poetry | Poetry | Waka (poetry) | Epic poetry | English poetry | Prose Edda | French poetry | Chinese poetry | Spanish poetry | Romantic poetry | prose | Japanese poetry | Poetry (magazine) | American poetry | waka (poetry) | Poetry Society of America | Indian epic poetry | Poetry Book Society | Portuguese poetry | Poetry Review | Lyric poetry | Irish poetry | Indian poetry | Poetry London | Poetry Ireland Review | Bengali poetry | Augustan poetry | Arabic poetry | Verse (poetry) | St. Mark's Poetry Project |
Max Ehrmann (September 26, 1872 – September 9, 1945) was an American writer, poet, and attorney from Terre Haute, Indiana, widely known for his 1927 prose poem "Desiderata" (Latin: "things desired").
First published in fragmentary form in 1845, the work is a collection of short essays in psychological fantasy — what De Quincey himself called "impassioned prose," and what is now termed prose poetry.
Baudelaire mentions he had read Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la nuit (considered the first example of prose poetry) at least twenty times before starting this work.