Van Gogh in green-lit room
living among bold, black lines
on dark, starry nights.
Sam Twain's scarcely disguised
humorous, satirical rage
unsettling to customary mores.
Fluent in metaphorical speech
Emily D. inventing peerless verse
waiting for Immortality.
Exquisitely inclusive
Lincoln knowing best how to lead
with humanistic resolve.
Eternally young femme fatale
Millay the classic Grecian nymph
romping with lyricism.
Explorer, artist, lamenter
of vanishing wilderness
birder Audubon superior.
Never daunted Elizabeth
primo of Peabody trio
reformer with transcendental zeal.
Emerson with his turgid prose
a guru of enlightenment
philosopher to humankind.
Epic oeuvre of imagined lives
dissected, penned-down truths
by abyss-gazing J. C. Oates.
Diva extraordinaire
with musical gifts beyond divine
Streisand, Streisand, Streisand!
Voltaire's Madame du Chatelet
pre-Einsteinian theorist
deducing light not matter.
Mythic sage Will Shakespeare
prolific weaver of words
unraveling the human heart.
Candide aka Voltaire
witty, iconoclastic
for civil rights and reason.
Societal, gender shackles
crux of Edith Wharton's works
au plus maxime in words and deeds.
Ego-trumped morality
in Tom Jefferson's world
himself above human rights.
William Maxwell the editor
empathetic, unsung author
in literary firmament.
Artistically-driven O'Keeffe
from New York to New Mexico
post-modern best with desert motifs.
Big chip on writing shoulder
Nobel-prize-winning Naipaul
still craving Olympian status.
Lillian 'Hellwoman'
complicated person
at war with her many selves.
With cleverness and conscience
Frances Perkins the architect
of FDR's domestic successes.
Visionary Frederick Olmstead
striver for human betterment
from army logistics to spacious parks.
Emerson's transcendental ally
unconventional Margaret Fuller
with more action-oriented intellect.
Intrepid, desert explorer
in pre-feminist world
Mideast-mapmaker Gertrude Bell.
No armchair, best-guessing scholar
globetrotting collector von Humboldt
catalyst for fact-finding, field science.
Never Nobelized Vera Rubin
discoverer of dark matter
cosmic riddle still to be unraveled.
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