Authors Posters & Prints, “Su...-Sz...-”
for the literature, language arts and social studies classrooms, home schoolers and scholars.

Su Shi
b. 1-8-1037; China
d. 8-24-1101

Su Shi, also known as Dongpo Jushi and Su Dongpo, was a writer, poet, artist, calligrapher, pharmacologist, and statesman of the Song Dynasty.

Suleiman the Magnificent
b. 4-27-1495; Trabzon, Turkey
d. 9-5/6/7-1566; Hungary on military campaign

Suleiman I, better known in the West as “Suleiman the Magnificent” and the longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, was also a poet. His most recognized work is -

The people think of wealth
and power as the greatest fate,
But in this world a spell of health
is the best state.
What men call sovereignty is a
worldly strife and constant war;
Worship of God is the highest throne,
the happiest of all estates.

Suleiman is also remembered for his love of Hurrem Sultan or “Roxelana” , a harem slave he freed and then married.

May Swenson
née Anna Thilda
b. 5-28-1913; Ogden, UT
d. 12-4-1989; Delaware

May Swenson is considered one the most original poets of the 20th century. Swenson spoke Swedish as her first language as a child and went on to teach at Bryn Mawr, University of North Carolina, University of California (Riverside) and Perdue, and being editor for New Directions publishers.

May Swenson quotes ~
• “We play in the den of the Gods and snort at death.”

Jonathan Swift
b. 11-30-1667; Dublin, Ireland
d. 10-19-1745

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels or Travel's into Several Remote Nations of the World, is a satire on human nature and petty differences, and a parody of the “travellers' tales” genre.

FYI ~ Swift was contemporaneous with Alexander Pope and William Congreve.

Jonathan Swift quotes ~
• “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
• “Every dog must have his day.”
• “For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”
• “Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.”

• alphabet posters
• Writings of Jonathan Swift

Algernon Charles Swinburne
b. 4-5-1837; London, England
d. 4-10-1909; London

Decadent poet Algernon Charles Swinburn invented the roundel form, wrote novels, and contributed to the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Swinburne was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1903 to 1909.

Algernon Charles Swinburne quotes ~
• “And the best and the worst of this is/ That neither is most to blame/ If you have forgotten my kisses/ And I have forgotten your name.”
• “Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.”
• “When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,/ The mother of months in meadow or plain/ Fills the shadows and windy places/ With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain . . .”

John Millington Synge
b. 4-16-1871; Dublin, Ireland
d. 3-24-1909; Dublin (Hodgkin's disease)

Playwright, poet, prose writer, and folklore collector was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre. Millington's best known play, The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots during its opening at the Abbey Theatre in 1907.

John Millington Synge quotes ~
• “I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.”
• “A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned.”
• “As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man’s family.”

Wislawa Szymborska
b. 7-2-1923; Krakow, Poland
d. 2-1-2012; Krakow

Wislawa Szymborska is a poet, essayist and translator awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature for “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”

Wislawa Szymborska quotes ~
• “Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.”
• “Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.”
• “In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.”
• “Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.”
• “Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?”