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La Fontaine, Jean de

(Encyclopedia)La Fontaine, Jean de zhäN də [key], 1621–95, French poet, whose celebrated fables place him among the masters of world literature. He was born at Château-Thierry to a bourgeois family. A restless...

MacLeish, Archibald

(Encyclopedia)MacLeish, Archibald məklēshˈ [key], 1892–1982, American poet and public official, b. Glencoe, Ill., grad. Yale, 1915, LL.B Harvard, 1919. He practiced law for only three years and during the 1920...

Blair, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Blair, Robert, 1699–1746, English poet and clergyman. His literary reputation rests solely on his didactic, blank-verse poem on death, The Grave (1743). ...

Lanier, Sidney

(Encyclopedia)Lanier, Sidney lənērˈ [key], 1842–81, American poet and musician, b. Macon, Ga., grad. Oglethorpe College 1860. His first work, the novel Tiger-Lilies (1867), was based on his experiences as a Co...

Mistral, Frédéric

(Encyclopedia)Mistral, Frédéric frādārēkˈ mēsträlˈ [key], 1830–1914, French Provençal poet. With Théodore Aubanel he was one of the seven founders (1854) of the Félibrige, an organization to promote P...

Dove, Rita

(Encyclopedia)Dove, Rita, 1952–, American poet, b. Akron, Ohio, studied Iowa Writers' Workshop (M.F.A., 1977). Her first poetry collection, Ten Poems, was published in 1977. Her verse is at once concise, precise,...

Tolstoy, Aleksey Konstantinovich

(Encyclopedia)Tolstoy, Aleksey Konstantinovich tŏlˈstoi, Rus. əlyĭksyāˈ kənstəntyēˈnəvĭch təlstoiˈ [key], 1817–75, Russian poet, dramatist, and novelist. He was a distant cousin of Leo Tolstoy. Toge...

offertory

(Encyclopedia)offertory [Lat.,=offering], in the Roman Catholic Mass and in derived liturgical forms, the preparation of bread and wine on the altar and their formal offering to God. It takes place after the gospel...

Ginsberg, Allen

(Encyclopedia)Ginsberg, Allen gĭnzˈbûrg [key], 1926–97, American poet, b. Paterson, N.J., grad. Columbia, 1949. An outspoken member of the beat generation, Ginsberg is best known for Howl (1956), a long poem a...

Hopkins, Gerard Manley

(Encyclopedia)Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844–89, English poet, educated at Oxford. Entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, he was ordained in 1877. Upon becoming a Jesuit he bur...