Viewing the human condition as a "confused impurity," Pablo Neruda wrote what he called "impure poetry." His childhood in remote Temuco, Chile, was spent voraciously reading Spanish and French literature. The boy "hunted poems" in the mountains and forests nearby, and published several pieces in Te

Dreamy, Ecstatic, Erotic, Intimate, Lush, Political, Rebel, Romantic poetry, Saturated, Surrealist poetry

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

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

In the Preface to his "Leaves of Grass," Walt Whitman wrote: "The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." His words have shown true for himself, as Whitman's influence is felt everywhere in American poetry. Even one hundred years after "Leaves of Gras

Beats, Epic, Expansive, Homoerotic, Joyful, Layered, Overflowing, Political, Repetition, Romantic poetry, Transcendentalism