Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer (October 1, 1885 – December 18, 1977) was an American author, poet, anthologist, and editor.

Modern American Poetry 1950

• All poetry is the reproduction of the tones of speech
• The poet's dilemma..to create order in the midst of disorder
• To reveal man in relation to the universe the poet must show himself not only concerned with the immensities but with the trivialities of daily life, with a sense of the past continually interrupting the present.

Other

• It takes a heap o’ children to make a home that’s true,
  And home can be a palace grand, or just a plain, old shoe;
  But if it has a mother dear, and a good old dad or two,
  Why, that’s the sort of good old home for good old me and you.
  • Mother Goose Up-to-date

• Laughter shall drown the raucous shout;
  And, though these shelt’ring walls are thin,
  May they be strong to keep hate out
  And hold love in.
  • Poem, Prayer for This House

Quotes about Louis Untermeyer

• I thought that the poets in the anthologies were the only real poets, that their being in the anthologies was proof of this, though some were classified as "great" and others as "minor." I owed much to those anthologies: Silver Pennies; the constant outflow of volumes edited by Louis Untermeyer; The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children; Palgrave's Golden Treasury; the Oxford Book of English Verse. But I had no idea that they reflected the taste of a particular time or of particular kinds of people.
  • Adrienne Rich Arts of the Possible (2001)

• Louis Untermeyer was contributing poems which dealt with the realities of the class struggle, but which sounded a note of hope.
  • Art Young: His Life and Times (1939) about The Masses