BAY AREA POETS REVIEW 

Bei Dao, born August 2, 1949

LEO/VIRGO

Poets born in August
1 Anne Hébert 1916-2000 (Canadian)
2 Ernest C. Dowson 1867-1900 (English)
2 Bei Dao 1949- (Chinese)
3 Hayden Carruth 1921-2008 (Connecticut)
3 Marvin Bell 1937- (b. New York City; former Iowa poet laureate)
3 Diane Wakoski 1937- (Whittier, CA)
   4 Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822  (English)
4 Robert Hayden 1913-1980 (b. Detroit, African-American)
4 Allison Hedge Coke 1958- (b. Texas, mixed Native & European American ancestry)
5 Conrad Aiken 1889-1973 (b. Georgia; lived, Massachusetts and England; 1950-52 poet laureate of the United States)
5 Wendell Berry 1934-  (Kentucky)
5 Ron Silliman 1946- (b. Washington state)
6 Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-1892 (English)
6 Paul Claudel, 1868-1955 (French)
7 Cees Buddingh' 1918-1985 (Dutch)

7 Larry Eigner 1927-1996 (born Massachusetts)

8 Sara Teasdale 1884-1933 (St. Louis, MO; received 1st Pulitzer Prize, 1918) (below)
9 John Dryden 1631-1700 (English)
9 Philip Larkin 1922-1985 (English)
9 Jack Foley 1940- (born New Jersey, lives in Oakland, California)
10 Abai Kunanbaev 1845-1904 (Kazakh)  (below)10 Witter Bynner 1881-1968 (b. Brooklyn, lived in Santa Fe)
10 Alastair Webster Mackie 1925-1995 (Scottish)
10 Blanca Leonor Varela Gonzales 1926-2009 (Peruvian)
10 Mark Doty 1953- (Tennesee/New York)
11 Hugh MacDiarmid 1892-1978 (Scotland)
11 Louise Bogan 1897-1970 (Maine)
12 Robert Southey 1774-1873 (English poet)
12 Donald Justice 1925-2004 (b. Florida)
12 J.D. McClatchy 1945- (b. Pennsylvania)
14 Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802-1838 (English)
14 Ernest Thayer 1863-1940 (Lawrence, MA)
14 Alfred Corn 1943- (b. Georgia)
15 Walter Scott 1771-1832 (Scottish)
15 Jan Brzechwa 1898-1966 (Polish)
15 Mary Jo Salter 1954- (Grand Rapids, MI)
16 Jules Laforgue 1860-1887 (Uruguay, French)
  16 Charles Bukowski 1920-1994 (b. in Germany, lived in Southern California) (above)

17 Charlotte Grimke 1837-1914 (African-American, b. Pennsylvania)
17 Ted Hughes 1930-1998 (English)
18 Jami 1414-1492 (Persian)
19 Ogden Nash 1902-1971 (b. New York)
20 Edgar Guest 1881-1959 (b. Birmingham, England; lived, Michigan)
20 Heather McHugh 1948- (b. San Diego to Canadian parents; received 2009 MacArthur “Genius“ Award)
21 X.J. Kennedy 1929- (b. New Jersey, lives in Massachusetts)
22 Dorothy Parker 1893-1967 (b. New Jersey)
23 Edgar Lee Masters 1868-1950 (Kansas/Illinois/Pennsylvania)
24 Robert Herrick 1591-1674 (English)
24 Maclolm Cowely 1898-1989 (b. Pennsylvania)
25 Bret Harte 1836-1902 (New York/California)
25 Charles Wright 1935- (Tennessee/Virginia; 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner)
  26 Guillaume Appollinaire 1880-1918 (Italian/Polish/French)

26 Jules Romains 1885-1972 (French)
26 Julio Cortazar 1914-1984 (Argentine)
28 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832 (German)
28 Sir John Betjeman1906-1984 (English)
28 Rita Dove 1952- (b. Ohio; 1st African-American poet laureate of the United States)
29 Maurice Maeterlinck 1862-1949 (Belgian; Nobel Prize 1911)
29 Thom Gunn 1929-2004 (b. in England; lived and taught in Bay Area)

