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 mark, van and/or doren:

    Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
    But yet the body is his book.
    And if some lover, such as we,
    Have heard this dialogue of one,
    Let him still mark us, he shall see
    Small change, when we’re to bodies gone.”
    John Donne (1572–1631)

    Mrs. Van Daan’s grizzling is absolutely unbearable; now she can’t any longer drive us crazy over the invasion, she nags us the whole day long about the bad weather. It really would be nice to dump her in a bucket of cold water and put her up in the loft.
    Anne Frank (1929–1945)

    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)