author

Dennison Woodcock

An American poet who turned the story of a long life into verse, writing with plainspoken warmth about work, family, memory, and change. His best-known book offers a rare first-person glimpse of 19th-century experience carried into the early 1900s.

1 Audiobook

A Life's Story, In Poetry. Other Poems

A Life's Story, In Poetry. Other Poems

by Dennison Woodcock

About the author

Dennison Woodcock is known for A Life's Story, In Poetry. Other Poems, published in 1908 in Wrights, Pennsylvania. In that volume, he says he was writing at the age of ninety-one, and the book presents his life as a long autobiographical poem alongside other pieces.

His poetry has a direct, conversational feel. In A Life's Story, he recalls childhood curiosity, learning mechanical skills, traveling west at a young age, and working with his hands; the collection also includes poems touching on love, rural life, temperance, and woman's suffrage.

Very little confirmed biographical information appears to be readily available beyond what can be gathered from the book itself and public-domain catalog records. Even so, the surviving work leaves a clear impression of a writer interested in everyday experience and in preserving the memories of a life that spanned major social change.