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Poet's Corner

Poetry Timeline

700-1799 | 1800-1899 | 1900-1924 | 1925-1949 | 1950-1974| 1975-

1925

Maxine Kumin is born.

Amy Lowell dies.

Edwin Arlington Robinson is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection The Man Who Died Twice.

1926

Vachel Lindsay's "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" is published in his collection Going-to-the-Stars.

Dorothy Parker's "One Perfect Rose" is published in her collection Enough Rope.

e. e. cummings's "since feeling is first" is published in his collection is 5.

Amy Lowell is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection What's O'Clock.

1927

Countee Cullen's "From the Dark Tower" is published in his collection Copper Sun.

John Crowe Ransom's "Janet Waking" is published in his collection Two Gentlemen in Bonds.

James A. Wright is born.

Leonora Speyer is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection Fiddler's Farewell.

1928

Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica" is published in his collection Streets in the Moon.

Edna St. Vincent Millay's "On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven" is published in her collection The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems.

William Butler Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" is published in his collection The Tower.

Maya Angelou is born.

Thomas Hardy dies.

Anne Sexton is born.

Elinor Wylie dies.

Edwin Arlington Robinson is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Tristram.

1929

Adrienne Rich is born.

Stephen Vincent Benet is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection John Brown's Body.

1930s-1960s

The Negritude emerges as a literary movement in the 1930s and continues until the early 1960s.

1930s—1970s

The New York Intellectuals, a group of literary critics, are active from the 1930s and the 1970s.

1930

Ted Hughes is born.

D. H. Lawrence dies.

Conrad Aiken is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Selected Poems.

John Masefield is named Poet Laureate of England.

1931

Vachel Lindsay dies.

Robert Frost is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his Collected Poems.

Swedish poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1932

Langston Hughes's "Dreams" is published in his collection Dream Keeper.

Sylvia Plath is born.

John Updike is born.

George Dillon is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection The Flowering Stone.

1933

Archibald Macleish is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Conquistador.

1934

Dylan Thomas's "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" is published in his collection 18 Poems.

Diana Chang is born.

Colleen McElroy is born.

N. Scott Momaday is born.

Robert Hillyer is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his Collected Verse.

Américo Paredes's "Guitarreros" is written in this year (first published in the Autumn 1964, issue of the Southwest Review).

Countee Cullen's "Any Human to Another" and "Sonnet" are published in his collection The Medea and Some Poems.

Edwin Arlington Robinson dies.

Audrey Wurdemann is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection Bright Ambush.

1935—1943

The Work Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project provides federally funded jobs for unemployed writers during the Great Depression.

1936

Lucille Clifton is born.

A. E. Housman dies.

Marge Piercy is born.

Robert P. Tristram Coffin is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Strange Holiness.

1937

Alicia Ostriker is born.

Robert Frost is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection A Further Range.

1937—1941

Joseph Auslander serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

1938

Lawson Fusao Inada is born.

James Weldon Johnson dies.

1939

Marya Zaturenska is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection Cold Morning Sky.

Seamus Heaney is born.

William Butler Yeats dies.

John Gould Fletcher is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Selected Poems.

1940s

The New Apocalypse Movement takes place in England in the 1940s.

1940s—

Postmodernism, referring to the various philosophies of literature that challenge the dominance of Modernism, begins in the 1940s.

1940

W. H. Auden's "The Unknown Citizen" and "Musée des Beaux Arts" are published in his collection Another Time.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer dies.

Mark Van Doren is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his Collected Poems.

1941

Simon Ortiz is born.

Leonard Bacon is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Sunderland Capture.

1942

José García Villa's "Be Beautiful, Noble, Like the Antique Ant" is published in his collection Have Come, Am Here.

Margaret Walker's "Childhood" and "Memory" are published in her collection For My People.

Karl Shapiro's "Manhole Covers" is published in his collection Person, Place and Thing.

William Rose Benet is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection The Dust Which Is God.

1943

Nikki Giovanni is born.

Robert Frost is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection A Witness Tree.

1943—1944

Allen Tate serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

1944

Stephen Vincent Benet is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Western Star.

1944—1945

Robert Penn Warren serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

1945

Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is published in his collection Little Friend, Little Friend.

Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (Lucila Godoy Alcayaga) is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Karl Shapiro is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection V-Letter and Other Poems.

1945—1946

Louise Bogan serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

1946

Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" and "Fern Hill" are published in his collection Deaths and Entrances.

Countee Cullen dies.

1946—1947

Karl Shapiro serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

1947

Robert Lowell is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Lord Weary's Castle.

1947—1948

Robert Lowell serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

1948

Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" is published in his collection The Lost Son and Other Poems.

Claude McKay dies.

Leslie Marmon Silko is born.

W. H. Auden is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection The Age of Anxiety.

Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1948—1949

Leonie Adams serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

1949

Edna St. Vincent Millay's "The Courage that My Mother Had " is published in her collection Mine the Harvest.

Gwendolyn Brooks's "The Sonnet-Ballad" is published in her collection Annie Allen.

Teresa Palomo Acosta is born.

Victor Hernandez Cruz is born.

Peter Viereck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection Terror and Decorum.

1949—1950

Elizabeth Bishop serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Source: Exploring Poetry, Gale, 1997.