Shakespeare: Runs in iambic pentameter and takes only fourteen strides to cover a length.

Robert Frost: Would win the race but wonder if he had done the right thing.

e.e. cummings: Will not actually run the race. Strays frequently into the infield and often trots in circles on the backstretch.

Emily Dickinson: Only after her death did it become well known that she ran in races.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Runs exclusively in very, very long races that no one ever watches to the end.

William Wordsworth: It is not a race. It is a voyage of personal discovery.

Edgar Alan Poe: Runs in firm, unshakable meter, but even when he wins, the event has a tragic, haunting quality.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Was retired from racing when track officials found he tested positive for drugs.

William Butler Yeats: Never actually ran in a race because of consistently poor health.

Wilfred Owen: Ran in the Great Race, but was never the same afterwards.

T.S. Elliot: The race is actually an obscure allusion to an ancient myth, meant to symbolize modern postwar disillusionment.

Lord Byron: Became famous for his unpredictable “Byronic” style of racing, which sometimes involved leaping over other horses in dramatic fashion, but was tragically killed during a race in Italy.

William Blake: Runs in races of innocence and races of experience.

Dylan Thomas: Races against the dying of the light.