American Poetry

This course was development for 3rd year university students at the Slavyansk State Pedagogical University. Students were studying to become teachers or translators of English or German, with an emphasis in Foreign Literature. This short course was limited to one, 80-minute lecture and one, 80minute seminar. During the lecture, the PCV was asked to introduce major historical trends in America poetry from the founding of the USA until the present. During the seminar, the PCV was asked to focus on major poets of each historical period, their brief biographies, and extracts of their work. This course is recommended for TEFL HE PCVs who find themselves in a situation where there is limited time to teach a subject quite unfamiliar to Ukrainian university students. Additional student self-study and research outside of the lectures and seminars is highly recommended to supplement this course.

Information adapted from An Outline of American Literature, published by the U.S. State Department; Bode, Highlights of American Literature, U.S. Information Agency, Washington D.C. 1995; Muller and Williams, Introduction to Literature, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, Inc., USA, 1995; Buscemi and Smith, 75 Readings Plus, 3rd edition, McGraw-Hill, Inc., USA, 1996; various Internet research, and other TEFL HE PCVs manuals on American Literature.

American Poetry Lecture

Katherine C. FitzSimons, U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, Slavyansk State Pedagogical University, 2007

Post-Revolutionary Period and National Beginnings The American Revolution against Britain (1775-1783) was the first modern war of colonial liberation. The American triumph brought with it new, nationalist hopes of great literature. However, with the exception of the outstanding political works of the time, few literary works of note appeared during or soon after the Revolution; and the literary works that did appear were harshly reviewed in London. This led to the gradual shift in American literary thinking which was the beginning of Americas own cultural revolution. Yet cultural revolutions, unlike military revolutions, cannot be successfully imposed but must grow from the soil of shared experience. Eventually, it would take America an additional 50 years of accumulated history (from about 1800s-1850s) to earn a true cultural independence from Great Britain. The reason this transition was so gradual was because early American writers now separate from England had no access to modern publishing, no audience, and no legal protection. The small, cultivated American audience still wanted well-known British authors that were well circulated and affordable, but the general public did not have the leisure time to spend reading because they were working to survive the American wilderness. However, there was an important landmark in the development of an independent cultural identity with the publication of the first American dictionary in 1806. Its editor, Noah Webster, insisted that American usage was as good as British usage. Because of this and the gradual growth of popular demand for national literature, the country began to develop a more united sense of literary identity. The first American literature was neither American nor really literature. It was the work of mainly immigrants from England escaping religious persecution. It wasnt in the form of poetry, essays, or fiction, but rather travel accounts and religious writings. After independence, it was extremely difficult for the first American writers to get published. American poets who emerged in the 17th century during the colonial period leading up to independence adapted the style of established European poets to the subject matter they now confronted in a strange, new land. Philip Freneau wrote the first poetry in the United States. One of the first poets in the new nation, his poetry had many traits of the English style. However, his subject matter makes him truly American, as the future of his country was always a subject of interest for him. If Freneau was Americas first nationalist poet, then Williams Cullen Bryant was the nations first naturalist poet. He was the first poet to actually be born in America and he wrote his best-known poem Thanatopsis when he was just 16. Romantic Period This is the literary period that began in the early 1800s, soon after the American Revolution, and goes up to 1860, just before the Civil War, which began in 1861 and lasted until 1865. This timeframe is generally known as the Romantic Period, named after Romanticism, which was the most dominant style of writing in Europe at that time. When you hear the word romantic you generally think about love or strong romantic feelings. While themes of love and romantic relationships may be addressed in romantic 2

