SEPTEMBER 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem. By Ian Sansom. Harper. 341 pages. $27.99. The subtitle for Ian Samson’s book “September 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem,” is such an unexpected combination of ...
Sitting in a bar on 52nd Street, WH Auden read in the “folded lie” of a newspaper about the accession of Danzig to the Third Reich. The poem he would write about the events of that night is the ...
In the winter of 1949, a group of judges — including poets T.S. Eliot and Robert Lowell — met to decide the winner of the prestigious Bollingen Prize for the best book of poetry published in the ...
James McWilliams's biography details the life and work of poet Frank Stanford. Stanford, born in Mississippi and raised in Tennessee and Arkansas, died by suicide at age 29. His epic poem "The ...