Amiri Baraka (1934) was born LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey. He earned a B.A. from Howard University and an M.A from Columbia University. From 1954 until 1956 he lived in the United States Air Force. Since then he taught at, among other schools, the New School for Social Research and Columbia University and has devoted himself to various experimental artistic ventures and radical political causes. He was instrumental in the founding of several small magazines, the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem, and Spirit House in Newark. In the 1970s, when he became a Black Muslim and took the name Imanu Amiri Baraka (although later he dropped Imanu), he began to write polemic poetry espousing black militancy. He later joined the Communist Party. In addition to poetry, he has written a novel, a collection of short stories, an autobiography, several plays, and numerous tracts on social issues. Baraka cites Allen Ginsberg as a major influence on his work, the primary themes of which include the nature of identity and the despair inherent in the human condition. He satirizes bourgeois values, but at the same time attempts to salvage and praise whatever “is useful and can be saved out of all the garbage of our lives.” His poetry manifests the fluidity and improvisational qualities associated with jazz and scat, and are particularly well suited to public performance.

     1960 s American poetic scenario especially in Black Art Movement some poetry were written about the anger. Among such poets, Amiri Baraka stands most prominently. In his poetry we can find the most powerful, bold fearless expression of social right. He believes that poetry ought to be loud gravely and racy. Black Art poetry is especially about the life of urban that records the hopes, joys and tribulation of black experiences in the jungle of American metropolitans. In Black Art poetry the hopes and optimism ultimately ended the life by disillusionment of city. Their optimism turns out to be pessimism. So they started criminal things. They spoilt their life by being pessimistic.The poetry written in 60 s and 70 s were the result of black optimism and the terrible stress felt in the ghettoes. To express their dreams and expectations they used irregular rhymes and rhythms emerged spontaneously that they derived from black music or Black speech. Their rhythm used to either colloquial or jazz.

    W. H. Auden (1907-1973), British-born poet, was educated at Oxford. Deeply feeling the impact of the early thirties’ unemployment in England, he and his friends developed a social conscience which resembled communism, Look Stranger! (1936) is the collection of poems that secured his position as a leading left-wing poet. Read More...

     Cynthia Zarin (1959) was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. She was educated at Harvard College & Columbia University. A staff writer at The Now Yorker from 1985 until 1994, she currently teaches at Princeton University & lives in New York City, where she is a writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Read More...

     Cathy Song (1955) a descendant of Korean immigrants, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and raised in Wahiawa, a village on the island of Oahu. She was educated at the University of Hawaii, Wellesley College, and Boston University, and her first book, Picture Bride (1982), was published in the Yale series of Younger Poets. Read More...

     Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was born in Ilford, Essex (England), and educated at home. After working as a nurse in London during World War II, she immigrated to the United States in 1948. From 1956 to 1959 she lived in Mexico. She then taught at, among other schools, Stanford University. In addition to poetry, she published two collections of prose. Read More...

    Dylan Thomas (1914-1953). Welsh poet. Born in Swansea, he was the son of a schoolmaster. He worked for a time as a reporter for the South Wales Evening Post and established himself with the publication of Eighteen Poems in 1934, in which year he moved to London, later settling permanently back in Wales at Laugharne. Read More...

     Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. After her father’s death in 1911 and her mother’s permanent hospitalization for mental illness in 1917, Bishop lived with relatives in Nova Scotia and Massachusetts. She was educated at Vassar College, and while there Bishop met the poet Marianne Moore, who recognized her promise and became her mentor. Read More...

    Margaret Atwood (1939) was born in Ottawa, Canada, and raised there and in Toronto. As a child, she spent much time in the woods of northern Quebec, where her father conducted entomological research. Educated at the University of Toronto, Radcliffe College and Harvard University, Atwood has taught at a number of Canadian universities and has worked as an editor for the Anansi publishing house. Read More...

     Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a prominent family. For one year she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now College), in nearby South Hadley, then withdrew and returned to Amherst. Her adult life was as short on external incident as it was long on imagination. Dickinson lived at her family home in Amherst form 1848 on, she rarely received visitors, and in her mature years she never went out. Read More...

    Langston Hughes (1902-67), born in Missouri is a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He led a nomadic life in the U.S. and Europe until he began his prolific literary career with The Weary Blues (1926), poems on black themes in jazz rhythms and idiom, whose success made possible his college career at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. His concern with his race, mainly in an urban setting is evident in his works, as is his social consciousness. Read More...