literature, romantic works are not to be confused with love stories. The Romantic style was considered to be a reaction against the Enlightenment Movement of the 18th century, which focused primarily on the importance of science and reason (as characterized by thinkers and writers like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson). Romanticism, however, focused on imagination, emotion, and subjectivity. Yet here again we are speaking about how the British inspired this literary movement in America. While it is true that American writers were heavily influenced by this European movement, (Romanticism actually began in Germany), by the early 1820s this movement took on a specifically American quality. The American Romantic Movement came at the same time of great westward expansion and a greater solidification of an American political identity. The states had become solidly unified under state and federal governments; and Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which doubled the size of America. This mass of unexplored, uncharted territory fueled the imaginations of the writers of this time period. In general, some of the major characteristics of American Romanticism are: an emphasis on nature and the common man (democracy), as well as a respect for a greater power beyond human understanding. Three types of Romanic literature are: the transcendental writings, historical fiction, and sentimental fiction. The Transcendental Movement began as an intellectual movement in New England (Concord, Massachusetts) which was founded and led by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). The word transcendental comes from the word transcendence, or to transcend. Transcendence is a kind of divine existence or a state of perfection. To transcend means to rise above or go beyond something. Transcendentalists believed in the power of the human imagination to transcend the limitations of the material world and to commune with the universal. This universal being was not God in the traditional Puritan sense. Rejecting the popular Puritan thought of the region, transcendentalists understood god to be a living mystery and as an aspect of everything, particularly found in nature. Their emphasis on nature offered what was considered to be one of the first cultural alternatives to American urbanization and materialism. In fact, the transcendentalists found their chief source of inspiration from nature. Ralph Waldo Emersons essay Nature (1836) was the first major document of this period. Some of his other important works were The American Scholar (1837) and Self-Reliance (1841), an essay in which he asserted the importance of being true to ones own nature. Many people of the time accused him of trying to subvert Christianity. A speech he made at the Harvard Divinity School made him unwelcome there for 30 years. In it, he accused the church of being too concerned with dogma and acting as if God were dead. Much of his thought was influenced by his readings in eastern religions: Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islamic Sufism. The decade just before the Civil War, the 1850s, was a period of great social reflection and literary activism. American women and minorities had suffered and endured many inequalities since the foundation of the American nation, in contrast to the liberties and opportunities promised in the political writings of the revolutionary period. In spite of the importance of the few female literary figures, women were still denied the right to vote, not allowed to enter most professional schools, forbidden to speak in public, and unable to own property. And, even though the importation of slaves was made illegal in 1808, slavery was still a strong, dehumanizing force in American society. During this time, America went through some of the greatest challenges in its history trade and manufacturing were growing, cities grew bigger, the population soared, and 3

the question of slavery led to civil war between North and South. While most were happy with new-found prosperity and development of the nation, some writers questioned the values held by the majorityabout dignity of the individual and the importance of making money. This trend emphasizes the individual instead of the group, the wild instead of the tame, the irregular instead of the regular. Edgar Allen Poe was a major romantic writer who wrote about dying ladies, sickness, and abnormal rather than normal love. He also pioneered the development of the detective story. His poems are as melodious as Bryants, but more dramatic in their effects. Unlike his contemporaries, most of Poes work has nothing to do with America, instead his subjects are universal or exotic. Not all romantic writers were dark and brooding like Poe. Emerson and Thoreau represented Transcendentalism, the positive idea that man has the capacity to know the truth and attain knowledge with transcends the senses. Walt Whitman was determined to be the poet of democracy. He thought he could reach the American people by throwing aside the traditional ornaments and prettiness of verse and creating his own form. He developed a kind of free verse without rhyme or a fixed rhythm, but impressive repetition. He put all social classes of Americans in his poetry and tried to reach everybody. However, not all common men liked Whitmans new style. Another poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow therefore became the most popular poet of the 19th century. Although not the best poet, Longfellow was popular because he wrote with a more traditional form. He reverted to the technique of using the European model. Longfellow was known as a Brahmin poet. The Brahmin Poets were from Boston, Harvard educated, enjoyed wealth and leisure, were from the upper class, traveled to or were educated in Europe. They fused American and European traditions and sought to create shared Atlantic experience. Many were professors who attempted to educate the general public by introducing a European dimension to American literature. They were ironic because they were conservative; they were not daring innovators of American literature. The most important Brahmin poets were: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell Dickinsons poetry was the reverse of Longfellows. Emily Dickinson is one of the most well-known and foremost poets in American literature. Like Poe, Dickinson explores the dark and mysterious parts of the mind, focusing greatly on death and the grave, though not in such a violent or frightening way. Her work is known for its simplicity of style and common images, which bring attention to such subjects as the pains and wonders of love; sexuality; the incomprehensible nature of death; the horrors of war; as well as God, and religious belief. However, Dickinsons influence on the public came mostly after her death because she only published 10 of her nearly 2,000 poems in her lifetime. The first volume of her work, Poems of Emily Dickinson, was published in 1890, four years after her death. Dickinson often used variations of meters and rhyme. Her short lyrical lines, full of powerful images and metaphors, differed greatly from the style of her contemporary, Walt Whitman, who used long lines, little rhyme and irregular rhythm. A nonconformist, like Thoreau, Dickinson often reversed meanings of words and phrases to great effect. Dickinsons poems continue to intrigue readers and critics. Some emphasizes her sensitivity to nature, others note her dark, mysterious side, while others are drawn to her exotic sensuality. She continues to be one of the most fascinating and challenging writers in American literature. 4

