Short Story Classics: The Vertical Fields, By Fielding Dawson
Fielding Dawson was an American author of short stories and novels, a painter and collagist, and a student at Black Mountain College.
Poetry Classics: The Old Flame, By Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell was born in 1917 into one of Boston's oldest and most prominent families. He attended Harvard College for two years before transferring to Kenyon College, where he studied poetry under John Crowe Ransom and received an undergraduate degree in 1940. He took graduate courses at Louisiana State University where he studied with Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. His first and second books, Land of Unlikeness (1944) and Lord Weary's Castle (for which he received a Pulitzer Prize in 1946, at the age of thirty),
Poetry Classics: The Castaway, By William Cowper
The Castaway is an elegiac poem/ballad written by William Cowper in 1799. The poem is written in rhymed stanzas and gives the account of a crewman who was washed overboard during a storm.
Poetry Classics: Dover Beach, By Matthew Arnold
"Dover Beach" is a lyric poem by the English poet Matthew Arnold. It was first published in 1867 in the collection New Poems, but surviving notes indicate its composition may have begun as early as 1849. The most likely date is 1851.
Poetry Classics: Echo, By Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and "Remember".
Poetry Classics: The Dead Man Walking, By Thomas Hardy
"The Dead Man Walking" is a lyric poem centering despair and pessimism. A lyric poem presents the author's imaginative or emotional response to a person, a place, a thing, an event, or an idea. Unlike a narrative poem, a lyric poem does not tell a story.
Poetry Classics: London, By William Blake
London is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience that does not have a corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence.
Short Story Classics: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, By Ambrose Bierce
Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek" is Bierce's most famous short story. It was first published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1890. It then appeared in Bierce's 1891 collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.
Poetry Classics: To Helen, By Edgar Allan Poe
"To Helen" is the first of two poems to carry that name written by Edgar Allan Poe. The 15-line poem was written in honor of Jane Stanard, the mother of a childhood friend. It was first published in the 1831 collection Poems of Edgar A. Poe.
Poetry Classics: A Dream, By Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the greatest yet mysterious poets in the world. His life shaped his poems and short stories; all the misery, sorrow, romantic feelings Poe suffered was expressed through his poems and short stories. He was part of the famous American Romantic Movement, consequently, most of his work was dark and disturbing.
Short Story Classics: Love Suicides, By Yasunari Kawabata
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (掌の小説 tenohira / tanagokoro no shōsetsu) is the name Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata gave to more than 140 short stories he wrote over his long career, though he reputedly preferred the reading tanagokoro for the 掌 character. The earliest story was published in 1920 with the last appearing posthumously in 1972. The stories are characterized by their brevity – some are less than a page long – and by their dramatic concision.
Poetry Classics: The Tiger, By William Blake
This poem contemplates a question arising from the idea of creation by an intelligent creator. The question is this: If there is a loving, compassionate God or gods who created human beings and whose great powers exceed the comprehension of human beings, as many major religions hold, then why would such a powerful being allow evil into the world
Poetry Classics: Marching Streets, By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Poetry Classics: Advice To A Son, By Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway wrote Advice to a Son right after the Roaring Twenties in the early 1930's. This poem shows the many things that Hemingway had learned after fleeing to Paris from America after the Great War. Hemingway in his early thirties was writing to his son through poetry about the harsh reality of life.
Poetry Classics: Ode On A Grecian Urn, By John Keats
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819 and published anonymously in the January 1820, Number 15, issue of the magazine Annals of the Fine Arts
Short Story Classics: The Story Of An Hour, By Kate Chopin
"The Story of an Hour," is a short story written by Kate Chopin on April 19, 1894. It was originally published in Vogue on December 6, 1894, as "The Dream of an Hour". It was later reprinted in St. Louis Life on January 5, 1895, as "The Story of an Hour". The title of the short story refers to the time elapsed between the moments at which the protagonist, Louise Mallard, hears that her husband is dead, and when she discovers that he is alive after all. "The Story of an Hour" was controversial by American standards of the 1890s because it features a female protagonist who feels liberated by the news of her husband's death. In Unveiling Kate Chopin, Emily Toth argues that Chopin "had to have her heroine die" in order to make the story publishable". (The "heroine" dies when she sees her husband alive after he was thought to be dead.
