Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
Events
March – at a dinner celebrating Robert Frost's 85th birthday, the critic Lionel Trilling gives some brief remarks about Frost's poetry and "permanently changed the way people think about his subject", according to critic Adam Kirsch. Trilling says that Frost had been long viewed as a folksy, unobjectionable poet, "an articulate Bald Eagle" who gave readers comfortable truths in traditional meter and New England dialect in such schoolbook favorites such as "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "The Road Not Taken"; but was instead was "a terrifying poet" not so much like Longfellow as Sophocles, "who made plain ... the terrible things of human life." Trilling is severely criticized at the time, but his view will become widely accepted in the following decades. Kirsch, Adam, "Subterranean Frost Books", a review of The Notebooks of Robert Frost, in The New York Sun, February 12, 2007, accessed February 16, 2007. May 18–24 – Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union's head of state, in an extemporaneous speech at the Congress of Soviet Writers, calls for indulgence towards "deviationist" writers. At the same conference, the poet Alexis Surkov again condemns writing "hostile to socialist realism and denounces fellow poet Boris Pasternak as acting in a way that is "treacherous and unworthy of a Soviet writer". A liberalizing trend in the state's treatment of its writers is evident. Surkov, the subject of intense criticism himself, resigns from the congress, and during the year attacks on Pasternak cease. November 11 – Release in the United States of the short film Pull My Daisy, written and narrated by Jack Kerouac and starring poets of the Beat Generation Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso. December 8 – "The Poetry Society" episode of Hancock's Half Hour is broadcast on BBC radio, satirizing artistic pretensions. In the United States, "Those serious new Bohemians, the beatniks, occupied with reading their deliberately undisciplined, protesting verse in night clubs and hotel ballrooms, created more publicity than poetry", writes Harrison M. Hayford, a professor of American Literature at Northwestern University. "Meanwhile back on the campus, the 'square' poets were turning more and more to a controlled verse, much of it good enough to survive the pointed charge of academicism." Non-beat, off-campus poets almost routinely displayed "simple competence in the handling of complex forms", he writes in Encyclopædia Britannica's Britannica Book of the Year 1960, which covers 1959.Britannica Book of the Year 1960, covering events of 1959, published by the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1960; including these articles: "American Literature", "Canadian Literature", English Literature", "French Literature", "German Literature", "Jewish Literature", "Italian Literature", "Latin American Literature", "Obituaries", "Spanish Literature" and "Soviet Literature" Literary critic M. L. Rosenthal coins the term "confessional" as used in Confessional poetry in "Poetry as Confession", an article appearing in the September 19 issue of The Nation. Rosenthal's article reviews the poetry collection Life Studies by Robert Lowell. The review is later collected in Rosenthal's book of selected essays and reviews, Our Life In Poetry, published in 1991Rosenthal, Our Life in Poetry pages 109 – 112 The chairmanship of The Group, a grouping of British poets, passes to Edward Lucie-Smith this year when Philip Hobsbaum leaves London to study in Sheffield. The meetings continue at his house in Chelsea, and the circle of poets expands to include Fleur Adcock, Taner Baybars, Edwin Brock, and Zulfikar Ghose; others including Nathaniel Tarn circulate poems for comment. Carl Sandburg, poet and historian, lectures at the U.S. fair and exposition in Moscow. After twenty years, John Crowe Ransom steps down as editor of The Kenyon Review, which he founded. The journal Canadian Literature is founded by George Woodcock at the University of British Columbia. The British poetry magazine Agenda is founded by William Cookson and Ezra Pound."'Agenda': the long and the short of excellence in poetry" article (no byline) in The Independent, April 25, 2008, accessed April 27, 2008 Aldous Huxley turns down the offer of a knighthood. In France, the centenary of the death of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore is commemorated.