CANCER/LEO Poets of July

Names in turquoise are poets who are still alive.
1  Jadwiga Luszczewska (pictured above)    1834-1908 (Polish)
2  Hermann Hesse 1877-1962 (German)
2  Bert Decorte 1915-2009 (Flemish)
2  Wislawa Szymborska 1923- (Polish, 1996 Nobelist)
2  Eliseo Diego 1920-1996 (Cuban)
3  Edward Young 1683-1765 (English)
7  Helene Johnson 1907-1995 (African-American)
7  Hasan Abidi 1929-2005 (Urdu poet, Pakistani)
7  Margaret Walker Alexander 1915-1998 (born Alabama, African-American)
7  Louise Erdrich 1954-    (born Minnesota, Native American)
8  Josef Hora 1891-1945 (Czech)
11 Luis de Gongora 1561-1627 (Spanish)
12 Stefan George 1861-1933 (German)
12 Pablo Neruda 1904-1973 (Chilean: 1971, Nobelist)
13 John Clare 1793-1864 (English)
14 Woody Guthrie 1912-1967 (American folksinger)
15 Abraham Sutzkever 1913-2010 (born Belarus; died Israel; Yiddish poet)
16 Mari Evans 1923-    (b. Ohio, African-American)
16 Reinaldo Arenas 1943-1990 (Cuban)
18 Rose Hartwick Thorpe 1850-1939 (American)
18 Yevgeny Yevtushenko 1933-    (b. Siberia, Soviet-Russian/American)
19 June Jordan 1936-2002 (b. Harlem, African-American)
20 Francesco Petrarch 1304-1374 (Italian)
20 Thomas Lovell Beddoes 1803-1849 (English)
21 Hart Crane 1899-1932 (b. Ohio)

21 Tess Gallagher (pictured above) 1943- (Irish-American)
22 Emma Lazarus 1849-1887 (Jewish-American)
22 Stephen Benet  1898-1943 (b. Pennsylvania)
26 Robert Graves 1895-1985 (English)
26 Anwar Chairil 1922-1949 (Indonesian)
27 Giosue Carducci 1835-1907 (Italian)
27 Vittorio Sereni 1913-1983 (Italian)
28 Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-1889 (English)
28 John Ashbery 1927- (born New York, American)
29 Stanley Kunitz 1905- (Jewish-American)
31 Peter Rosegger 1843-1918 (Austrian)

Celebration by Mari Evans    

I will bring you a whole person
and you will bring me a whole person
and we will have us twice as much
of love and everything

I be bringing a whole heart
and while it do have nicks and
dents and scars,
that only make me lay it down
more careful-like
An; you be bringing a whole heart
a little chipped and rusty an'
sometime skip a beat but
still an' all you bringing polish too
and look like you intend
to make it shine

And we be bringing, each of us
the music of ourselves to wrap
the other in
    Forgiving clarities
    Soft as a choir's last
    lingering note our
    personal blend

I will be bringing you someone whole
and you will be bringing me someone whole
    and we be twice as strong
        and we be twice as true
and we will have twice as much
    of love
        and everything

Success by Emma Lazarus

Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain,
The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng.
These I ignore to-day and only long
To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain,
One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song,
For all the victories of man's high endeavor,
Palm-bearing, laureled deeds that live forever,
The splendor clothing him whose will is strong.
Hast thou beheld the deep, glad eyes of one
Who has persisted and achieved? Rejoice!
On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun.
Salute him with free heart and choral voice,
'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan,
The bold, significant, successful man.
       

Pisces/Aries Poets of March

Names in green are poets still living.

