2. Poet introduction

Edgar Albert Guest was born on \(20 \) August \(1881\) in England. Although he was born to a British family, he was taken to America at a very young age. His upbringing in the United States shaped his style when he started writing. His poems were read widely throughout the \(20\)th century.

 

Guest started his career as a copy boy in Detroit Free Press, where he continued to work for around sixty-five years. From his humble beginnings, he moved into a higher position as an established poet. He also organised a program on NBC radio called "A Guest in your Home", which later telecasted on television.

 

Guest is called the 'The People's Poet' as his voice was a representation of a common man. He called himself a newspaper man who collected verse. He has published around twenty volumes of poetry and eleven thousand individual poems. All his poems revolve around the themes of optimism and motivation. He writes about the beauty that lies in the world. They were also called sentimental poems as they directly addressed the feelings of the readers. Most of his poems were fourteen line long and depicted the real view of daily life. He stated that "I take simple everyday things that happen to me and I figure it happens to a lot of other people and I make simple rhymes out of them", indicating that he pictured a sentimental view of life.

 

His most famous works include: