Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He remained literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–28), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.

Amongst his notable works, many published in The Kenyon Review, include a collaboration with brother Carl Van Doren, American and British Literature since 1890 (1939), the play The Last Days of Lincoln; critical studies, The Poetry of John Dryden (1920), Shakespeare (1939), The Noble Voice (1945) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949), collections of poems like three book-length narrative poems: Jonathan Gentry (1931), stories, and the verse play The Last Days of Lincoln (1959).

Read more about Mark Van Doren:  Early Life, Career, Personal Life, Legacy, Bibliography, Reviews, Quotes, Further Reading

Famous quotes containing the words van doren, mark van, mark, van and/or doren:

    For him nor deep nor hill there is,
    But all’s one level plain he hunts for flowers.
    —Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.

    AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)

    I pray that Allah may be moved
    To drop sleep on her eyes because she loved.
    —Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.

    AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)

    If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
    Bible: New Testament, Mark 3:24,25.

    Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
    And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
    And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
    But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.
    —Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)

    Ferdinand De Soto, sleeping
    In the river, never heard
    Four-and-twenty Spanish hooves
    Fling off their iron and cut the green,
    Leaving circles new and clean
    While overhead the wing-tips whirred.
    —Mark Van Doren (1894–1973)