Arthur Rimbaud made his way through language like some crazed channeler of unseen forces. As a Symbolist poet, Rimbaud scrambled the senses and his prose, forging a synesthetic wash of words sustained by their own momentum and internal sense. There is no clear form (he did not write sonnets); there's

Anxiety, Dark, Dissonant, Overflowing, Pathos, Surreal, Symbolist poetry

Herman Melville was born in 1819 to a quintessentially American family -- one bestarred with Revolutionary heroes and Tea Party guests. His father, Allan Melvill (who would later add the elegant "e" to the family name), had a mediocre opinion of him, writing around his son's 12th birthday that he was

Baroque, Expansive, Grand, Lyrical, Overflowing, Repetition, Romantic literature, Sublime

The unlucky landlord of "Rent" died the night his smash Broadway musical was born in 1996. Following the musical's final dress rehearsal, Broadway's Great White Hope for the American musical unexpectedly perished in his apartment of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 35. Theater's wunderkind reworked

Bombast, Dramatic, New american musical, Overflowing, Pop, Tragic

The dramatic duo of Victorian London, playwright Sir William Schwenck Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, turned a theatrical corner with the creation of their wildly successful comic operas. For more than 20 years, the pair created a host of now-classic light operas, such as "HMS Pinafore" (1

Dramatic, Lyrical, Musical theater, Overflowing, Pathos, Playful