Literary Birthday – 1 October – Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer was born 1 October 1885 and died 18 December 1977.

Seven Quotes

1. Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always for money.
2. Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable.
3. The poet’s dilemma..to create order in the midst of disorder.
4. To reveal man in relation to the universe the poet must show himself not only concerned with the immensities but with the trivialities of daily life, with a sense of the past continually interrupting the present.
5. Friendship is like love at its best; not blind but sympathetically all-seeing; a support which does not wait for understanding; an act of faith which does not need, but always has, reason.
6. She has something to say about what life is like-which is all we ask of poetry.

Louis Untermeyer was an American poet, editor, anthologist, critic, and translator of more than one hundred books. He is known as the anthologist whose collections introduced students to contemporary American poetry from 1919. He also published  his own collections, including First Love and Challenge. He was appointed the fourteenth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.

Source for image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Untermeyer.jpg

George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar