Robert W. Service was born on 1874, when he turned 15 he went into banking, following his father.  He did not follow long, he soon moved to Canada, and became a farmer, not satisfied with his life he migrated to California.  Service moved about doing odd jobs along the southern coast.  Vancouver was the place that Service found his home.  He was hired by the Bank of Canada.Soon after he recited a poem at his local Church, a modest start, but a start just the same.  Songs of a Sourdough was Services first publication.

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830.  Dickinson was born into an educational and political family.  Her Father was a congressman and lawyer. Dickinson got her education at an Academy and a n all female seminary.  She started to write poems in 1850, and she perfected her art 10 years later.  After the end of the civil war, Dickinson stayed in seclusion, communicating only with letters to a few people.  Many suspect that a very sorrowful love life left her in a deep depression. (But no one really knows) Upon her death in 1886, her sister published 3 volumes of her poems; they caught on quickly and became a national must read.

Lewis Carroll was the first born of 11 children. He grew up to be a satirist and children's book writer, like this word has never seen before.  Carroll began his entertaining at an early age, putting on magic show, and puppet performances.  He attended Christ Church College in Oxford, and remained there for many years lecturing on mathematics. Carroll's favorite pastime was photography, especially children, and became quit good at it.  This is were he got his inspiration for Alice, in Alice in Wonderland. Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland to satire, but was amazingly entertaining for all ages.  The Jabberwocky was one of his more famous works. Amazingly he made up many of the words in the poem. Including snort and chuckle, which are now used regularly, in every day conversion.

Countee Cullen was born in 1903, in New York.  He began writing at age 14, and when to college at New York University. The Crisis was one of the first publications to publish his poetry. (The Crisis was lead by the famous poet W. E. B. Du Bois.) Cullen was published in many more African American magazines and newsletters.  Cullen was a part of the Harlem Renaissance along with Langston Hughes and many other African American Poets, painters and writers.  Renaissance means new thinking, and Countee Cullen did just that.

My poetry, I think, has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.         

                                       -Countee Cullen

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, and soon after birth moved to New England wre he lived out most of his life.  Robert Frost was named after the famous confederate general, Robert E Lee.   Frost was in high school when he wrote his first poem.  Frost went to college at Dartmouth, and Harvard.  Frost one went though many jobs including teacher and editor of the local paper. His first professional poem was My Butterfly published in the New Yorker. Frost married Elinor Miriam White who died in 1938.  Frost is the most recent mainstream poet. He published many great books, and poem. Frost read his poem, The Gift Outright, at JFK inauguration.   

Walt Whitman was born in 1819, on Long Island.  He was the second of nine children. And his parents were Quakers.  When Whitman was four his family moved to Brooklyn, New york.  There he got a public school education, till he turned eleven and went to work as an office boy, in a law firm. Soon after he went to work for a typesetter and published  many news paper.  Whitman first publication, Leaves of Grass, which started with 12 poems, grew over time with more and more editions, in till his death at age 72.   Whitman also worked as a Civil War field doctor. When fighting in the Civil War, he got inspiration for O Captain My Captain.    

Alexander Pope was born in London, to Roman Catholic Parents. As a child, Pope suffered Potts Dieses, a tubercular condition, which made his heath as a child very unstable. One side effect of the medication he was taking was stunted growth, so he never was taller then 4 ft 6 in.  His education was almost totally self taught. Pope produced some of the great works of his time, the 18^th century.