Connecticut has its share of poets and playwrights both past and present. Back in the day, the Hartford Wits entertained themselves (and others, presumably) with long (really long) poems concerning the American Revolution. Not exactly material that has stuck around forever–it and they went out of fashion after the revolution. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, a prolific poet and writer of elegies and essays, was extremely well-known in her time (1791-1865), but fell out of favor after her death. Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) although not a native born Nutmegger (he lived most of his adult life in Connecticut though) was (and is) extremely well respected as a philosophically aesthetic poet. Thornton Wilder, who wrote the play Our Town, performed by at least one high school in the state every year, carried out his career in Hamden. Eugene O’Neill spent his summers in New London as a child and based many of his characters and settings on his childhood home and the people around him. Clare Boothe Luce, who was a representative from Connecticut’s 4th district, was also a wit and a playwright. Arthur Miller also spent most of his working career in Roxbury, Connecticut and wrote Death of a Salesman, among many other plays, while living there.

We have contemporary poets and playwrights in Connecticut too, of course. But we’ll let you go find them yourself!