allegory a literary work or visual imagery that functions on two or more levels of meaning by comparing objects to symbols outside the scope of the work. alliteration the repetition of consonant sounds, even those spelled differently. allusion a brief or indirect reference to something or someone known to most […]
Read more Study Help Full GlossaryThe Poets Cathy Song (1955- )
About the Poet A Hawaiian of Chinese and Korean ancestry, Cathy Song centers her verse on island themes and activities and understated pastoral settings. Her language is standard English inset with words and phrases from Pacific and Asian sources. She has gained credence for lifting the mundane from homely backgrounds […]
Read more The Poets Cathy Song (1955- )The Poets Rita Dove (1952- )
About the Poet The first black and youngest author to serve as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, Rita Frances Dove considers herself the heir of Phillis Wheatley, slave poet of the colonial era. A complex intellectual, Dove has edited Callaloo, Gettysburg Review, and TriQuarterly and served at Harvard […]
Read more The Poets Rita Dove (1952- )The Poets Joy Harjo (1951- )
About the Poet Feminist screenwriter and poet Joy Harjo relishes the role of “historicist,” a form of storytelling that recaptures lost elements of history. Typically listed alongside native writers Paula Gunn Allen, Mary Crow Dog, Wendy Rose, and Linda Hogan, she strives for imagery that exists outside the bounds of […]
Read more The Poets Joy Harjo (1951- )The Poets Wendy Rose (1948- )
About the Poet A blend of poet, historian, painter, illustrator, and anthropologist, Wendy Rose rejects marginalization. Issued under her birth name Bronwen Elizabeth Edwards and the pseudonym Chiron Khanshendel, as well as Rose, her realistic writings, watercolors, and pen-and-ink sketches defy those who relegate native American artisans to a passing […]
Read more The Poets Wendy Rose (1948- )The Poets Amiri Baraka (1934- )
About the Poet A model of the self-made African-American national, poet and propagandist Imamu Amiri Baraka is a leading exponent of black nationalism and latent black talent. Baraka, who was originally named Everett LeRoi Jones, earned a reputation for militancy among radical contemporaries Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, and the […]
Read more The Poets Amiri Baraka (1934- )The Poets Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
About the Poet Sylvia Plath, a precocious enigma of the 1960s, battled perfectionism and precipitous mood swings while pursuing a career as a teacher and poet. She was born in Jamaica Plain, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, on October 27, 1932. In early childhood, she lived in Winthrop on Massachusetts […]
Read more The Poets Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)The Poets Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
About the Poet A multitalented writer, polemist, and literary theorist, Adrienne Cecile Rich was an exponent of a poetry of witness and dissent, a poetry that voices the discontent of those generally silenced and ignored. Prophetic of the bitterness that emerged from 1960s feminism, antiwar protests of the 1970s, and […]
Read more The Poets Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)The Poets Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
About the Poet A college dropout turned housewife, fashion model, and jazz singer, Anne Gray Harvey Sexton is an unusual source of self-revelatory verse that prefaced an era of modernist confessional. An ambivalent feminist, she spoke for the turmoil in women who despised the housewife’s boring fate, yet she suffered […]
Read more The Poets Anne Sexton (1928-1974)The Poets James Wright (1927-1980)
About the Poet Admired for depicting the little dramas lived by the lonely and alienated, poet James Arlington Wright probed the distances between people. A lyric romanticist in the tradition of Robert Frost and E. A. Robinson, Wright profited from classes with teachers John Crowe Ransom and Theodore Roethke. His […]
Read more The Poets James Wright (1927-1980)