1 Robert Lowell 1917-1977 (Massachusetts)
1 Richard Wilbur 1921- (2nd U.S. poet laureate)
1 Robert Hass 1941- (born in San Francisco, two-times U.S. poet laureate)
2 George Sandys 1577-1644 (English)
3 Edward Thomas 1878-1917 (English)
3 James Merrill 1926-1995 (New York)
3 Michael Salinger 1962- (Ohio)
3 Hans Pieter Verhagen 1939 - (Dutch)
3 Clifton Snider 1947-  (born Minnesota)
4 Léon-Paul Fargue 1876-1947 (French)
4 Thomas Sturge Moore 1870-1944 (English)
6 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (photo above) 1806-1861 (English)
8 Marcus B. Christian 1900-1976 (Louisiana, African-American)
8 Eric Linklater 1899-1974 (Welsh/Orkneyan)
10 Samuel Ferguson 1810-1886 (Irish)
10 David M Chumaceiro 1877-1922 (Curacao)
10 Manolis Anagnostakis 1925-2005 (Greek)
10 Ina Donna Coolbrith 1841-1928 (first California poet laureate)
16 Cesar Vallejo 1892-1938 (Peruvean)
18 Wilford Owen 1893-1918 (English/Welsh)
18 Stephen Mallarme 1842-1898 (French)
18 John Updike 1931-2009 (born in Pennsylvania)

18 Michael S. Harper (above) 1938- (born in Brooklyn, African-American, 1st poet laureate of Rhode Island)
20 Ovid 43 BCE-17/18 CE (Roman)
20 Heinrich Holderlin 1770-1843 (German)
21 Phyllis McGinley 1905-1978 (born Oregon, lived in New York)
24 Lawrence Ferlinghetti 1919- (born Yonkers, New York; San Francisco poet)

25 George Moses Horton 1797-1883 (est.) (African-American slave, born North Carolina)
26 A.E. Housman 1859-1936 (English)
26 Robert Frost 1874-1963 (born San Francisco)
26 Gregory Nunzio Corso 1930-2001 (Italian-American Beat poet)
27 Michael Bruce 1746-1767 (Scottish)
27 Marie Under 1883-1980 (Estonian)
27 Louis Simpson 1923 (born in Jamaica of Scottish-Russian ancestry, U.S. poet, 1964 Pulitzer Prize winner)
28 Amelia Roselli (below) 1930-1996 (Italian)

29 Frans Uuno Kailas 1901-1933 (Finnish)
29 R.S. Thomas 1913-2000 (Welsh)
29 Jacques Brault 1933- (French Canadian)
30 Gerrit Komrij 1944- (Dutch poet laureate 2000-2004)
30 M C Hammer 1962- (African-American Rapper, originally from Oakland)
30 Paul Verlaine 1844-1896 (French)
31 Andrew Marvell 1621-1678 (English)
31 Nichita Stanescu 1933-1983 (Romanian)


Twilight (Medialuz)

I have dreamed of flight. And I have dreamed
of your laces strewn in the bedroom.
I have dreamed of some mother walking the length of a
    wharf
and at fifteen nursing the hour.

I have dreamed of flight. A “forever”
sighed at a fo’c’sle ladder.
I have dreamed of a mother,
of fresh sprigs of table-greens,
and the stars stitched in bridals of the dawn.

        The length of a wharf . . .
the length of a drowning throat!

    - Cesar Vallejo, translated by Johyn Knoepfle, from Neruda and Vallejo, Selected Poems, edited by Robert Bly. (Beacon Press, Boston: 1971).

Thaw

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

- Edward Thomas, from The Works of Edward Thomas (Wordsworth Poetry Library: Hertfordshire, Great Britian: 1994).

Loma Alta *

Scarred with the jagged wounds from ruthless hands,
Despoiled, dishonored of my fair array, --
The gold and emerald vesture of the day
When I first signaled to these virgin strands
The argosies and fleets of alien lands;
Rampart and sentinel of this my Bay,
Whose untracked waters leap in jeweled spray
And beat in melody the tawny sands!
What guerdon mine? I wait! To greet these skies --
Thorned on my breast, lifting from fronded trees,
I see a templed splendor yet to be!
Whiter than Shasta’s snows it shall arise,
And proud as that which shone on Pericles --
The marble dream by the Aegean Sea.