Realism and Reaction The Civil War, however, was the official end of that early American idealism and innocence. Brought on most importantly by the problem of slavery, the cultural and economic tensions between the northern and southern states finally erupted in this bloody conflict. Over 640,000 soldiers were killed and roughly 900,000 were wounded. And, since a majority of the battles were fought in the south, many southern cities and towns were completely destroyed. The entire southern economy was ruined. This terrible destruction, however, concluded with some notes of optimism. The country quickly began southern reconstruction, northern businesses were quickly growing, and slavery was abolished. Realism was the dominant writing style of this period. However, by the end of the Civil War, which very few Americans were left unaffected by, many writers avoided national themes in favor of local, regional themes. Regionalism was the result of this literary trend. Even during the war the United States had been growing. Pioneers were continuously settling new territories in the west; cultural and urban centers were being established and made accessible through the greatly efficient railroads. Writers started focusing on the differences between the regions rather than the nation in general. Poetry also thrived during this Realist period. Three Midwestern poets, in particular, made up what was called the Chicago School of poetry. The poetry of this school usually focuses on ordinary peoplethe life of the individual. And, through realistic and sometime dramatic techniques they acquired a wide readership. Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) printed his most influential work Spoon River Anthology (1915), which experiments with a colloquial style of speech as well as unabashed frankness when addressing issues of sex or sexuality. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was considered by many to be a modern-day Walt Whitman because of his simple, child-like rhymes. Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) initiated a strong rhythmic poetry, meant to be read out loud. Though not a member of the Chicago School, one of the best known poets of the nineteenth century was Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935). He is best known for his short, ironic character studies of ordinary individuals. His best-known poem Richard Cory (1869) is about the life of important, wealthy man who, at the end of the poem, surprisingly, commits suicide. This poem was an effective warning against materialism and the myth of success. Writing during the first quarter of the 20th century is more often than not critical of American society. The tone is satirical, the stereotyped American is made fun of, and the American dream is shown to be an illusion. In their opposing ways, the two most important poets in the first decade of the 20th century were Edward Arlington Robinson and Carl Sandburg. They thought to explore the quality of American life and to report on it with truthfulness. Now, as from the beginning, poets tended to be divided into traditionalists and innovators. Robinson and Sandburg represent these two styles. Robinson uses conventional meter and rhyme to paint wry and condensed scenes of mans responses to a hard life. There is the typical tone of this periodpessimism and disillusionment. Sandburg, however, is a breaker of conventions. He saw greatness in ordinary man and in mans capacity to create a society in which inequalities would be erased and dreams reached. His poems represent 19th century idealism and 18th century faith in political and social change. His form is free verse with lines of irregular length, looser speech rhythms and no end rhyme. 5

