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Thought this was a really great opportunity for students and wanted to share!

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See below for press related to Poetry in America's programming for high-schoolers.

Feature in The New York Times

On Friday, The New York Times highlighted the work we've been doing with our partners at the National Educational Equity Lab in a front-page article by Erica L. Green, "A Program Inspires Ivy League Dreams in Disadvantaged Teens."

Feature in Harvard Magazine

In Fall 2019, Poetry in America, in partnership with the National Education Equity Lab and the Harvard Extension School, offered a for-credit course to high-schoolers in Title I schools across the United States. Read this feature in Harvard Magazine by Lydialyle Gibson to learn more about the pilot run of Harvard's first-ever dual enrollment offering (from the March-April 2020 issue).

Feature by The Common App

The National Education Equity Lab celebrated the success of Pilot participants at Jazz at Lincoln Center back in February. Read this piece from The Common App (from February 5, 2020).

Feature in The Harvard Crimson

During the Fall 2019 semester, The Harvard Crimson ran a feature on the Poetry in America National Pilot. Click below to read their coverage (from October 31, 2019).

Local News Features

Opelousas, Louisiana

KATC News in Opelousas, Louisiana, interviewed students and school administrators at Opelousas High School about their participation in the Poetry in America National Pilot. Click below for their coverage (from September 19, 2019).

Pontiac, Michigan

Students at Pontiac's International Technology Academy (in Pontiac, Michigan) were early participants in Poetry in America's programming for high-schoolers. Pontiac ITA students first enrolled in a Poetry in America course in Spring 2019; ITA students also participated in the Fall 2019 Pilot. Click below to read a feature by The Oakland Press (from May 13, 2019).

Feature in The Harvard Gazette

Poetry in America Founder and Director Elisa New and Harvard University President Larry Bacow visited Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego, California-one of Poetry in America's very first educational partners-in the winter of 2018. Students from HSHMC have earned low-cost college credit by enrolling in Poetry in America courses for the last several years. Click the link below to read about the students' experience with Poetry in America, and about President Bacow's visit to their campus (from December 16, 2018).

True Grit: On Poetry and Character with the UNC Women's Soccer Team

UNC Soccer has an incredible history of winning-- 22 NCAA championships over the last 36 years. While filming practice last month, we got to witness first-hand the speed, strength, and grit of these champions, followed by a discussed of Coleman Barks' "Glad" with the team, its legendary coach Anson Dorrance, and Macarthur Genius Angela Duckworth. How would a championship team respond to a poem in which the speaker's team loses ten-zip?

The Production Design of Modernism

When we began filming the core segments for our Modernism course, the production team knew that we wanted to move beyond the one-note aesthetic of previous edX Poetry in America modules. We wanted to marry our visual approach to the mold-breaking spirit of Modernist poets themselves. Because the structure of the videos themselves wasn't something we could experiment with, we turned to production design to explore the individual tone of each week.

Poetry at the White House

Last month, the Poetry in America team headed to Washington DC for one of our most exciting conversations yet: a discussion with Vice President Joe Biden on Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." What would the Vice President have to say about the father/son relationship in Hayden's poem?

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IN THE NEWS: Poetry in America for High-Schoolers

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See below for press related to Poetry in America's programming for high-schoolers. On Friday, The New York Times highlighted the work we've been doing with our partners at the National Educational Equity Lab in a front-page article by Erica L. Green, "A Program Inspires Ivy League Dreams in Disadvantaged Teens."

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More great young poets! This was very inspiring!

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On April 12th, 2022, Poetry in America's own Elisa New and Gillian Osborne joined the National Student Poets Class of 2020 for a discussion of Edna St. Vincent Millay's provocative poetry, and their own craft. The virtual event was co-presented by Scholastic, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.

2020 student poets Isabella Ramirez, Ethan Wang, and Rosemary Dietz initially discussed Millay's "Sonnet IV; I shall forget you presently, my dear" in our Season Three finale on PBS. Tuesday's event brought their conversation to current and prospective students in the Poetry in America for High Schools program, who read Millay as part of their study of 1920's U.S. poetry.

