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Curated playlist

American male poets

  • Stephen KingA minivan hit Stephen King on a Maine road in June 1999. A dog in the back distracted the driver.
  • Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe's executor used forged letters to paint him as a drunken madman.
  • Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
  • Herman MelvilleHerman Melville's death notice misspelled his great novel as "Mobie Dick."
  • T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
  • H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft died in 1937 virtually unknown to readers. His monsters later became global touchstones.
  • Jack KerouacJack Kerouac typed On the Road on a 120-foot roll of taped tracing paper. He finished the final draft in 20 days.
  • Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
  • Dr. SeussAn education publisher dared Dr. Seuss to write a book children can't put down. The result was The Cat in the Hat.
  • Robert MitchumRobert Mitchum, the American film actor and singer, gave critic Roger Ebert a picture that never faded. Ebert named him his favorite movie star and praised his "deep, laconic voice and his long face and those famous weary eyes." Ebert saw…
  • Langston HughesLangston Hughes's ashes rest beneath the floor of a Harlem research center.
  • Jim MorrisonOn live TV in 1967, Jim Morrison sang a lyric censors had told him to change. Ed Sullivan then banned the Doors.
  • Muhammad AliMuhammad Ali refused three times to step forward for his Army induction in 1967. He lost his boxing title that same day.
  • Henry Wadsworth LongfellowLongfellow used his own body to smother the flames on his wife's burning dress. He wore a beard from then on.
  • W. H. AudenW. H. Auden died hours after reading his poems aloud in a Vienna hotel.
  • Tupac ShakurTupac Shakur wrote and recorded the album The Don Killuminati in three days. Mixing took four more.
  • Stephen CraneStephen Crane wrote a famous Civil War novel without ever seeing a battle. He died of tuberculosis at 28.
  • Vladimir NabokovNovelist Vladimir Nabokov also named butterfly species, and later genetic research backed his theory.
  • Edmund WilsonCritic Edmund Wilson mailed strangers a postcard listing over two dozen things he would not do.
  • Gil Scott-HeronGil Scott-Heron preferred the word "bluesologist" even as critics called him a rap progenitor.
  • Ambrose BierceAmbrose Bierce's last known letter said he was leaving for an unknown destination. He then vanished at age 71.
  • Fritz LeiberFritz Leiber is credited with coining the term "sword and sorcery".
  • Brian ChristianBrian Christian entered a 2009 chatbot contest to act more human than the humans. He succeeded.

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