Very, Jones

Transcendentalist poet and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jones Very is best known for his intensely pious religious sonnets. Born in Salem in 1813 and died here is 1880, he distinguished himself at Harvard as an essayist but later his interest turned to poetry. His importance as a poet is somewhat linked to the Transcendentalist movement. At his death, his poetry was unknown until the early 1990s when his poems, more than 1,000 in number, were collected and edited by Helen Deese.