1949 in Poetry - Events

Events

• Greek Communist poet Yannis Ritsos, incarcerated during the Communist–centrist/rightist struggle in the Greek Civil War, writes poems which will ultimately see publication twenty-six years later, in the 1975 book, Petrinos khronos.
• George Hill Dillon, editor of the journal Poetry since 1937, relinquishes his post.
• First issue of Caribbean Quarterly, the flagship journal on culture edited at the University of the West Indies, spotlights Caribbean poetry.
• January 19 - Starting this year, and continuing to at least 2009, an anonymous black-clad person, who enters popular lore as the Poe Toaster, appears in Baltimore at the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground tomb of American poet Edgar Allan Poe early on the morning of Poe's birthday. The man toasts Poe with Cognac and leaves three red roses at the grave (along with the remainder of the Cognac).