Modernism and Experimentation: The Period Between the Wars When we left off, Americain fact, the entire globewas on the brink of world war. America, which was made up of thousands of immigrants with ties to Europe, was reluctantly drawn into the conflictjust how reluctantly can be seen through the fact that America was only directly involved in the conflict from 1917-1918. Americas casualties were noticeably less than that of her allies. However, the numerous American soldiers that did go off to war, usually from poor, rural areas, came back changed. Needless to say, after seeing the world and the horrors of war, many returned veterans had a hard time adjusting to the simple lives they had before the war. In fact, with the increasing use of farming technologies (tractors, planters, and harvesters), many people had no work to go back tomachines had replaced the need for manual laborers. This and other factors led to the drastic expansion of urban life. The increased production through technology, on farms and in cities, led to an economic booma period known as the Roaring Twenties. Many families now had disposable income, which, as a byproduct, led to increased enrollment in higher education. More Americans were going to college, which was to have a significant effect on literary output. A few other historical factors of this time period were: the progressive activism and moral license of the Roaring Twenties, the nation-wide prohibition of alcoholknown as Prohibition (19191933), as well as the global economic depression of the 1930sknown as the Great Depression (1929-1933). Given an additional push by World War II (1941-1945), the modern industrial society was firmly established and in full swing. Despite outward gaiety, modernity and material prosperity, young Americans of the 1920s were the lost generation, so named by Gertrude Stein. T.S. Eliots poem The Waste Land (1922) shows western civilization as a bleak desert in desperate need of rain/spiritual renewal. 1912 is the most widely excepted date marking a poetic renaissance and the beginning of modern American poetry. In that year, Harriet Monroe founded Poetry, A Magazine of Verse which gave a home to new and experimental poets. A common attitude of the poets of the interwar years was one of rebellion against Victorian poetryrather than rebelling against what the Victorian had said, they rebelled against how they said itthe conventional poetic techniques used. Experimentation was commonpoetry was tried without punctuation or capitalization, without coherence, without logic The new poets felt that life was more complicated than the Romantic poets had admitted and they set about to expose its conflicts and contrasts. The interwar poets used humor, irony, and wit to focus on inconsistencies in life. They followed the Imagist poets of the 20th century and believed that poetry should treat its subject directly and that only words, which strengthened the poems should be used, thus leaving the reader to discover the meaning on his own. In contrast to the 19th century, this poetry was more intellectual and more related to real life situations. All but the most essential images were eliminated. An important battle was fought for the recognition of free verse. For many years, people thought that new poetry of this era and the term free verse were synonyms. Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and Wallace Stevens all used free verse in their poems, and free verse gradually won acceptance. By 1941, the idea of free verse was old fashioned. During and after war-time, many American writers spent time in Europe and wrote about their experiences as expatriates: e.e. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound. After WWII, American poetry began to turn away from orthodoxy and new 6

poets realized they needed something more than the standard of the past 30 years. They insisted on being emotional and personal and telling about WWII with their own voices. The post-WWII poets used colloquial speech to characterize the suburbs and to defy the terrors of modern life. Many of them found inspiration in everyday, ordinary things and experiences. Two characteristics run through much of contemporary American poetry: introspection and social criticism. Introspective social criticism means that the poets explores the depths of his own feelings with regard to what appear to him to be the injustices of society. Poets of this era used themes of sincerity and opposition bold, unexpected opposites in form. They focused on the difference between appearance and fact, seeming and being, superficial and essential. Words and images are blunt, abrupt, and realistic, but the overall effect is to make the meaning implicit. Therefore, this poetry is not as literal or logical has traditional poetry. Sarcasm, irony, and paradox are common tools of the modern poet. As America transitioned into a modern industrial state, the literary tradition too began to demonstrate elements of change. This time period is known as the Modernist Period. The Modernist Period is known for its break with the classical, western tradition. Much of this literature focuses on the various aspects of modern life: its quickness of pace, emphasis on science and technology, as well as growing individual isolation. In many ways this writing style continued certain aspects of the Realist Periodvivid descriptions and accurate portrayals of real life (particularly the suffering of ordinary Americans during the Great Depression). However, this period was also known for its experimental prose, in particular the approach to viewpoint (from whose perspective the novel or story is told) and form (the way in which novels were written). The Modernist Period is known for the resurgence of American poetry, and in many ways the Modernist Period is synonymous with Modernist Poetry. An important feature of poetry of this period was the focus on strong, concrete imagesthis style is known as Imagism. This imagist style is highly visual, in contrast to traditional poetry, which was full of clichs and stock phrases. The father of modern, imagist poetry was Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Though he lived abroad for most of his life, through his letters and correspondence, he was a great influence on many of the important writers of his period. His most significant work was really his life work, a collection of poems called The Cantos. Though rich and vivid imagery, these poems allude to the history and literature from many cultures and eras, which make them virtually indecipherable to the average reader. Up to now we have been speaking about African American literature as an undercurrent of the greater American literary traditionwhich is partly due to the fact that many black Americans were not writing (hadnt the freedom or luxury to write); and the ones who were writing were not able to reach large audiences. In many ways, the black writers we have mentioned in previous lectures have only recently been reexamined and treated with new interest. Very few were known in their time. In the same way that the American literary tradition was established through the Transcendental Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was the cultural and artistic explosion, which brought public awareness to African American culture and literature. Harlem was a fashionable, predominately black, neighborhood in New York City that was the scene of this artistic revival (which lasted throughout the 1920s in conjunction with the Roaring Twenties). Fueled by the newly popularized jazz music as well as traditional black spirituals (songs and rhymes sung by slaves), African American writers were able to articulate the ideas and experiences of black Americans. This emergence of minority voices was a key element of the Modernist Movement. Langston Hughes was the great poet of the Harlem 7

