2. Robert Frost
• Robert Frost was born in San
Francisco on March 26, 1874. He
died January 29, 1963.
• His father was a journalist, who
died of tuberculosis when Frost
was 11 years old. QuickTimeª and a
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• Frost moved with his mother to
New England to live near family.
• He didn't do well in college. He
dropped out of both Dartmouth and
Harvard without taking a degree.
3. Robert Frost
• He wanted to marry his
high school sweetheart and
tried to impress her with a
book of poems he'd
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• He finally married the girl
and supported himself as a
teacher for a few years,
writing poetry on the side.
4. Robert Frost
• In 1900 his grandfather
bought him a farm in Derry,
New Hampshire, in hopes
that it would give him a
steady income. Frost never
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gave him something to write
about, and it was in those
years on the farm that he
began to write the poems that
would make his name.
5. Robert Frost
• He published his first two
collections, A Boy's Will
(1913) and North of Boston
(1914), the latter of which
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"Mending Wall," "The Death
of the Hired Man," "After
Apple-Picking," and "Home
Burial."
6. Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken QuickTimeª and a
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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could And both that morning equally lay
To where it bent in the undergrowth. In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Then took the other, as just as fair, Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
And having perhaps the better claim, I doubted if I should ever come back.
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there I shall be telling this with a sigh
Had worn them really about the same. Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
7. Emily Dickinson
• Born December 10th in Amherst,
Massachusetts (1830).
• Dickinson spent one year in
seminary school at Mount
Holyoke, and then she moved QuickTimeª and a
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care of the family household
while her mother recovered from
a nervous breakdown.
8. Emily Dickinson
• She spent most of her adult life
in her corner bedroom in her
father's house. The room
contained a writing table, a
dresser, a Franklin stove, a
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pictures on the wall of three
writers: George Eliot, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, and Thomas
Carlyle.
• She is famous for her style. She
was a good observer of the
world.
9. Emily Dickinson
• She wrote on scraps of paper
and old grocery lists, compiled
her poetry and tucked it away
neatly in her desk drawer.
• She began collecting her
handwritten poems into packets QuickTimeª and a
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spines herself.
• She eventually wrote more than
1,700 poems. In the year 1862
alone, she wrote 366 poems
(about one per day).
10. Emily Dickinson
• Emily Dickinson said, "To live is so
startling it leaves little time for anything
else."
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11. Emily Dickinson
I’m Nobody, Who Are You?
I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
There's a pair of us, don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog,
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
12. Walt Whitman
• Born in West Hills, Long Island,
New York on May 31, 1819
• He grew up in Brooklyn and
lived in New York City for most
of his life. He began working as QuickTimeª and a
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young age, and in the '40s and
'50s he worked for a series of
newspapers in Brooklyn and
Manhattan. He always loved
New York.
13. Walt Whitman
• Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a
volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to
publishing his poetry.
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14. Walt Whitman
• It was in New York City, in
1855, that Whitman published
the first edition of his poetry
collection Leaves of Grass. He
couldn't find anyone to publish
it for him so he sold a house and
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used the money to publish it
himself. There was no
publisher's name or author's
name on the cover, just a picture
of Whitman himself. He wrote
the poems in a new style, a kind
of free verse without rhyme or
meter.
15. Walt Whitman
• Ralph Waldo Emerson called
Leaves of Grass "the most
extraordinary piece of wit and
wisdom that America has yet
contributed."
• In the 1880s, the Society for the QuickTimeª and a
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immoral in a Boston newspaper,
and that's when it finally started
to sell. Whitman used the money
to buy a cottage in Camden,
where he spent the rest of his
life.
16. Walt Whitman
O Me! O Life!
O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question,
O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here--that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
17. Nikki Giovanni
• Was born Yolande Cornelia
Giovanni, in Knoxville,
Tennessee on June 7th, 1943,
but raised in Cincinnati.
• She gained early admission to
Fisk University in Nashville, but QuickTimeª and a
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first semester, as she later wrote,
because her "attitudes did not fit
those of a Fisk woman." But
four years later she returned, and
in 1967 graduated magna cum
laude, earning a degree in
history.
18. Nikki Giovanni
• At Fisk, she became involved in
both the Writers' Workshop and the
Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee, and was very active in
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coalition of African-American
intellectuals who wrote radical
poetry aimed at raising awareness of
black rights.
19. Nikki Giovanni
• Early in her career she was dubbed
the "Princess of Black Poetry," and
over the course of more than three
decades of publishing and lecturing
she has come to be called both a
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recently, one of Oprah Winfrey's
twenty-five "Living Legends."
20. Nikki Giovanni
• She said, "I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers
don't write from experience, though many are hesitant to admit that they
don't. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd
get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."
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21. Nikki Giovanni
Love Is
Some people forget that love is
tucking you in and kissing you
"Good night"
no matter how young or old you are
Some people don't remember that
love is
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no matter what your age
Few recognize that love is
commitment, responsibility
no fun at all
unless
Love is
You and me
22. Langston Hughes
• Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin,
Missouri.
• His father divorced his mother
and moved to Mexico when
Hughes was just a baby. He was
raised by his mother and
grandmother, but after high
school he went to Mexico to get
to know his father for the first
time. He was disgusted when he
found that his father was
obsessed with money and more
racist than most white men
Hughes had ever known.
23. Langston Hughes
• He went to Columbia University
for a year, but then he decided
that he wanted to learn from the
world rather than books. He quit
college, hopped a boat to Africa,
and as soon as the boat left New
York Harbor, he threw all his
college books overboard. He
took odd jobs on ships and made
his way from Africa to France,
Holland, Italy, and finally back
to the United States.
24. Langston Hughes
• He got a job working as a
busboy in a Washington, D.C.,
hotel, and one day he left three
poems he had written next to the
plate of the poet Vachel
Lindsey. Lindsey loved them
and read them to an audience the
very next day. Within a few
years, Hughes had published his
first book of poetry, The Weary
Blues (1926).
25. Langston Hughes
• He got involved in the Harlem
Renaissance and started to write
poetry influenced by the music he
heard in jazz and blues clubs.
• Hughes was one of the first African-
American poets to embrace the
language of lower-class black
Americans.
26. Langston Hughes
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?