Given the old timey feel of Millay's name ("Edna," "St. Vincent"), and the near centennial vintage of the poem - to say nothing of the more-than-1000-year history of the sonnet - the student poets were pleasantly surprised at the freshness and relevance of the poem's form and content. As Rosemary said, unlike the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets that popularized the form, "[Millay's sonnet] celebrates something very different than love. It celebrates having a good time with someone and then knowing that it doesn't have to last forever." Isabella responded to the poem by noting, "As a queer person, I feel that inherently my love exists outside of many of the institutions that Millay implicitly critiques- such as marriage, motherhood."

For the student poets, and the students listening in the audience, the conversation shed some light on why a poet might choose to write in a particular form. Isabella noted, "a lot of things became clearer to me as ... I saw how Millay plays into [the sonnet] structure ... and how she uses it to her advantage and subverts it ... I love to see how many moving pieces you can get in just 14 lines... It's quite a feat as a writer and as a poet." In response, Rosemary observed of the sonnet, "It's good to see that [even with] a form that is entrenched in meaning, you don't have to stick with that meaning forever. And today poets and writers continue to subvert forms that have been entrenched for hundreds or even thousands of years and thats very very exciting to me."

True Grit: On Poetry and Character with the UNC Women's Soccer Team

UNC Soccer has an incredible history of winning-- 22 NCAA championships over the last 36 years. While filming practice last month, we got to witness first-hand the speed, strength, and grit of these champions, followed by a discussed of Coleman Barks' "Glad" with the team, its legendary coach Anson Dorrance, and Macarthur Genius Angela Duckworth. How would a championship team respond to a poem in which the speaker's team loses ten-zip?

The Production Design of Modernism

When we began filming the core segments for our Modernism course, the production team knew that we wanted to move beyond the one-note aesthetic of previous edX Poetry in America modules. We wanted to marry our visual approach to the mold-breaking spirit of Modernist poets themselves. Because the structure of the videos themselves wasn't something we could experiment with, we turned to production design to explore the individual tone of each week.

Poetry at the White House

Last month, the Poetry in America team headed to Washington DC for one of our most exciting conversations yet: a discussion with Vice President Joe Biden on Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." What would the Vice President have to say about the father/son relationship in Hayden's poem?

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So make the most of this, your little day: Poetry in America and National Student Poets in Conversation

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On April 12th, 2022, Poetry in America's own Elisa New and Gillian Osborne joined the National Student Poets Class of 2020 for a discussion of Edna St. Vincent Millay's provocative poetry, and their own craft. The virtual event was co-presented by Scholastic, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.

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I chose to research William Shakespeare because he is one of the world's greatest writers. Shakespeare is definitely an inspiration to young writers today as his work is apart of many mandatory curriculums for high school and college students.

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William Shakespeare: A biography

Since William Shakespeare lived more than 400 years ago, and many records from that time are lost or never existed in the first place, we don't know everything about Shakespeare's life. For example, we know that he was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, 100 miles northwest of London, on April 26, 1564. But we don't know his exact birthdate, which must have been a few days earlier.

We do know that Shakespeare's life revolved around two locations: Stratford and London. He grew up, had a family, and bought property in Stratford, but he worked in London, the center of English theater. As an actor, a playwright, and a partner in a leading acting company, he became both prosperous and well-known. Even without knowing everything about his life, fans of Shakespeare have imagined and reimagined him according to their own tastes.

Looking for more in-depth information? Need something you can cite? Read an essay about Shakespeare's life from the Folger Shakespeare Editions. Read essay

Early life: Birth and childhood

William Shakespeare was probably born on about April 23, 1564, the date that is traditionally given for his birth. He was John and Mary Shakespeare's oldest surviving child; their first two children, both girls, did not live beyond infancy. Growing up as the big brother of the family, William had three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and two younger sisters: Anne, who died at seven, and Joan.