-Ina Donna Coolbrith

* Telegraph Hill, San Francisco

Blaise Cendrars

1 Blaise Cendrars 1887-1961 (Swiss/French)
3 Vivet Oberoi 1976- (Mumbai, India)
2 Eugene Field 1850-1895 (b. St. Louis, MO)
5 Robert Fergusson 1750-1774 (Scottish)
5 Dario Belleza 1944-1996 (Italian)
5 Nicanor Parra Sandoval 1914- (Chilean)
7 C.J. Dennis 1876-1938 (Australian)
7 Elinor Wylie 1885-1928 (b. Sommerville, NJ)
7 Edith Sitwell 1887-1964 (b. Yorkshire, England)
7 Sunil Gangopadhya 1934- (Bangladeshi Indian)
7 Martin Booth 1944-2004 (b. Lancashire, England; raised in Hong Kong; he was also a publisher and brought out the early works of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes)
8 Luovico Ariosto 1474-1533 (Italian)
8 Frédéric Mistral 1830-1914 (French writer of the Occitan language of southern France; 1904 Nobelist)
8 Joaquin Miller 1837 (or 1841)-1913 (b. Indiana; lived in SF Bay Area)
8 Alfred Jarry 1873-1907 (Breton French)

8 Siegfried Sassoon (above) 1886-1967 (Jewish-English, born in Kent; anti-war poet of World War I)
8 Boris Ryzhy 1974-2001 (Russian)
9 Cesare Pavese 1908-1950 (Italian)
8 Jack Prelutsky 1940- (b. Brooklyn)
9 Ralph Hodgson 1871-1962 (b. Durham, England; English-American)
9 Sonia Sanchez (below) 1934- (African-American, born Birmingham, AL)

9 Linda Gregg 1942- (b. New York, grew up in Marin)
10 Georgia Douglas Johnson 1886-1968 (African-American, born Atlanta, GA)
10 Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) 1886-1961 (b. Pennsylvania)
10 Franz Werfel 1890-1945 (b. Prague, Jewish-Austrian)
10 Omar Pound 1926-2010 (Ezra Pound’s son; scholar/translator of Arab and Persian poetry into English)
10 Mary Oliver 1935- (b. Ohio/lives on Cape Cod)
11 Pierre de Ronsard 1524-1585 (French)
11 James Thomson 1700-1748 (British; wrote “Rule Britannia)
11 José Agostinho de Macedo 1761-1931 (Portuguese)
11 David Herbert Lawrence 1885-1930 (English)
11 Reed Whittemore 1919- (b. Connecticut)
11 David Bottoms 1949- (b. Georgia; Poet Laureate of Georgia)
11 Miguel Algarin 1941- (Puerto Rican-American)
11 Al Hellus 1953-2008 (born Saginaw, MI)
12 Louis MacNeice 1907-1963 (b. Belfast; Anglo-Irish)
12 Michael Ondaatje 1943- (born Sri Lanka; Canadian)
13 John Malcolm Brinnin 1916-1998 (born Nova Scotia; lived in Michigan, Florida)

13 Miroslav Holub (above) 1923-1998 (Czech)
13 Luis Eduardo Aute 1943- (b. Manila; Spanish Filipino)
14 Lola Rodríguez de Tío 1843-1924 (Puerto Rican/Cuban)
14 Hamlin Garland 1860-1940 (born Wisconsin, settled in Boston)
14 Theodor Storm 1817-1888 (German)
15 James Gates Percival 1795-1856 (b. Connecticut)
15 Georg Rudolf Weckherlin 1584-1653 (German; died in London)
15 Claude McKay 1889/90-1948 (b. Jamaica; African-American, Harlem-Renaissance poet)
16 Hildegard von Bingen 1098-1179 (German)
16 John Gay (below) 1685-1732 (English)

