Poets from Indiana, John Matthias Wait, that's John Matthias. I know, you're probably like, why wasn't he the first poet on the list for Indiana? After all, he studied under John Berryman and Yvor Winters. He rubbed elbow patches with Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky. He was at Notre Dame when the MFA started, edited The Notre Dame Review , and joked around with other amazing writers like Steve Tomasula and Joyelle McSweeney (I suppose, though I haven't heard any stories). And, finally, he's the poet that Robert Archambeau is always talking about, so you know his work is amazing . He grew up in Ohio and went to The Ohio State U and Stanford, but he's been in South Bend long enough to be claimed as someone with "deep Indiana roots." I'm sure that some of his many books were written along the banks of the St. Joseph River. One of my favorites is "After Quevedo." Quevedo himself writes insightfully about death, and Matthias' poem picks
Poets from Indiana, Robert Underwood Johnson I know, you're like, wait, that guy looks old. Yep, Robert Underwood Johnson died in 1937. He lived through the Civil War, served as an ambassador to Italy, went camping with John Muir (yes, that one), argued for copyright laws, argued for land conservation and women's rights. He hung out with Teddy Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry James, and many others. And yes, he grew up in Indiana and graduated from Earlham College in Richmond at the age of 14. Still, even more importantly, he was a poet with many books to his name. I first came across his work in Eletha Mae Taylor's Indiana Poetry compilation. It contains this poem, "Titian's Two Loves, in the Borghese." One forgets not the first dead he sorrowed over; One forgets not the first kiss of the first lover. Not the dust of ages could remembrance cover How in Titian's golden kin