"Curiouser and curiouser!" was Alice's verdict on her adventures down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" (1865), a book that exposed the absurdity of adult conventions and manners above ground. Carroll (whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson) was a pathologically shy math

Fantastic, Fantasy, Layered, Mathematical, Quirky, Repetition, Surreal, Whimsical

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

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

Baroque, Beautiful , Composed, Dense, Elegant, Essays, Implosive, Layered, Playful, Postmodern fiction, Repetition, Science fiction, Surreal, Surrealist literature, Whimsical