16 Alfred Noyes 1880-1958 (English poet who wrote “The Highwayman”)
16 T.E. Hulme 1883-1917 (English; died in WWI)
17 Abilo Manuel de Guerra Junqueiro 1850-1923 (Portuguese)
17 William Carlos Williams 1883-1963 (New Jersey)
17 Kay Ryan 1945- (b. San Jose, CA; lives in Marin; U.S. Poet Laureate 2008-10)
17 Carl Dennis 1939- (b. St. Louis, MO; 2002 Pulitzer)
18 Samuel Johnson 1709-1784 (English)
20 Rachel Bluwstein 1890-1931 (b. Russia; immigrated to Palestine in1909)
20 Natan Yonatan 1923-2004 (Israeli)

20 Stevie Smith (above) 1902-1971 (English)
20 Donald Hall 1928- (b. Connecticut; U.S. Poet Laureate 2006)
21 Luis Cernuda 1902-1963 (Spanish; lived and died in Mexico)
21 Édouard Glissant 1928- (b. Martinique; Black-French)
21 Leonard Cohen 1934- (b. Montreal; Jewish-Canadian)
22 Dannie Abse 1923- (Jewish-Welsh)
22 Irving Feldman 1928- (b. Brooklyn; 1992 MacArthur Fellow)
23 Edgar Lee Masters 1869-1950 (Kansas/Illinois/Pennsylvania)
23 Jaroslav Seifert 1901-1986 (b. Prague; Czech)
24 Francis Ellen Watkins Harper 1825-1911 (b. Baltimore, MD; African-American)
24 Eavan Boland 1944- (Irish)
25 Kenneth Mackenzie 1913-1955 (b. Perth; Australian)
25 Shel Silverstein 1930-1999 (b. Chicago; Jewish-American)
26 T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot 1888-1965 (born, St. Louis, MO; resided in England) 
26 Mick Ogilvie Imlah 1956-2009 (Scottish)
28 Alessandro Tassoni 1565-1635 (Italian)
28 Francis Turner Palgrave 1824-1897 (English)
28 James Edwin Campbell 1867-1896 (.b. Ohio; African-American)
28 Stephen Spender 1909-1995 (English)
29 Miguel de Unamuno 1864-1936 (b. Bilbao, Spanish)
29 Miguel de Cervantes 1547-1616 (Spanish)
29 Merle Collins 1950- (b. Aruba; Caribbean)
30 Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (portrait below) 1207-1273 (Persian Sufi)
30 W.S. (William Stanley) Merwin 1927- (U.S. Poet Laureate, 2010)
30 Piri Thomas 1928- (b. Spanish Harlem, Manhattan; Puerto-Rican/Cuban)


ARIES/PISCES

Poets of April

1  Edmond Rostand 1868-1918 (France)
1  Maria Polydouri 1902-1930 (Greek)
1  Juan Gil-Albert 1904-1994 (Spanish)
1  Milan Kundera 1929- (Czech/French)
1  Gill Scott-Heron 1949- (African-American, born Chicago)
2  Anne Waldman 1945-  (born New Jersey/New York)
3  George Herbert 1593-1633 (English metaphysical poet)
3  Jose Juan Tablada 1871-1945 (Mexican; introduced haiku to Spanish readers)
4  Emmett Williams 1925-2007 (born in South Carolina, raised in Virginia, lived many years in Europe)

4  Maya Angelou (above) 1928- (African-American, born in St. Louis, Missouri)
5  Alexander Muir 1830-1906 (Scottish)
5  Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837-1909 (English)
6  Aasmund Olavsson Vinje 1818-1870 (Norwegian)
6  Homero Aridjis 1940- (Mexican)
7  William Wordsworth 1770-1850 (English)

