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Should Walt Whitman Be #Cancelled?

Black America talks back to "The Good Gray Poet" at 200.
The Writing Master, by Thomas Eakins, 1882. Painting of a man wearing glasses and writing with a pen.

Yawns Innumerable

The story of John Quincy Adams’ forgotten epic poem—and its most critical reader.

When Walt Whitman’s Poems Were Rejected for Being Too Timely

"1861" is just so 1861.

The Rage and Rebellion of the Detroit Riots, Captured in One Poem

50 years later, Philip Levine's poem, "They Feed They Lion," helps us remember and understand that time.

Walt Whitman—Patriotic Poet, Gay Iconoclast, or Shrewd Marketing Ploy?

Americans tend to think of Walt Whitman as the embodiment of democracy and individualism, but have you ever considered Walt Whitman, the brand?

Green House: A Brief History of “American Poetry”

Tracing its emergence of as a distinct cultural institution.
The Pirates’ Ruse, early 19th century engraving, depicting people standing on deck in view of another ship pretend everything is normal, while armed pirates hide out of view of a nearby American vessel.

The Poetics of History from Below

All good storytellers tell a big story within a little story, and so do all good historians.

Phillis Wheatley: an Eighteenth-Century Genius in Bondage

Vincent Carretta takes a look at the remarkable life of the first ever African-American woman to be published.
Alice Morgan Wright with unknown friend, sitting on a tree stump.

Reconstructing the Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

Rouse reveals the hidden queer histories of suffragists like Alice Morgan Wright, who balanced activism with private, erased relationships.
Audre Lorde

A Book That Puts the Life Back Into Biography

To capture the spirit of the poet Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs decided to break all the rules.
Emily Dickinson.

When Emily Dickinson Mailed It In

The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us?
Herman Melville; illustration by Maya Chessman.

Siding with Ahab

Can we appreciate Herman Melville’s work without attributing to it schemes for the uplift of modern man?
Close-up of E.E. Cummings, looking off to the side.

The Peculiar Legacy of E.E. Cummings

Revisiting his first book, "The Enormous Room," a reader can get a sense of everything appealing and appalling in his work.
Gratz Cohen and the manuscript of one of his poems.

A Savannah Poet

The Civil War cut short many lives, and a new a book that blends the genres of history and memoir sets out the resurrect the memory of one of those lives.
Painting of Emily Dickinson writing at a desk outside.

Eternity Only Will Answer

Funny, convivial, chatty—a new edition of Emily Dickinson's letters upends the myth of her reclusive genius. 
A computer-drawn image of George Moses Horton.

Stand Up and Spout

Cecil Brown wants to digitally revive the enslaved antebellum poet George Moses Horton. Can digital technology help reconnect us to the tradition he embodied?
A photograph of John G. Neihardt raising his fists to box.
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A Tale of Two Visionaries

What roiled the mind of Nebraska poet John Neihardt with whom Black Elk, the iconic Lakota holy man, shared his story?
Old stone walls and trees in a New England meadow

How Stone Walls Became a Signature Landform of New England

Originally built as barriers between fields and farms, the region’s abandoned farmstead walls have since become the binding threads of its cultural fabric.
Lenore Kandel’

The Forgotten Poet at the Center of San Francisco’s Longest Obscenity Trial

Amid Reagan’s late-sixties crackdown on the California counterculture, a jury was tasked with deciding whether Lenore Kandel’s psychedelic sex poems had “redeeming social importance.”
View of Brooklyn from Trinity Church, 1853.
original

Mettlesome, Mad, Extravagant City

In the streets of New York, we try to imagine the city as Walt Whitman, and other artists of his time, experienced it.
Emily Dickinson Museum collection.

What Emily Dickinson Left Behind

The winding story of how a trove of 8,000 of the poet’s family objects were saved.
August Wilson

The Man Who Transformed American Theater

How August Wilson became one of the country’s most influential playwrights.
Bruce Lee in a classic pose from the movie ‘Enter the Dragon.'

The Fighting Spirit of Bruce Lee

The actor and martial arts star also wanted to be regarded as a poet-philosopher.
Edgar Allan Poe

Poe vs. Himself: On the Writer’s One-Sided War with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The story of the Little Longfellow War.
Tennessee Williams

How Thomas Lanier Williams Became Tennessee

A collection of previously unpublished stories offers a portrait of the playwright as a young artist.
A lithograph of Phillis Wheatley and the first page of her book, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral."

Phillis Wheatley’s “Mrs. W—”: Identifying the Woman Who Inspired “Ode to Neptune”

Who was that traveler? And what did she signify to the poet?
Car interior with Chuck Berry reflected in side view mirror.

An Anthropologist of Filth

On Chuck Berry.
Painting of flowers called "The Island Garden," by Childe Hassam, 1892.

A Wiser Sympathy

How Emily Dickinson, scientists, and other writers theorized plant intelligence in the nineteenth century.
Bobby Seal and Huey Newton standig in front of a Black Panther Party sign

How Huey P. Newton’s Early Intellectual Life Led Him To Activism

The role of family in Huey P. Newton's educational journey.
A blue sign reads "It's Time to Vote Y'all"

'Y'all,' That Most Southern of Southernisms, is Going Mainstream – And It's About Time

The use of ‘y'all’ has often been seen as vulgar, low-class and uncultured. That’s starting to change.

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