1656 in poetry
# 1656 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

## Events

* This year in England, John Phillips, a nephew of John Milton, is summoned before the privy council for his share in a book of licentious poems, Sportive Wit, suppressed by the authorities but almost immediately replaced by a similar collection, Wit and Drollery.
* Hallgrímur Pétursson begins work on his Passion Hymns

## Works published

* Margaret Cavendish, Lady Newcastle, Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, fiction, poetry and prose
* Abraham Cowley:
   * Miscellanies, including "On the Death of Mr. Crashaw"
   * Poems
   * Pindaric Odes
* Sir John Denham, translator, The Destruction of Troy, published anonymously, partial translation of Virgil's Aeneid, Book 2
* William Davenant, Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems
* William Drummond, Poems
* John Evelyn, translator, An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Carus, translation of the Latin of Lucretius' De rerum natura, with both English and Latin; including commendatory poems by Sir Richard Brown, Edmund Waller and Christopher Wase (in Latin); this work was the first attempt to translate the work into English; Evelyn translated only the first book after realizing that he didn't have the ability to write a translation, as he put it, "to equal the elegancy of the original", although some of his friends warned him of the danger of the atheistic work to his morals, spirituality and reputation
* Richard Flecknoe, The Diarium, or Journall, anonymously published
* Mary Oxlie, authored a commendatory poem of fifty-two lines, To William Drummond of Hawthornden

## Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

* Lady Mary Chudleigh (died 1710), English poet and essayist
* Henry Hall (died 1707), English poet and composer

## Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

* Joseph Hall (born 1574), English bishop, satirist, moralist, and poet
* Johan van Heemskerk (born 1597), Dutch poet
* Johann Klaj (born 1616), German poet