William Wordsworth's portrait

9  Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867 (French)
10 Adrian Henri 1932-2000 (English, Liverpool songwriter of the Mersey beat)
10 Bella Akhmadulina 1937- (Russian)
10 Norman Dubie 1945- (born Vermont)
11 Christopher Smart 1722-1771 (English)
11 Bernard O'Dowd 1866-1953 (Australian)
13 Maxwell Henley Harris 1921-1995 (Australian)
13 Seamus Heaney 1939- (Irish)
15 Bliss Carman 1861-1929 (Canadian)
16 Sarah Kirsch 1935- (German)
17 Henry Vaughan 1622- 1695 (English)
17 Constantine Cavafy 1863-1933 (Greek)
18 Henry Clarence Kendall 1839-1882 (New South Wales)
19 Etheridge Knight 1931-1991 (pictured below right) (African-American, born Mississippi)
22 Louise Gluck 1942- (born New York City of Hungarian Jewish heritage)
22 Ana Maria Shua 1951- (Argentinian)
23 William Shakespeare 1564-1616 (English)
23 Edwin Markham 1852-1940 (born in Oregon, lived in Vacaville, Oakland, San Francisco)(pictured left)
23 Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977 (Russian)
23 Pierre Labrie 1972- (French-Canadian)
24 Robert Penn Warren 1905-1989 (born Kentucky, 1st United States Poet Laureate)
24 George Oppen 1908-1984 (Jewish-American, born New Rochelle, NY; lived in Mexico; received Pulitzer 1969)
25 Walter De La Mare 1873-1956 (English)
25 Ted Kooser 1939- (born Iowa) (at right)
27 Edwin Morgan 1927- (Scottish)
27 Cecil Day Lewis 1904-1972 (Irish/English, British poet laureate 1968-1972)
27 Jessie Redmon Fauset (pictured below right) 1882-1961 (African-American, born New Jersey)

28 Carolyn Forche 1950- (born Detroit, Michigan)
29 Taliesin 534- (Welsh poet according to legend)
29 Rod Marvin McKuen 1933- (born Oakland)

29 Yusef Komunyakaa (above) 1947- (African-American of Trinidadian heritage, raised in Louisiana, 1994 Pulitzer winner)
30 John Crowe Ransom 1888-1974 (born Tennessee, founder of the “Fugitives” and “Agrarian” Southern poetry groups) 1939- (Irish/Irish-American, 1995 Novel winner) ( 1939- (born Iowa) 1852-1940 (born Oregon,

Poets born in January

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here:
My heart’s in the Highlands a chasing the deer;
A chasing the wild deer, and following the roe.
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the north.
The birth place of Valour, the country of Worth.
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
- Robert Burns, from “Farewell to the Highlands”

2 Robert Nathan 1894-1985 (New York)

2 Ai 1947-1910 (Mixed Ethnic/Race poet from Texas/Arizona)

6  Kahlil Gibran (above) 1883-1931 (born Lebanon, lived New York)

6 Carl Sandburg 1878-1967 (Illinois born of Swedish immigrants)

7 Faiz Ahmed Faiz 1910/11-1984 (Pakistani Urdu poet)

7 Zora Neale Hurston 1891-1960

9 Hayyim Nahman Bialik1873-1934 (Jewish-Russian poet who wrote in Hebrew)

9 William Johnson Cory 1823-1892 (English)

9 Lizette Woodworth Reese 1856-1936 (Maryland)

9 William Meredith 1919-2007 (born New York)

10 Robinson Jeffers 1887-1962 (Pennsylvania and Northern California)

14 Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander, 1700-1764 (Germany, a poet who collaborated with J. S. Bach)

15 Osip Mandelstam 1891-1938 (born in Warsaw, Russian-Jew)

15 Ivor Cutler 1923-2006 (Scottish-Jewish)

16 Robert Service 1874-1958 (born to a Scottish family in England, emigrated to Canada)

16 Jules Supervielle 1884-1960 (French, born in Montevideo, Uruguay)

18 A.A. Milne 1882-1956 (English)

19 Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 (born Boston, lived in Virginia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania)

19 Pat Mora 1942- (Mexican-American poet born El Paso, Texas)

20 Huddie Ledbetter known as Leadbelly, 1889-1949 (African-American blues poet/songwriter, born

21 Richard P. Blackmur 1904-1965 (Massachusetts)

21 Thomas Merton 1915-1968 (born in France, lived in Kentucky)

21 Ian McMillan 1956- (English Yorkshire poet)

22 George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824 (English)

22 Howard Moss 1922-1987 (Jewish-American poet born in New York; won Pulitzer Prize in 1971)

25 Robert Burns (portrait below) 1759-1796 (Scottish)

27 Lewis Carroll 1832-1898 (English)

29 Halfdan Rasmussen 1915-2002 (Danish)

30 Sterling Plumpp 1940- (African-American blues poet/songwriter, born in Clinton, Mississippi)

With a vague soughing of leaves
A black wind rustles by
And a flickering swallow draws
A circle against the dark sky.