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 Ronald Bates, The Wandering World Ralph Gustafson, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, anthology Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, et al., editors, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 1993, Princeton University Press and MJF Books, "Canadian Poetry" article, English "Anthologies" section, p 164 Robert Finch, Acis in Oxford and Other Poems." Robert Finch," Online Guide to Writing in Canada. Web, Mar. 17, 2011. Governor General's Award 1961. George Johnston, The Cruising Auk Irving Layton: A Red Carpet for the Sun,. Governor General's Award 1959.Gnarowsky, Michael, "Poetry in English, 1918-1960", article in The Canadian Encyclopedia, retrieved February 8, 2009 Laughter in the Mind Jay Macpherson, *A Dry Light & The Dark Air. Toronto: Hawkshead Press."Jay Macpherson, 1931-", Canadian Women Poets," BrockU.ca, Web, Apr. 10, 2011
India, in English Nissim Ezekiel, The Third ( Poetry in English ), Bombay: Strand Bookshop;Naik, M. K., Perspectives on Indian poetry in English, p. 230, (published by Abhinav Publications, 1984, , ), retrieved via Google Books, June 12, 2009 Keshav Malik, The Lake Surface and Other Poems ( Poetry in English ), New Delhi: Surge Publications K. P. Budhey, Chant and Incense, Nagpur: Kusum BudheyVinayak Krishna Gokak, The Golden Treasury Of Indo-Anglian Poetry (1828-1965), p 323, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi (1970, first edition; 2006 reprint), , retrieved August 10, 2010 Prithwindra N. Mukherjee, A Rose-Bud's Song ( Poetry in English ), Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo AshramVinayak Krishna Gokak, The Golden Treasury Of Indo-Anglian Poetry (1828-1965), p 325, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi (1970, first edition; 2006 reprint), , retrieved August 10, 2010 P. Lal and K. Raghavendra Rao, editors, Anglo-Indian Poetry, anthology, Delhi: KavitaLal, P., Modern Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology & a Credo, p 8, Calcutta: Writers Workshop, second edition, 1971 (however, on page 597 an "editor's note" states contents "on the following pages are a supplement to the first edition" and is dated "1972")
United Kingdom Patricia Beer, The Loss of the Magyar, a first book of poems Edwin Bronk, An Attempt at Exorcism, Northwood, Middlesex: Scorpion PressM. 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 George Mackay Brown, Loaves and FishesCox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, Robert Graves, Collected Poems, the fourth version James Harrison, Catchment Area, a first book of poems Geoffrey Hill, For the Unfallen: Poems 1952–1958Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, editors, The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, W. W. Norton & Company, 1973, P. J. Kavanagh, For the Unfallen Laurence Lerner, Domestic Interior, a first book of poems Christopher Logue, Songs Louis MacNeice, Eighty-Five Poems James Michie, Possible Laughter, a first book of poems Spike Milligan, Silly Verse for Kids (including "On the Ning Nang Nong") I. A. Richards, Goodbye Earth, a first book of poems by a longtime critic Anne Ridler, A Matter of Life and Death Rex Taylor, Poems, a first book of poems Vernon Watkins, Cypress and Acacia
Anthologies in the United Kingdom Edwin Muir, editor, New Poets 1959, an anthology including work by Iain Crichton Smith, Karen Gershon and Christopher Levenson Guy Butler, A Book of South African Verse
United States W. H. Auden, Selected PoetryLudwig, 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) Joseph Payne Brennan, The Dark Returners (collects a handful of poems as filler to the short fiction) Hayden Carruth, the Crow and the Heart, New York: Macmillan Louis O. Coxe, The Wilderness, and Other Poems Babette Deutsch, Coming of Age Robert Duncan, Selected Poems, San Francisco: City Lights Books William Everson (also known as "Brother Antoninus"), The Crooked Lines of God, University of Detroit Press John Fandel, Testament, and Other Poems Jean Garrigue, A Water Walk by Villa d'Este Barbara Gibbs, The Green Chapel Allen Ginsberg, Kaddish, written about his mentally-ill mother Ramon Guthrie, graffiti, New York: Macmillan Donald Hall, Dark Houses Edwin Honig, The Gazebos: Forty-One Poems, Clarke & Way Barbara Howes, Light and Dark Langston Hughes, Selected Poems Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues Kenneth Koch, Ko, or a Season on Earth Denise Levertov, With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads, New York: New Directions Robert Lowell, Life Studies, a book on his family and on his own life that reflected stylistic changes that seemed more in line with the popular openness of Beat and Confessional poetry James Merrill, The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace, and Other Poems W. S. Merwin, translation, The Poem of the Cid, London: Dent (American edition, 1962, New York: New American Library)Web page titled "W. S. Merwin (1927- )" at the Poetry Foundation Web site, retrieved June 8, 2010 Marianne Moore, O to Be a Dragon Vladimir Nabokov, Poems Ogden Nash, Verses from 1929 On Ned O'Gorman, The Night of the Hammer Hyam Plutzik, Apples From Shinar Ezra Pound, Thrones: 96–109 de los cantares Charles Reznikoff, Inscriptions: 1944-1956, self-published Theodore Roethke, Words for the Wind Delmore Schwartz, Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems 1938-1958, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Louis Simpson, A Dream of Governors, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press W. D. Snodgrass, Heart's Needle Gary Snyder, Riprap Ruth Stone, In an Iridescent Time, New York, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company May Swenson, A Cage of Spines David Wagoner, A Place to Stand Reed Whittemore, The Self-Made Man Richard Wilbur, Advice to a Prophet and Other Poems, New York: Reynal and Hitchcock James Wright, Saint Judas, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press Louis Zukofsky, A 1–12, published by Cid Corman's Origin Press
Criticism, scholarship and biography in the United States Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, biography, winner of the National Book Award in 1960 Hugh Kenner (Canadian writing and published in the United States): The Art of Poetry, criticism The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (revised edition in 1969), criticism
Other in English Frank Collymore, Collected Poems, Barbados"Selected Timeline of Anglophone Caribbean Poetry" in Williams, Emily Allen, Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, 1970–2001: An Annotated Bibliography, page xvii and following pages, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, , retrieved via Google Books, February 7, 2009 M. K. Joseph, The Living Countries, New ZealandWeb page titled "The Contemporary Scene" in An Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 1966 website, accessed April 21, 2008 E. H. McCormick, New Zealand Literature, a Survey, acholarship, New ZealandPreminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, et al., editors, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 1993, Princeton University Press and MJF Books, "New Zealand Poetry" article, "History and Criticism" section, p 837