American poetry
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American poetry refers to the
Much of the American poetry published between 1910 and 1945 remains lost in the pages of small circulation political periodicals, particularly the ones on the far left, destroyed by librarians during the 1950s McCarthy era.
Poetry in the colonies
As England's contact with the Americas increased after the 1490s, English explorers sometimes included verse with their descriptions of the New World up through 1650, the year of Anne Bradstreet's "The Tenth Muse", which was written in America (most likely in Ipswich, Massachusetts or North Andover, Massachusetts) and printed and distributed in London by her brother-in-law, Rev. John Woodbridge. There are 14 such writers whom might be termed American poets (they had been to America and to different degrees, written poems or verses about the place). Early examples include a 1616 "testimonial poem" on the "sterling and warlike" character of Captain John Smith (in Barbour, ed. "Works") and Rev. William Morrell's 1625 "Nova Anglia" or "New England", which is a rhymed catalog of everything from American weather to his glimpses of Native American women.[4] Then in May 1627, Thomas Morton of Merrymount – a Devon-born West Country outdoorsman, attorney at law, man of letters and colonial adventurer – raised a maypole to celebrate and foster success at his fur-trading settlement and nailed a "Poem" and "Song" (one a densely literary manifesto on how European and Native people came together there and must keep doing so for a successful America; the other a light "drinking song" also full of deeper American implications). These were published in book form along with other examples of Morton's American poetry in "New English Canaan" (1637); and based on the criteria of "First," "American" and "Poetry," they make Morton (and not Anne Bradstreet) America's first poet in English.[5]
One of the first recorded poets of the
This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the poetry written in the colonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The earliest "secular" poetry published in New England was by Samuel Danforth in his "almanacks" for 1647–1649,[8] published at Cambridge; these included "puzzle poems" as well as poems on caterpillars, pigeons, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, Danforth never ventured far from a spiritual message.
A distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was
The 18th century saw an increasing emphasis on America as fit subject matter for its poets. This trend is most evident in the works of Philip Freneau (1752–1832), who is notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude to Native Americans shown in his writings, which had been interpreted as being reflective of his skepticism toward American culture.[11] However, as might be expected from what was essentially provincial writing, this late colonial-era poetry is generally somewhat old-fashioned in form and syntax, deploying the means and methods of Pope and Gray in the era of Blake and Burns. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard (1772–1855), although quite old, still apply to life in today's world. She writes about nature, not only the nature of environment, but the nature of humans.[12]
On the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place. As the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative, to say the least. This can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London.[citation needed]
Postcolonial poetry
The first significant poet of the independent United States was
Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), Sidney Lanier (1842–1881), and James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916). As might be expected, the works of all these writers are united by a common search for a distinctive American voice to distinguish them from their British counterparts. To this end, they explored the landscape and traditions of their native country as materials for their poetry.[15]
The most significant example of this tendency may be , possibly to avoid British models. The resulting poem, while a popular success, did not provide a model for future U.S. poets.
As time went on, the influence of the transcendentalism of the poet/philosophers Emerson and Thoreau increasingly influenced American poetry. Transcendentalism was the distinctly American strain of English Romanticism that began with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Emerson, arguably one of the founders of transcendentalism, had visited England as a young man to meet these two English poets, as well as Thomas Carlyle. While Romanticism transitioned into Victorianism in post-reform England, it became energetic in America from the 1830s through to the Civil War.
Whitman and Dickinson
The final emergence of a truly indigenous English-language poetry in the United States was the work of two poets,
What links them is their common connection to Emerson (a passage from whom Whitman printed on the second edition of Leaves of Grass), and the daring originality of their visions. These two poets can be said to represent the birth of two major American poetic idioms—the free metric and direct emotional expression of Whitman, and the gnomic obscurity and irony of Dickinson—both of which would profoundly stamp the American poetry of the 20th century.[18]
The development of these idioms, as well as conservative reactions against them, can be traced through the works of poets such as
Modernism and after
This new idiom, combined with a study of 19th-century
Numerous other poets made important contributions at this revolutionary juncture, including
Whereas these poets were unambiguously aligned with high modernism, other poets active in the United States in the first third of the 20th century were not. Among the more important of the latter were those who were associated with what came to be known as the New Criticism. These included John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), Allen Tate (1899–1979), and Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989). Other poets of the era, such as Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), experimented with modernist techniques but were drawn toward traditional modes of writing. Still others, such as Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962), adopted Modernist freedom while remaining aloof from Modernist factions and programs.
