Muriel Rukeyser, b. 1913, d. 1980
Muriel Rukeyser was born in New York City, New York, on December 15, 1913. Rukeyser was an American poet and a political activist. Her poems included social justice, feminism, and equality. Rukeyser wrote the book, "The Life of Poetry", which was published in 1996. She died from a stroke in New York City on February 12, 1980.
Muriel Rukeyser wrote in her book, "The Life of Poetry":
"The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality."
Anne Sexton, b. 1928, d. 1974
Anne Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts on November 9, 1928. She was married to Alfred Muller Sexton and the couple had two children. Sexton suffered from mental illness and her psychiatrist encouraged her to join a poetry workshop in 1957. She bared her innermost feelings in her poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her volume, "Live or Die". Anne Sexton died in October, 1974, of an apparent suicide.
Sharon Olds, b. 1942
Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco, California, on November 19, 1942. Olds is an accomplished American poet who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award and the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980. Olds was the first American woman to win the T. S. Eliot award for poetry. She wrote "The Moment Two Worlds Meet" in 1987 and currently teaches creative writing at New York University.