In my gently dying heart
There is quiet contending
Between twilight drawing on
And daylight ending.

A copper moon stood above
Woods that night filled with darkness.
Why ius there so little music
And why such stillness?
- Osip Mandelstam, from Stones, translated by Robert Tracy

Other Poet Anniversaries in January

1845    Elizabeth Barrett receives an “I Love You” letter from little-known poet Robert Browning
1935    Ezra Pound meets Mussolino and gives him a draft of the “Cantos” as a gift
1939    Death of William Butler Yeats, great Irish poet
1961    Robert Frost reads at John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Presidential inauguration
2009    Elizabeth Alexander reads at Presidential inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama
1972    John Berryman commits suicide January 7 at age 58

Statue of Robert Burns in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Aquarius/Pisces Poets of February

"Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life."-- Bertolt Brecht, born February 10, 1898

1  Paul Fort 1872-1960 (French)
1  Hugo Von Hofmannsthal 1874-1929 (Austrian)
1  Langston Hughes 1902-1967 (African-American/Missouri)
1  Galway Kinnell 1927- (Irish-American/Providence, Rhode Island)
2  Hamid Abdulhak 1852-1937 (Turkish)
2  James Joyce 1882-1941 (Irish)
  3  George Trakl (at left) 1887-1914 (Austrian)
4  Jacques Prévert 1900-1977 (French)
6  Christopher Marlowe 1564-1593 (English)
6  Alexander Pushkin 1799-1837 (African-Russian)
6  Anne Spencer 1882-1975 (African-American/Virginia)
6  Melvin Tolson 1898-1966 (Mixed race-American/Missouri)
6  Pauline Laetitia Tennant, Lady Rumbold 1929-2008 (English)
7  Rhijnvis Feith 1753-1824 (Dutch)
8  Elizabeth Bishop 1911-1979 (Worcester, Massachusetts)
9  Amy Lowell 1847-1925 (American/Massachusetts, Pulitzer Prize in 1925)
9  Brendan Behan 1923-1964 (Irish)
10 Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956 (German)
12 Thomas Campion 1567-1920 (English)
16 Elisabeth Eybers 1915-2007 (South African Afrikaaner poet)
16 Peter Neville Frederick Porter 1929- (Australian/English)
17 William Bronk 1918-1999 (American/New York)
18 Luis Muñoz Marín 1898-1980 (Puerto Rico)
18 Audre Lorde 1934-1992 (New York; poet laureate of state of New York 1991-92)
19 Andre Bréton 1896-1966 (French Surrealist poet)
20 Pieter Cornelis Boutens 1870-1943 (Dutch)
21 Wystan Hugh (W. H.) Auden 1907-1973 (English/American)
22 James Russell Lowell 1819-1891 (American/Massachusetts)
22 Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892-1950 (American/Maine)
22 George Seferis 1900-1971 (Greek,1963 Nobelist)
22 Ishmael Reed 1938- (African-American/Oakland, CA)
26 Victor Hugo 1802-1885 (French)
27 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  1807-1882(Maine)
27 Angelina Weld Grimke 1880-1958 (African-American/Massachusetts)
28 Stephen Spender 1909-1995 (English)
28 John Montague 1929- (born New York; Irish)
28 Arthur Symons 1865-1945 (English)
29 Howard Nemerov 1920-1991 (American/New York, 3rd U.S. Poet Laureate)

There are
no clocks on the wall,
and no time,
no shadows that move
from dawn to dusk
across the floor.

There is neither light
nor dark
outside the door.

Thee is no door!
- Langston Hughes