In addition, other early 20th-century poets maintained or were forced to maintain a peripheral relationship to
The modernist torch was carried in the 1930s mainly by the group of poets known as the
World War II and after
Archibald Macleish called John Gillespie Magee Jr. "the first poet of the war".[20]
World War II saw the emergence of a new generation of poets, many of whom were influenced by Wallace Stevens and Richard Eberhart (1904–2005). Karl Shapiro (1913–2000), Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) and James Dickey (1923–1997) all wrote poetry that sprang from experience of active service. Together with Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) (1904-1991), Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) and Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966), they formed a generation of poets that in contrast to the preceding generation often wrote in traditional verse forms.
After the war, a number of new poets and poetic movements emerged.
In contrast, the
Around the same time, the
Other poets often associated with the Black Mountain are Cid Corman (1924–2004) and Theodore Enslin (1925-2011), but they are perhaps correctly viewed as direct descendants of the Objectivists. One-time Black Mountain College resident, composer John Cage (1912–1992), along with Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004), wrote poetry based on chance or aleatory techniques. Inspired by Zen, Dada and scientific theories of indeterminacy, they were to prove to be important influences on the 1970s U.S. avant-garde.
The Beats and some of the Black Mountain poets often are considered to have been responsible for the San Francisco Renaissance. However, as previously noted, San Francisco had become a hub of experimental activity from the 1930s thanks to Kenneth Rexroth and Gleason. Other poets involved in this scene included Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) and Jack Spicer (1925–1965). These poets sought to combine a contemporary spoken idiom with inventive formal experiment.
The
Los Angeles poets: Leland Hickman (1934–1991), Holly Prado (1938-2019), Harry Northup (born 1940), Wanda Coleman (1946-2013), Michael C. Ford (born 1939), Kate Braverman (1949-2019), Eloise Klein Healy (born 1943), Bill Mohr, Laurel Ann Bogen, met at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, in Venice, California. They are lyric poets, heavily autobiographical; some are practitioners of the experimental long poem. Their predecessors in Los Angeles were Ann Stanford (1916–1987), Thomas McGrath (1916–1990), Jack Hirschman (1933-2021). Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, created by George Drury Smith in 1968, is the central literary arts center in the Los Angeles area.
Just as the West Coast had the San Francisco Renaissance and the Small Press Movement, the East Coast produced the New York School. This group aimed to write poetry that spoke directly of everyday experience in everyday language and produced a poetry of urbane wit and elegance that contrasts with the work of their Beat contemporaries (though in other ways, including their mutual respect for American slang and disdain for academic or "cooked" poetry, they were similar). Leading members of the group include John Ashbery (1927-2017), Frank O'Hara (1926–1966), Kenneth Koch (1925–2002), James Schuyler (1923–1991), Barbara Guest (1920–2006), Ted Berrigan (1934–1983), Anne Waldman (born 1945) and Bernadette Mayer (born 1945). Of this group, John Ashbery, in particular, has emerged as a defining force in recent poetics, and he is regarded by many as the most important American poet since World War II.
American poetry today
The last 40 years of poetry in the United States have brought new groups, schools, and trends into vogue. The 1970s saw a revival of interest in surrealism, with the more prominent poets working in this field being Andrei Codrescu (born in 1946), Russell Edson (1935-2014) and Maxine Chernoff (born in 1952). Performance poetry emerged from the Beat and hippie happenings, the talk-poems of David Antin (1932-2016), and ritual events performed by Rothenberg, to become a serious poetic stance which embraces multiculturalism and a range of poets from a multiplicity of cultures. This mirrored a general growth of interest in poetry by African Americans including Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000), Maya Angelou (1928–2014), Ishmael Reed (born in 1938), Nikki Giovanni (born in 1943), and Detrick Hughes (born in 1966).
Another group of poets, the
The Language school includes a high proportion of women, which mirrors another general trend—the rediscovery and promotion of poetry written both by earlier and contemporary women poets. A number of the more prominent African American poets to emerge are women, and other prominent women writers include Adrienne Rich (1929–2012), Jean Valentine (1934–2020), and Amy Gerstler (born in 1956).
Although poetry in traditional classical forms had mostly fallen out of fashion by the 1960s, the practice was kept alive by poets of great formal virtuosity like
The last two decades have seen a revival of the
Poetry has become a significant presence on the Web, with a number of new online journals, 'zines, blogs and other websites. An example of the fluid nature of web-based poetry communities is, "thisisbyus, now defunct, yet this community of writers continues and expands on Facebook and has allowed both novice and professional poets to explore writing styles.
During the contemporary time frame, there were major independent voices who defied links to well-known American poetic movements and forms such as poet and literary critic
The
With increased consciousness of society's impact on natural ecosystems, it is inexorable that such themes would become integrated into poetry. The foundations of poems about nature are found in the work of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. The modern ecopoetics movement was pioneered by Jack Collom, who taught a dedicated course on ecopoetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado for 17 years.[citation needed] Contemporary poetry on environmental sustainability is found among the works of J.S. Shipman, for example, in, "Calling on You."[29]
The growth in the popularity of graduate creative writing programs has given poets the opportunity to make a living as teachers. This increased professionalization of poetry, combined with the reluctance of most major book and magazine presses to publish poetry, has meant that, for the foreseeable future at least, poetry may have found its new home in the academy and in small independent journals. A prominent example is Nobel Laureate Louise Glück who teaches at Yale University.
