A Brief History
On February 27, 1807, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Maine, going on to a career in education and especially poetry, becoming the most prominent American poet of his day. Today, we ask you, “Who is America’s greatest poet?” We list some possible choices with perhaps their greatest poems, but feel free to add your own:
Digging Deeper
Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning”
E.E. Cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town”
Emily Dickinson, “Hope”
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride”
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
Ezra Pound, Cathay
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Question for students (and subscribers): Who is your choice as America’s greatest poet? How about America’s Greatest Poem? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Canarroe, Joel (editor). Six American Poets: An Anthology. Vintage, 1993.
Williams, Oscar and Edward Honig (editors). The Mentor Book of Major American Poets. Berkley, 1962.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of the birthplace of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Portland, Maine, is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1928.
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