1955 in poetry

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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

List of years in poetry (table)
In literature
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958

Events

  • April – Wallace Stevens is baptized a Catholic by the chaplain of St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, where Stevens spends his last days suffering from terminal cancer.[1] After a brief release from the hospital, Stevens is readmitted and dies on August 2 at the age of 76.
  • July 30 – Philip Larkin makes a train journey in England from Hull to Grantham which inspires his poem The Whitsun Weddings.[2] His collection The Less Deceived is published in November (dated October).
  • The Group, a British poetry movement, starts meeting in London with gatherings taking place once a week, on Friday evenings, at first at Philip Hobsbaum's flat and later at the house of Edward Lucie-Smith. The poets gather to discuss each other's work, putting into practice the sort of analysis and objective comment in keeping with the principles of Hobsbaum's Cambridge tutor F. R. Leavis and of the New Criticism in general. Before each meeting about six or seven poems by one poet are typed, duplicated and distributed to the dozen or so participants.
  • The Movement poets as a group in Britain come to public notice this year in Robert Conquest's anthology New Lines. The core of the group consists of Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Jennings, D. J. Enright, Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn and Donald Davie. They are identified with a hostility to modernism and internationalism, and look to Thomas Hardy as a model. However, both Davie and Gunn later move away from this position.
  • Henry Rago[3] becomes editor of Poetry magazine in the United States.

Beat poets

  • July 19 – Beat poet Weldon Kees's Plymouth Savoy is found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco with the keys in the ignition. When his friends go to search his apartment, all they find are the cat he had named Lonesome and a pair of red socks in the sink. His sleeping bag and savings account book are missing. He has left no note. No one is sure if Kees, 41, jumped off the bridge that day or if he went to Mexico. Before his disappearance, Kees quoted Rilke to friend Michael Grieg, ominously saying that sometimes a person needs to change his life completely.
  • October 7 – The "Six Gallery reading" takes place in San Francisco with Kenneth Rexroth acting as M.C., Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen read, and the event includes Allen Ginsberg's first reading of Howl (written the previous summer at Ginsberg's cottage in Berkeley, California); the reading (1) brings together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation, (2) is the first important public manifestation of the poetry movement and (3) helps to herald the West Coast literary revolution that becomes known as the San Francisco Renaissance. In the audience a totally drunken Jack Kerouac refuses to read his own work but cheers on the others, shouting "Yeah! Go! Go!" during their performances.

Works published in English

Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:

Canada

New Zealand

  • James K. Baxter:
    • The Fire and the Anvil, critical study, based on three Macmillan Brown lectures on poetry at Victoria University in 1954, criticism
    • Traveller’s Litany, a long poem published in pamphlet form
  • J. R. Hervey, She Was My Spring[8]
  • Kendrick Smithyman, The Gay Trapeze, Wellington: Handcraft Press

United Kingdom

United States

Carl Sandburg in 1955

Criticism, scholarship, and biography in the United States

  • Carl Sandburg, Prairie-town boy (autobiography; essentially excerpts from Always the Young Strangers)

Other in English

Works published in other languages

France

India

Listed in alphabetical order by first name:

Gujarati

Oriya

Other languages of the Indian subcontinent

Other languages

Awards and honors

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

See also

Notes

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  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Gustafson, Ralph, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, revised edition, 1967, Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books
  5. 5.0 5.1 "Irving Layton: Publications," Canadian Poetry Online, Web, May 7, 2011.
  6. "Dorothy Livesay (1909-1996): Works", Canadian Women Poets, Brock University. Web, Mar. 18, 2011.
  7. "Notes on Life and Works," Selected Poetry of Raymond Souster, Representative Poetry Online, UToronto.ca, Web, May 7, 2011.
  8. Web page titled "Ursula Bethall" in An Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 1966 website, accessed April 21, 2008
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860634-6
  10. 10.0 10.1 M. L. Rosenthal, The New Poets: American and British Poetry Since World War II, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967, "Selected Bibliography: Individual Volumes by Poets Discussed", pp 334-340
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 "A List of 250 Outstanding Books", The New York Times Book Review, December 4, 1955
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  13. 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 13.11 13.12 13.13 13.14 Ludwig, Richard M., and Clifford A. Nault, Jr., Annals of American Literature: 1602–1983, 1986, New York: Oxford University Press ("If the title page is one year later than the copyright date, we used the latter since publishers frequently postdate books published near the end of the calendar year." — from the Preface, p vi)
  14. Everett, Nicholas, "Robert Creeley's Life and Career" at the Modern American Poetry website, accessed May 1, 2008
  15. Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, et al., editors, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 1993, Princeton University Press and MJF Books, "Australian Poetry" article, Anthologies section, p 108
  16. Web page titled "Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918)" at the Poetry Foundation website, retrieved August 9, 2009. Archived 2009-09-03.
  17. 17.0 17.1 Bree, Germaine, Twentieth-Century French Literature, translated by Louise Guiney, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983
  18. 18.0 18.1 18.2 Auster, Paul, editor, The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry: with Translations by American and British Poets, New York: Random House, 1982 ISBN 0-394-52197-8
  19. 19.00 19.01 19.02 19.03 19.04 19.05 19.06 19.07 19.08 19.09 19.10 19.11 19.12 19.13 19.14 19.15 19.16 19.17 19.18 19.19 Das, Sisir Kumar and various, History of Indian Literature: 1911-1956: struggle for freedom: triumph and tragedy, Volume 2, 1995, published by Sahitya Akademi, ISBN 978-81-7201-798-9, retrieved via Google Books on December 23, 2008
  20. Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, et al., editors, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 1993, Princeton University Press and MJF Books, "German Poetry" article, "Anthologies in German" section, pp 473-474
  21. "Cumulative List of Winners of the Governor General's Literary Awards", Canada Council. Web, Feb. 10, 2011.
  22. Service for Shinder ; Fox, Margalit, "Jason Shinder, 52, Poet and Founder of Arts Program, Dies", obituary, May 3, 2008, The New York Times, retrieved December 11, 2008
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