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	Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Juana was a voracious reader in her early childhood, hiding in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library. She composed her first poem when she was eight years old. Stéphane Mallarmé In the 1880s, Mallarmé was at the center of a group of French writers including Andre Gide, Paul Valéry and Marcel Proust that he referred to as "The Decadents." Thomas Merton Merton published nearly 50 books in his lifetime. Inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins' conversion to Catholicism and the priesthood, Merton was baptized in 1938, and began studying the catechism of the Catholic church. Geoffrey Chaucer Now considered the "Father of English literature," Chaucer held several positions early in his life, serving as a noblewoman's page, a courtier, a diplomat, a civil servant, and a collector of scrap metal. Petrarch A celebrity throughout Europe, Petrarch travelled widely for pleasure and is sometimes called "the first tourist." Known for his work reviving interest in classical literature, Petrarch is also considered the "father of Humanism." Rachel Wetzsteon In a New York Times feature article about the poet, her work is described as "hard-edged yet sinuous, rich with feeling yet unsentimental." She recently passed away on December 25, 2009. Marie Howe Author of three collections of poetry, Howe is also the editor of an anthology of American writing from the AIDS pandemic. She lives in New York City and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Columbia University. Leslie Scalapino Both as a poet and publisher, Scalapino is a renowned promoter of experimental verse, often working in collaboration with other poets. Despite ties to many language poets, she is both separate and vital to that school of thought. Philip Appleman Born in Indiana in 1926, Philip Appleman served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and in the Merchant Marine Cadet Corps after the war. Kenneth Goldsmith A key figure in "conceptual poetry," Goldsmith describes his aesthetic as "a poetics of the moment, fusing the avant-garde impulses of the last century with the technologies of the present." Phillip Lopate A poet and essayist, as Lopate puts it: "Though I am known today mostly as an essayist, occasionally as a fiction writer, for about fifteen years I wrote poetry." Ira Sadoff Born in 1945 to Russian immigrants, Sadoff has published numerous books and served as poetry editor of The Antioch Review as well as co-founder of The Seneca Review.
	New & Improved
	New poems, photos, links, and more have been added to the profiles of Walt Whitman,Sherman Alexie, Deborah Digges, Saskia Hamilton, Ben Jonson, Keith Waldrop, James Dickey, Frank O'Hara, Constantine Cavafy,Rosanna Warren, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Louise Glück, James Tate, Mahmoud Darwish, Marvin Bell, Derek Walcott, Alice Walker & Lucie Brock-Broido

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

At Tara today in this fateful hour

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At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all heaven with its power,
and the sun with its brightness,
and the snow with its whiteness,
and fire with all the strength it hath,
and lightning with its rapid wrath,
and the winds with their swiftness along their path,
and the sea with its deepness,
and the rocks with their steepness
and the earth with its starkness:
all these I place,
by God's almighty help and grace,
between myself and the powers of darkness.

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fateful: with serious, often disastrous, consequences
wrath: great anger

I wish I loved the Human Race

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I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one,
I wish I thought "What Jolly Fun!"

What a piece of work is a man!

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What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty!
in form, in moving, how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!
And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
man delights not me; no, nor woman neither,
though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.

When I was a child

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When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away
childish things. For now we see through a
glass, darkly; but then face to face: now
I know in part; but then shall I know even
as also I am known.

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spake: spoke (past tense of "to speak" - old-style English)

I met a traveller from an antique land

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I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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trunk: person's body without legs, arms or head
trunkless: without trunk
visage: face
wrinkled: slightly folded; creased
sneer: contemptuous or mocking smile