See also
- Academy of American Poets
- Biker Poetry
- Chicano poetry
- Cowboy poetry
- Haiku in English
- Irish language outside Ireland
- List of national poetries
- List of poets from the United States
- Nuyorican Poetry
- Proletarian poetry
References
- ISBN 0-275-95790-X)
- ^ Cary Nelson, Repression and Recovery (University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 9-10
- ISBN 9780836921410. Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Mar 31, 2006.
- ^ Young, Alexander. Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1623-1636. United States: C. C. Little and J. Brown, 1846.
- ^ Jack Dempsey, ed., "New English Canaan by Thomas Morton of 'Merrymount'" and his biography "Thomas Morton: The Life & Renaissance of an Early American Poet" Scituate MA: Digital Scanning 2000
- ^ Moulton, Charles (1901). The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. The Moulton Publishing Company. Original from the New York Public Library Digitized Oct 27, 2006.Anne Bradstreet: "our earliest woman poet"
- ISBN 978-0-87413-623-4.
- ^ Danforth, Samuel; Royster, Paul (2006-06-27). ""Samuel Danforth's Almanack Poems and Chronological Tables 1647-1649" by Samuel Danforth and Paul Royster (transcriber & editor)". Faculty Publications, Unl Libraries. Digitalcommons.unl.edu. Retrieved 2014-08-27.
- ^ Williams, George (1882). History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. G.P. Putnam's Sons. Original from Harvard University Digitized Aug 18, 2006.
- ISBN 978-0-7368-1033-3.
- ISBN 978-90-5183-628-8.
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ISBN 0-396-07608-4
- ^ "A Brief Guide to the Fireside Poets" Archived 2014-01-16 at the Wayback Machine at Poets.org Archived 2015-12-18 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 03-22-2009
- ^ Lucy Larcom: Landscape in American Poetry (1879).
- S2CID 147288533.
- ^ Williams, William Carlos (1966). The William Carlos Williams Reader. New York: New Directions Publishing Corp. p. 368.
- ^ Untermeyer, Louis (1921). Modern American Poetry. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Original from the New York Public Library Digitized Oct 6, 2006.
- ^ Falck, Colin, ed. (1992). Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems, The Centenary Edition. HarperCollins. pp. xxviii.
- ^ "High Flier". The “Quote... Unquote” Newsletter. April 1992. Archived from the original on 15 July 2011. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
- ^ "Kenneth Irby" Archived 2017-12-01 at the Wayback Machine at Poetry Foundation Archived 2017-07-07 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 11-20-2017
- ISBN 978-0-230-11555-2)
- ^ "Poetry As A Contact Sport -- Rhythm And Rhyme In Your Face Can Be Beautiful And Bombastic, But It's Never Boring | The Seattle Times". archive.seattletimes.com. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
- ^ "Robert Peters: Ludwig of Bavaria". Capa.conncoll.edu. Retrieved 2014-08-27.
- ^ "Poetry of September 11: Library of Congress Bibliographies, Research Guides, and Finding Aids (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
- ^ "The Poetry Of 9/11 And Its Aftermath". Huffington Post. 9 September 2011. Archived from the original on 2012-01-29. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
- ^ "Press Briefing with Robert Pinsky, Three-Time Poet Laureate". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
- ^ "Robert Pinsky". poets.org. Archived from the original on 25 November 2013. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
- ^ Shipman, J.S. 2005. "Calling on You" In: A Surrender to the Moon. International Library of Poetry. Watermark Press. Owings Mills, Maryland. p. 3.
Further reading
- Baym, Nina, et al. (eds.): The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Shorter sixth edition, 2003). ISBN 0-393-97969-5
- Cavitch, Max, American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman (ISBN 0-8166-4893-X
- Hoover, Paul (ed): ISBN 0-393-31090-6
- Moore, Geoffrey (ed): The Penguin Book of American Verse (Revised edition 1983) ISBN 0-14-042313-3
- Shipman, J.S. 2005. "Calling on You"In: Surrender to the Moon. International Library of Poetry. Watermark Press. Owings Mills, MD. P 3.
External links
- Cary Nelson, Ed. (1999–2002) Poet biographies at Modern American Poetry. Retrieved December 5, 2004
- Poet biographies at the Academy of American Poets Captured December 10, 2004
- Poet biographies at the Electronic Poetry Centre Captured December 10, 2004
- Various anthologies of American verse at Bartleby.com Captured December 10, 2004
- Poetry Resource a website for students of poetry