Baudelaire 1821 - 1867 Charles Baudelaire expressed concern for a Auguste Poulet-Malassis work published in 1857 titled Les Fleurs du mal, the concern springed from six poems containing the concepts of lesbian affairs and vampires(subjects not acceptable by the ministry of interior). This put a ban on Auguste Poulet-Malassis, and the additions written by Baudelaire, work until 1949. Charles Baudelaire took inspiration from these works and added thirty-five poems to the collection, Baudelaire gaining popularity and notoriety. Baudelaire Took inspiration from urban Paris, focusing on urban beauty and decay, believing art must be created from “non-Poetic” situations. In the 1860’s Baudelaire wrote essays and articles with a large arrangement of topics, Baudelaire also published many poems, creating the collection of Petits Poémes en prose or little poems in prose. Baudelaire broke through the norms of the form of verse. learn more at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charles-baudelaire
Stéphane Mallarmé 1842 - 1898 Stéphane Mallarmé’s work was viewed as obscure and unorthodox, his new use of exploring content and form, using text to inspire arrangement of placement, words, and spaces on the page Stéphane Mallarmé’s work of L’Aprés Midi D’un Faun (The Afternoon of a Faun) served as an inspiration for Debussy’s tone poem (1894), by the same name written in 1849. Mallarmé’s work also includes Hérodiade(1896) and Toast Funèbre (A Funeral Toast), written in memory of Théopile Gautier. Mallarmé was a symbolist icon not only for his poetry, but his lifestyle. Hosting salons at his Paris home every tuesday evening. Poets/Writers such as André Gide, Paul Valéry, Oscar Wilde, Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke, and W.B. Yeats could be seen at these gatherings, along with painters like Renoir, Monet, Degas, Redon, and Whistler, and the sculptor Rodin. These attendants became known as Les Mardistes, inspired from the French word for Tuesday. In the 1880s, Mallarmé became the center for The Decadents (a play on their bohemian lifestyle), a group of French writers which included Andre Gide, Paul Valéry and Marcel Proust. Mallarmé along with Valéry, and Baudelaire would become leaders of the symbolist movement. Mallarmé leading his fellow poets to break the strict conventions of rhyme, meter, and theme. learn more at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stephane-mallarme
Paul Valéry 1871 - 1945 Paul Valéry is considered one the most important Symbolist writers, along with Stéphane Mallarmé. During a violent thunderstorm, Valéry determined that he must free himself “at no matter what cost, from those falsehoods: literature and sentiment.” His highly self-conscious and philosophical style can also been seen to influence later English-language writers such T. S. Eliot and John Ashbery. From 1892 until 1912, Valéry subsided from poetry. He instead began to keep his ideas and notes in a series of journals, which were published in twenty-nine volumes in 1945. learn more at: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/paul-val%C3%A9ry
Robert Pinsky 1940 - Present Robert Pinsky was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, October 20, 1940. He received a BA from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned both an MA and PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University. Robert Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans—of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state—shared their favorite poems. The project’s videos, giving voice to the American audience for poetry, demonstrate that poetry has a vigorous presence in the American cultural landscape. learn more at: https://robertpinskypoet.com/