Their father, John Shakespeare, was a leatherworker who specialized in the soft white leather used for gloves and similar items. A prosperous businessman, he married Mary Arden, of the prominent Arden family. John rose through local offices in Stratford, becoming an alderman and eventually, when William was five, the town bailiff-much like a mayor. Not long after that, however, John Shakespeare stepped back from public life; we don't know why.

Shakespeare, as the son of a leading Stratford citizen, almost certainly attended Stratford's grammar school. Like all such schools, its curriculum consisted of an intense emphasis on the Latin classics, including memorization, writing, and acting classic Latin plays. Shakespeare most likely attended until about age 15.

A horn book in the Folger collection, similar to one that Shakespeare might have learned to read from

Marriage (to Anne Hathaway) and children

A few years after he left school, in late 1582, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. She was already expecting their first-born child, Susanna, which was a fairly common situation at the time. When they married, Anne was 26 and William was 18. Anne grew up just outside Stratford in the village of Shottery. After marrying, she spent the rest of her life in Stratford.

In early 1585, the couple had twins, Judith and Hamnet, completing the family. In the years ahead, Anne and the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare worked in London, although we don't know when he moved there. Some later observers have suggested that this separation, and the couple's relatively few children, were signs of a strained marriage, but we do not know that, either. Someone pursuing a theater career had no choice but to work in London, and many branches of the Shakespeares had small families.

Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of 11. His older daughter Susanna later married a well-to-do Stratford doctor, John Hall. Their daughter Elizabeth, Shakespeare's first grandchild, was born in 1608. In 1616, just months before his death, Shakespeare's daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney, a Stratford vintner. The family subsequently died out, leaving no direct descendants of Shakespeare.

London theater

For several years after the birth of Judith and Hamnet in 1585, nothing is known for certain of Shakespeare's activities: how he earned a living, when he moved from Stratford, or how he got his start in the theater.

Following this gap in the record, the first definite mention of Shakespeare is in 1592 as an established London actor and playwright, mocked by a contemporary as a "Shake-scene." The same writer alludes to one of Shakespeare's earliest history plays, Henry VI, Part 3, which must already have been performed. The next year, in 1593, Shakespeare published a long poem, Venus and Adonis. The first quarto editions of his early plays appeared in 1594.

For more than two decades, Shakespeare had multiple roles in the London theater as an actor, playwright, and, in time, a business partner in a major acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (renamed the King's Men in 1603). Over the years, he became steadily more famous in the London theater world; his name, which was not even listed on the first quartos of his plays, became a regular feature-clearly a selling point-on later title pages.

Final years and death

Shakespeare prospered financially from his partnership in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), as well as from his writing and acting. He invested much of his wealth in real-estate purchases in Stratford and bought the second-largest house in town, New Place, in 1597.

Among the last plays that Shakespeare worked on was The Two Noble Kinsmen, which he wrote with a frequent collaborator, John Fletcher, most likely in 1613. He died on April 23, 1616-the traditional date of his birthday, though his precise birthdate is unknown. We also do not know the cause of his death. His brother-in-law had died a week earlier, which could imply infectious disease, but Shakespeare's health may have had a longer decline.

The memorial bust of Shakespeare at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford is considered one of two authentic likenesses, because it was approved by people who knew him. The other such likeness is the engraving by Martin Droeshout in the 1623 First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, produced seven years after his death by his friends and colleagues from the King's Men.

Timeline

View a timeline of Shakespeare's life with links to key supporting documents on Shakespeare Documented.
View timeline

The bust of Shakespeare in the Folger Reading Room is a copy of the statue at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Shakespeare leave his wife his "second best bed"?

William Shakespeare wrote in his last will and testament, dated March 25, 1616, "Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture" (furniture is used to refer to the curtains and bedcover which formed part of the complete bed).

This was not an unusual bequest, nor was it likely to have been intended as a snub. The best bed was usually regarded as an heirloom piece, to be passed to the heir rather than the spouse. It is also probable that the best bed would have been reserved for guests, meaning the "second best" was the bed that William and Anne shared.