Renaissance. He embraces African American jazz rhythms, one of first black writers to attempt to make a profitable career out of it. Hughes used blues, spirituals, colloquial speech, and folkways in his poetry. The Beat Movement, which primarily took root in San Francisco, California, was the literary beginnings of the counter-culture movement of the 1950s. The name Beat or beatnik came from Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), who, enchanted by the popular jazz rhythms of the time thought that beat, which recalls the image of pulse, reflected the vibrancy of the period. This title, however, was more precisely imposed on this particular group of writers and poets, who, given their anti-conformist views, were reluctant to be labeled as anything in particular. However, some common features of these writers works are 1) their unwillingness to conform to conventional styles of writing, as we saw earlier with e. e. cummings 2) the use of the stream of consciousness technique, that is, letting thoughts lead the writing with no necessary plan or plot design, 3) a focus on youth culture, which includes music, drugs, sex, and homosexuality, and, finally 4) in spite of the anti-conformist nature of these writings, there is still evinced a noticeable love of country, though voiced in a kind of cry or moan at what America had become. Jack Kerouac was a leading figure in this Beat Movement. His best known novel, which is loosely autobiographical, On the Road (1957), questions the values of middle-class life through relaying the adventures of displaced beatniks wondering through the US. The experimentalism of the Beats helped to reflect certain elements of postmodernism: 1) the rejection of the distinction between high culture and ordinary life, 2) the response, sometime ironic or irreverent, to the new worlds geopolitical conditions, capitalism, the Cold War, 3) the exploration of diversity of culture, mass media, and cultural mores, 4) an acceptance of fragmentation and discontinuity, 5) the loss of authority or absolute values, 6) challenging the notions of decency, 6) exposing the margins of society as well as those who have been marginalized, 7) the attempt to integrate art and everyday life, 8) the blending of genres, and 9) the deconstruction of language or the breakdown of conventionally accepted rhetorical devises. Post-Modernism However, the end of World War II brought with it a number of new assumptions and, in fact, a new geo-political global order. Some significant features of this time period we will deal with today are 1) American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), 2) the beginning of the Cold War, which was played out through a number of military conflicts such as The Korean War (1950-1953), The Vietnam War, (1965-1973), 3) the beginning of the counter-culture and Protest Movement in America. Along with these historical events, the technological progress and economic boom that followed WWII was contrasted with serious reflections on 1) the kind of world that could permit the rise of a Hitler and the incalculable suffering he would unleash, 2) the ever present fear and anxiety incited by the Cold War tensions between the US and the Soviet Union, and 3) the growing sense of an inner loneliness and alienation felt by many Americans. These factors, amongst others, contributed to bringing about the end of the Modernist Movement. However, it should be noted, that a distinctive feature of post-1950s writing is the seeming non-existence of dominate movements like those we saw in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This fracturing suggests that the modernist movement was not ended; rather it was simply reduced to a movement or style among many small currents. This brings us to what we will loosely call the Postmodern Period or Postmodernism; because, as I have said, this period is characterized mostly by a lack of unity or 8

