Israel Defense Forces says Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was released Tuesday, the day after IDF arrested him as he attempted to evacuate to southern Gaza, the Times of Israel reports. His wife and children had been allowed to continue on. The IDF says Abu Toha was among a...

Poet Laureate Addressed Trauma, With Brief Joy
Poet Laureate
Addressed
Trauma, With
Brief Joy
obituary
Oct 13, 2023 5:05 PM CDT

Poet Laureate Addressed Trauma, With Brief Joy

Louise Glück won Nobel and Pulitzer prizes

(Newser) - Nobel laureate Louise Glück, a poet of unblinking candor and perception who wove classical allusions, philosophical reveries, bittersweet memories, and humorous asides into indelible portraits of a fallen and heartrending world. She was 80, per the AP . Over more than 60 years of published work, Glück forged a...

School Library Scraps Inaugural Poem After Parent Complaint

Amanda Gorman says she's 'gutted' that 'The Hill We Climb' was taken out of Fla. elementary library

(Newser) - The young poet who performed her spoken-word piece at President Biden's 2021 inauguration is now at the center of the latest book-banning controversy. Citing documents from the Florida Freedom to Read Project, Politico reports that Amanda Gorman's poem "The Hill We Climb" has been removed from the...

'Poet Who Connects' Gets Nod From Library of Congress

Ada Limon, 46, is nation's 24th poet laureate

(Newser) - The country's next poet laureate, Ada Limon, has long thought of her work as a public art form. "I grew up with poetry being in the community," says Limon, a native of Sonoma, Calif. "It wasn't supposed to just be something read on [the] page;...

White Poet Turns Down Job to Translate Gorman Poem

Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld nixes assignment after critics say Black writer should do it

(Newser) - A writer who was chosen to translate American poet Amanda Gorman's work into Dutch has handed back the assignment following criticism that a white author was selected to translate the words of a Black woman who's the youngest inaugural poet in US history. Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, who uses...

Amanda Gorman's Fans Make Her Books Bestsellers

'I am on the floor,' inaugural poet says

(Newser) - Amanda Gorman has two books coming out, but not until September. After the poet's performance at President Biden's inauguration Wednesday, they went to the top of a bestseller list anyway. "I am on the floor," Gorman tweeted . "My books are #1 and #2 on Amazon...

Inauguration Poet to 'Touch' on Capitol Attack

Amanda Gorman was chosen to read by the Bidens

(Newser) - At age 22, poet Amanda Gorman, chosen to read at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, already has a history of writing for official occasions. "I have kind of stumbled upon this genre. It's been something I find a lot of emotional reward in, writing something I can...

Boy, 4, Lands Book Deal
Boy, 4, Lands Book Deal
Jul 22, 2020 6:20 PM CDT

Boy, 4, Lands Book Deal

Nadim Shamma-Sourgen writes 'purely childlike' poems

(Newser) - Not many poets try picking their nose on national television. But then, Nadim Shamma-Sourgen doesn't have much media experience: He just landed his first book deal at the age of four, the Guardian reports. "The poems talk about such important feelings, like love and loneliness, and Nadim finds...

The Love Affair Fueled His Poetry—Until the Bitter End

TS Eliot disses muse Emily Hale in note from beyond the grave

(Newser) - "Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened," reads TS Eliot's poem Burnt Norton. The words have found new meaning with the release of Eliot's 1,131 letters to muse Emily Hale, who donated them to Princeton...

'Fools!' Spacey Makes Surprise Appearance in Museum

The actor surprises people with reading of Gabriele Tinti's "Boxer at Rest"

(Newser) - Kevin Spacey returned to the public eye Friday for "a bizarre reading" of a poem at an Italian museum, Variety reports. The actor, whose career nosedived in 2017 amid sexual-assault allegations, appeared at the National Roman Museum and read a poem about a wounded boxer who vowed never to...

Our Poet Laureate Has Been Named. It's Historic

Joy Harjo, 68, is first-ever Native American in the role

(Newser) - The first Oklahoman to ever be bestowed the title of US poet laureate has another distinction to brag about: She'll also be the first Native American to serve in the role when she takes over for Tracy K. Smith in the fall and becomes the 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant...

'Bride Married to Amazement': Poet Mary Oliver Dies

Beloved Pulitzer-winner was 83

(Newser) - Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose rapturous odes to nature and animal life brought her critical acclaim and popular affection, has died. She was 83. Bill Reichblum, Oliver's literary executor, said she died Thursday at her home in Hobe Sound, Florida. The cause of death was lymphoma. "...

Poet Stumped by Standardized Questions on Her Own Poems
Poet Stumped by Standardized
Test Questions on Own Poems
in case you missed it
Jan 14, 2017 10:32 AM CST

Poet Stumped by Standardized Test Questions on Own Poems

Sara Holbrook calls Texas assessment 'big baloney sandwich'

(Newser) - If anyone can answer questions on a standardized test about the poems "The Real Case" and "Midnight," it should be Sara Holbrook—the poet who wrote them. But as the Washington Post reports, Holbrook recently took a stab at a couple of State of Texas Assessments of...

Poet Max Ritvo Dead at 25
Poet Max Ritvo
Dies of Cancer at 25
OBITUARY
Aug 27, 2016 6:11 AM CDT

Poet Max Ritvo Dies of Cancer at 25

He chronicled illness in acclaimed work

(Newser) - Fiercely talented poet Max Ritvo has died at the age of 25 from the cancer he chronicled in his work and was first diagnosed with when he was 16. Ritvo, who had Ewing's sarcoma, a deadly form of bone cancer, went to Yale during the years he was in...

Teacher Says He Knows Jack the Ripper's Identity

He claims a renowned, opium-addicted poet was responsible for the slayings

(Newser) - Did life imitate art in the case of Jack the Ripper? An Australian English teacher, who claims to have solved the 127-year-old mystery, certainly thinks so, the New York Daily News reports. Richard Patterson believes Jack the Ripper, who killed five London prostitutes over 10 weeks in 1888, was actually...

Poet Pablo Neruda Wasn't Poisoned: Tests

But family says Chilean case isn't closed

(Newser) - The four-decade mystery of whether Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned was seemingly cleared up today, when forensic test results showed no chemical agents in his bones. But his family and driver were not satisfied and said they'll request more tests. Neruda died under suspicious circumstances in...

Seamus Heaney, Nobelist Poet, Dead at 74

Called 'most significant Irish poet of his generation'

(Newser) - Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, has died at age 74 following a recent illness. A former teacher who lived in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Heaney was widely considered the best Irish poet since WB Yeats, the BBC notes; the Irish Times calls him...

Feminist Poet Adrienne Rich Dead at 82

Ground-breaking writer fought for women's rights with words

(Newser) - As a woman, a lesbian, and a Jew, Adrienne Rich felt triply excluded by society, and she used her long and influential career as a poet to fight for change. Rich, who has died from complications linked to rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 82, was one of America's...

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