What did Shakespeare's son die of?

We don't really know how Shakespeare's young son Hamnet died. He had a twin sister named Judith, who lived to adulthood and married, but Hamnet died at the age of 11 and a half. Child mortality was high in the 16th century; there were no antibiotics and many childhood diseases might therefore prove fatal, such as scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, and even measles. He was buried on August 11, 1596.

What is the inscription on Shakespeare's grave?

GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE,
TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE:
BLESTE BE Ye [the] MAN Yt [that] SPARES THES STONES,
AND CURST BE HE Yt [that] MOVES MY BONES.

Did Shakespeare have a coat of arms?

Yes, William's father, John Shakespeare, was granted a coat of arms in 1596. It was disputed in 1602 by York Herald, Ralph Brooke, saying that the arms were too similar to existing coats of arms, and that the family was unworthy. However, the challenge was unsuccessful, as the Shakespeare coat of arms appears in later heraldic collections and on William Shakespeare's funeral monument in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Does Shakespeare have descendants?

William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had three children. The eldest, Susanna, was baptized on May 26, 1583, and married John Hall in 1607. They had one child, Elizabeth, in 1608. Elizabeth was married twice, to Thomas Nash in 1626, and to John Bernard in 1649. However, she had no children by either husband.

William and Anne also had twins, Judith and Hamnet, who were baptized on February 2, 1585. Hamnet died at age 11 and a half. Judith married Thomas Quiney in 1616, and the couple had three sons: Shakespeare Quiney, who died in infancy, and Richard and Thomas, who both died in 1639 within a month of each other. Since neither of the boys married, there is no possibility of any legitimate descendants from Shakespeare's line.

It is possible, however, to claim a relationship to Shakespeare through his sister, Joan. She married William Hart some time before 1600, and there are many descendants of this marriage alive today, in both the male and female lines.

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Shakespeare's life | Folger Shakespeare Library

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Learn about Shakespeare's life and family: birth in Stratford-upon-Avon, marriage to Anne Hathaway and their children, work in London theaters, and death.

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Walt Whitman is an American Poet who was involved the transition to realism. Today realism in the arts is something that many young artists learn about and practice. Walt Whitman is a very influential poet to this day.

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celebrate whitman 200
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor. In the 1820s and 1830s, the family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Long Island and Brooklyn, where Whitman attended the Brooklyn public schools.

At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn the printer's trade and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible.

Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of seventeen, he began his career as teacher in the one-room schoolhouses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, The Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent for three months. After witnessing the auctions of enslaved individuals in New Orleans, he returned to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848 and co-founded a "free soil" newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, which he edited through the next fall. Whitman's attitudes about race have been described as " unstable and inconsistent." He did not always side with the abolitionists, yet he celebrated human dignity.

In Brooklyn, Whitman continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-two poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his lifetime, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book. Noted Whitman scholar, M. Jimmie Killingsworth writes that "the 'merge,' as Whitman conceived it, is the tendency of the individual self to overcome moral, psychological, and political boundaries. Thematically and poetically, the notion dominates the three major poems of 1855: ' I Sing the Body Electric,' ' The Sleepers,' and 'Song of Myself,' all of which were merged in the first edition under the single title 'Leaves of Grass' but were demarcated by clear breaks in the text and the repetition of the title."

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged" and "cleansed" life. He worked as a freelance journalist and visited the wounded at New York City-area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1862 to care for his brother, who had been wounded in the war.

Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals; he ended up staying in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. After Harlan fired him, he went on to work in the attorney general's office.

In 1873, Whitman suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. A few months later he travelled to Camden, New Jersey, to visit his dying mother at his brother's house. He ended up staying with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass (James R. Osgood), which brought him enough money to buy a home in Camden.

In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (David McKay, 1891-92) and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye My Fancy (David McKay, 1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

Along with Emily Dickinson, he is considered one of America's most important poets.

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celebrate whitman 200 Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor. In the 1820s and 1830s, the family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Long Island and Brooklyn, where Whitman attended the Brooklyn public schools.