Toni Morrison, arguably the most famous living African American author, was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 in Ohio. As a child, she was an avid and precocious reader, and her family of masterful storytellers raised her on a steady diet of tales and legends. She studied literature at Howard and Co

African american fiction, Dense, Feminine, Layered, Melancholy, Pathos, Religious, Southern gothic, Spectral, Women's literature

Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet Laureate of Illinois since 1968, is the first black writer to have won the Pulitzer Prize: her second book of poetry, "Annie Allen," was selected for the award in 1950. Born in 1917, Brooks began her writing career while still a child growing up in the slums of Chicago. At the

African american fiction, In-your-face, Modernist poetry, Pathos, Political, Urban

When, in his famous epic poem "Howl," Allen Ginsberg spoke of "the best minds of my generation," he could only have meant the Beats, that band of notorious writers and artists that formed his surrogate family. Ginsberg, the anti-establishment Buddhist homosexual, became themost widely known public pe

Beat poetry, Epic, Homoerotic, Pathos, Perverse, Political, Queer literature, Religious, Romantic poetry, Sincere, Trippy

In 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke was staying at the Chateau de Muzot in Switzerland. His masterwork, the "Duino Elegies," had lain unfinished for seven years, and the poet was hoping to find some peace and solitude in which to complete it. Rilke had recently come across a Renaissance painting of the mythi

Contemplative, Pathos, Romantic poetry, Spiritual, Sublime