1919 in poetry

''Considering that, all hatred driven hence,

''The soul recovers radical innocence

''And learns at last that it is self-delighting,

''Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,

''And that its own sweet will is heaven's will;

''She can, though every face should scowl

''And every windy quarter howl

''Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

—From A Prayer for My Daughter by W. B. Yeats, first published this year

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

Events

 * Two paintings by E.E. Cummings appear in a show of the New York Society of Independent Artists.
 * Vladimir Nabokov, novelist and poet, leaves Russia with his family.
 * The Egoist, a London literary magazine founded by Dora Marsden which published early modernist works, including those of James Joyce, goes defunct
 * October—William Butler Yeats travels to the United States and begins a lecture tour lasting until May, 1920.
 * The journal Litterature founded in France by André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon
 * Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) wrote Notes on Thought and Vision, a prose work; published posthumously in 1982

Australia

 * Edwin James Brady, The House of the Winds
 * John Le Gay Brereton, The Burning Marl, dedicated to "All who have fought nobly"
 * C.J. Dennis, Jim of the Hills
 * Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney, Bookfellow

Canada

 * Charles G.D. Roberts, New Poems. (London: Constable).

Indian poetryin English

 * Swami Ananda Acharya, Snow-birds, London: Macmillan, Indian poetry in English
 * Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, The Coloured Garden, Adyar, Madras: The Commonwealth Office; India, Indian poetry in English
 * Ardeshir M. Modi, Spring Blossoms, London: Arthur H. Stockwell
 * Nanikram Vasanmal Thadani, Krishna's Flute and Other Poems, Bombay: Longmans

United Kingdom

 * Richard Aldington:
 * Images of Desire
 * Images of War
 * Swami Ananda Acharya, Snow-birds, London: Macmillan, Indian poetry in English
 * John Drinkwater, Loyalties
 * T.S. Eliot, Ara Vos Prec, including "Gerontion" and the poems later published in Poems – 1920; his "Tradition and the Individual Talent" appears in The Egoist
 * Ivor Gurney, War's Embers
 * Rudyard Kipling, The Years Between
 * Ezra Pound, Quia Pauper Amavi
 * Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon
 * Dora Sigerson, Sixteen Dead Men, and Other Ballads of Easter Week (posthumous)
 * Osbert Sitwell, Argonaut and Juggernaut
 * J.C. Squire, The Birds and Other Poems
 * W.B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
 * The Wild Swans at Coole, significant revision of the 1917 edition: has the poems from the 1917 edition and others, including "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" and "The Phases of the Moon"; contains: "The Wild Swans at Coole", "Ego Dominus Tuus", "The Scholars" and "On being asked for a War Poem"
 * Two Plays for Dancers, (see also, Four Plays for Dancers, published in 1921)

United States

 * John Jay Chapman, Songs and Poems
 * Babette Deutsch, Banners
 * Vachel Lindsay, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, a poem chronicling William Jennings Bryan's 1896 presidential campaign through the eyes of an idealistic sixteen-year-old
 * Amy Lowell, Pictures of a Floating World
 * Edgar Lee Masters, Starved Rock
 * John G. Neihardt, The Song of Three Friends
 * Ezra Pound, Quia Pauper Amavi
 * John Crowe Ransom, Poems About God
 * Charles Reznikoff, Rhythms II, including "The Idiot"
 * Louis Untermeyer, editor, Modern American Poetry, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe; anthology, more than 130 poems, including "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight", by Vachel Lindsay and verse by Ezra Pound, Sara Teasdale, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Emily Dickinson
 * John Hall Wheelock, Dust and Light

Other


On being asked for a War Poem by W. B. Yeats I THINK it better that in times like these

A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth

We have no gift to set a statesman right;

He has had enough of meddling who can please

A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

Or an old man upon a winter’s night.
 * W. B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
 * The Wild Swans at Coole, significant revision of the 1917 edition: has the poems from the 1917 edition and others, including the title poem and:
 * "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death"
 * "The Phases of the Moon"
 * "Ego Dominus Tuus"
 * "The Scholars"
 * "On being asked for a War Poem" (originally written on February 6, 1915 in response to a request by Henry James that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I and sent to James in a letter that year; first published in Edith Wharton's volume, The Book of the Homeless 1916, with minute differences in wording from the later version but under the significantly different title "A Reason for Keeping Silent")
 * Two Plays for Dancers, (see also, Four Plays for Dancers, published in 1921)
 * A Prayer For My Daughter, first published in the November issue of Poetry magazine (later published in Michael Robartes and the Dancer in 1921)

France

 * Paul Claudel, La Messe là-bas
 * Léon-Paul Fargue, Poèmes
 * Max Jacob, La Defense de Tartuffe
 * Francis Jammes, La Vierge et les sonnets, Paris: Mercure de France
 * Pierre Reverdy, La Guitare endormie

Indian subcontinent
Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname:
 * Ardoshir Faramji Kharbardar, Bharatno Tankar (Parsi writing in Gujarati)
 * Basavaraju Appa Rao, Selayeti ganamu, Telugu-language
 * Duvvuri Rami Reddi, Krsivaludu, has been called the most prominent poem of the Telugu-language romantic movement; depicts peasants and rural life
 * Gopala Krishna Pattanayak, Gopalakrsna Padyabali, Oriya-language, vaishnav lyrics, posthumous edition
 * Jammuneshwar Khataniyar, Arun, her first collection of poems, Indian, Assamese-language
 * Kumaran Asan, Malayalam-language:
 * Cintavistayaya Sita ("Sita's Story"),
 * Prarodanam, elegy on the death of A. R. Rajara Varma, a poet, critic and scholar; similar to Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonais but with a distinctly Indian philosophical attitude
 * Nilkanth Sharma Dal, Ramayana, Kashmiri-language poem based for the most part on the Ramacarita-Manas of Tulsidas
 * Syama Sundara Das, editor, Parmala Raso, Hindi-language epic poem; written in a language mixing Brjibhasa, Kannauji and Bundeli, published by Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha

Spain

 * Juan Ramón Jiménez, Piedra y cielo ("Stone and Sky"), Spain
 * Ramón del Valle Inclán, La pipa de Kif ("Kif's Pipe"), Spain

Latin America

 * Juana de Ibarourou, Tongues of Diamond, Uruguay
 * Alfonsina Storni, Without Remedy, Argentina

Other languages

 * Khalil Gibran, The Procession, long ode, Arabic
 * Charles Gill, Le Cap Éternité: suivi des Étoiles filantes; French language;, Canada
 * Kitahara Kakushu, Heretics, Japan
 * Jacob Anker-Paulsen, Horn og Hov, Denmark
 * Kurt Pinthus, editor, Menscheitsdämerung ("“The Twilight of Mankind”)"), anthology of Expressionist poetry, published in Berlin, Germany
 * Kurt Schwitters, "An Anna Blume" ("To Anna Flower" also translated as "To Eve Blossom"), widely noticed and controversial work variously described as a parody of a love poem, an emblem of the chaos and madness of the era, and as a harbinger of a new poetic language; much parodied; originally published in August in Der Sturm magazine, then later in the year in Schwitters' book, Anna Blume, Dichtungen, published by Verlag Paul Steegemann, Hannover (revised edition 1922), Germany
 * Edith Sodergran, Gaudy Observations, Sweden
 * Giuseppe Ungaretti, Gay Shiprecks, Italy

Awards and honors

 * Nobel Prize in Literature: Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler, Swiss poet and novelist
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Margaret Widdemer, Old Road to Paradise and Carl Sandburg, Corn Huskers

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 7 – Robert Duncan (died 1988), American poet associated with the Black Mountain poets and the beat generation, and a key player in the San Francisco Renaissance.
 * January 9 – William Meredith, American poet
 * February 12 – Subhash Mukhopadhyay (died 2003), Bengali poet and Marxist (surname: Mukhopadhyay)
 * March 24 – Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born "Lawrence Ferling"), American beat poet, painter, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers &amp; Publishers
 * May 28 – May Swenson, (died 1989, American poet and playwright
 * July 19 – Miltos Sachtouris, Greek
 * September 3 - Edwin Honig, (died 2011), American poet, critic, and translator known for his English renditions of seminal works of Spanish and Portuguese literature
 * September 7 – Louise Bennett-Coverley, aka "Miss Lou" (died 2006), Jamaican folklorist, writer, and poet
 * September 26 – Matilde Camus, Spanish poet, and researcher.
 * November 4 – Patricia Beer (died 1999), English poet and critic
 * Also:
 * Joan Brossa, Spanish Catalan poet
 * Ruth Dallas, New Zealander
 * Madeline DeFrees
 * Gevorg Emin (Karlen karapetian), Armenian
 * M. Govindan (died 1988), Indian, Malayalam-language poet
 * Emyr Owen Humphreys, Welsh novelist, playwright and poet
 * Lance Jeffers (died 1985), African American
 * Kuroda Saburu, Japanese (surname: Kuroda)
 * Jiri Orten (Czechoslovakia)
 * Juan Rodolfo Wilcock, (died 1978), Argentine author and poet
 * Amrita Pritan, Punjabi poet and novelist; a woman
 * Bani Ray, Bengali writer, novelist, poet and critic, a woman
 * Binod Chandra Nayak, Oriya-language poet
 * Buddhidhari Singha, Maithili-language poet and fiction writer
 * G. D. Madgulkar (died 1978), Indian, Marathi-language poet, song writer and short-story writer
 * Girija Kumar Mathur (died 1994), Indian, Hindi-language poet
 * M. Govindan, Indian, Malayalam-language poet, short-story writer, playwright and essayist
 * Syed Abdul Malik, Indian, Assamese-language short-story writer and poet
 * Abdurrahman Pazhwak, Afghan poet, novelist and playwright
 * Yoshioka Minoru, Japanese (surname: Yoshioka)

Deaths
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * Endre Ady, Hungarian
 * Akshay Kumar Baral (died 1919), Indian, Bengali-language poet
 * Matilda Betham-Edwards (born 1836), English novelist, travel writer, poet, children's book author
 * Benjamin Paul Blood
 * Wilfred Campbell
 * Sarah Morgan Piatt
 * Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 * Akshay Kumar Baral (born 1860), Indian, Bengali-language poet
 * Brij Raj (born 1847, Indian, Dogri-Pahadi Brajbhasha poet
 * Ganesh Janardan Agasha (born 1852), Indian, Marathi-language poet and literary critic
 * Govindagraj, also known as "Ram Ganes" Gadkari (born 1885), Indian, Marathi-language poet, playwright and humorist
 * Narayan Vama Tilak, Indian, Marathi-language Christian poet
 * Amado Nervo, Mexican
 * Ricardo Palma, Peruvian novelist, playwright, poet, essayist and writer of short fiction
 * William Michael Rossetti, English poet and essayist
 * Johann Sigurjonsson, Icelandic playwright and poet