uniformity. When I say the word Postmodern or Postmodernism many associations probably come to mind. For the sake of clarity, we are going to divide this movement in half and look at it in the two senses it implies. The first sense refers to how it is defined in contrast to its relationship with Modernism. The prefix post simply suggests after. So, quite literally, Post-modernism is that which comes after Modernismthat which is a reaction to the Modernism movement (like Romanticism was to the Enlightenment and Realism was to Romanticism). In this sense of the meaning, Post-modernism is a bit easier to fit into our linear discussion of literature--that which comes after and reacts to Modernism. In the second sense of the meaning, Postmodernism not only refers to a reaction to Modernism but also a complete inversion of it. And it is in this sense that much of the experimental, existential, and surrealistic writing was (and is being) written. However, what complicates identifying writers as Postmodern is that a writer cannot exclusively be considered Postmodern in the way, for example, Emerson is considered a Transcendentalist. A writer writing in the Post-Modern period of time can only write a postmodern text. A writer who might write a realist or naturalist text in one instance might in the next produce something Postmodern. According to this definition, only a text can be postmodern, not a writer. A writer can merely employ postmodernist elements. Contemporary Period: Feminism and Multiculturalism This leads us to the Contemporary Period. While it is true that the word modern at times means contemporary, usually when we use the word modern in reference to literature, it almost exclusively implies the Modernist Period. Contemporary implies those writers who are still alive and writing today or those writers who were the contemporaries of writers living today. As opposed to previous shifts from one literary period to the next (like Realism to Modernism and Modernism to Post-Modernism), this transition, if we can even call it that, was not characterized by a noticeable refutation or breaking away. While it is true that the radical experimentalism of the sixties and seventies was slowing down, in this period what is seen is the more specific implementation or deepening of postmodern ideas through a narrowing of focus. This narrowing of focus is also offset by the fact that writers and poets no longer belong to or represent a specific movement. Some writers belong to multiple movements or none at all. This is also true about many of the writers we talked about in our previous lecture who are still living and are therefore part of this Contemporary Period. Today we are going to look at those writers who demonstrate this new focus on much narrower or more specific issues that stem from ethnicity and gender. In particular, we will be looking at the Idiosyncratic and Confessional Poets, Feminism, and Multi-ethnic literature. The Idiosyncratic Poets are poets who have developed unique, personal styles (based on personal idiosyncrasies). The Idiosyncratic Poets include Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Adrianne Rich, as well as John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop and others. Part of the narrowing of this Contemporary Period is the new focus on individual experience. Many of the Idiosyncratic Poets writings are quite autobiographical in grotesque and painfully revealing ways. This is why many of the Idiosyncratic Poets are also considered Confessional Poets. Confessional poetry deals with personal experiences of the poet. The poet confesses. Usually, when we say confess, we imply to admit guilt. These poets are not admitting to being guilty, though 9

they do sometimes admit to feeling guilty. Their poetry explores many personal issues the poets have faced, like failed or troubled relationships, alcoholism, abortion, sex, sexuality, and suicide. Because of the issues they raise, some Confessional Poets are also considered feminist writers; and, some Ethic writers also address feminist issues. Contrary to common stereotypes, feminism does not mean man-hating nor are all feminists lesbians. Some feminists may convey an anger or frustration, which, perhaps, looks like hate, and others may be lesbians; but to generalize and dismiss this group because of these facts is to miss a key aspect of deconstructionist thinking, which questions and challenges the standards and assumptions that inform peoples understanding of social roles, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality. Feminism explores issues of gender roles (stereotypes), gender identity, and social inequality, as well as the standards that have defined what literature or the western canon is--a definition, which, despite the presence of writers like Emily Dickinson, for the most part has excluded women. In many ways Feminist writing must be understood in the context of history. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and the Womens Movement, much like the Civil Rights Movement, did much to improve the lives and opportunities of women in America. More women started to enter the work force, higher education institutions, political office, and high power positions. Whereas in American life before the 60s, it was widely believed that a womans place was in the home and her role was to raise children, women have worked to create a more equal place for themselves in society. So, before it is derided, it should be noted that the feminist movement has contributed greatly to the rights of women, including laws against sexual discrimination and harassment, changes in divorce laws, and generally, the creation of a new, diverse identity for women that allows them more freedom of choice to become who they want to be in society. Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, and Marge Piercy are considered feminist poets. Many of Sextons poems deal with topics were considered taboo, menstruation, abortion, masturbation, and adultery. Not only did this redefine the boundaries of poetry, it brought into the open issues that people had considered to be dirty. Multi-ethnic literature, like feminism, employs deconstructionist thinking and must be understood historically. Most notably, Ethnic literature was borne out of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Though, no less significant was the influence the American immigrant had on literature. The continued immigration of the early twentieth century and the fact that immigrants ceased being required to fully integrate (that is, become like white, English-speaking Americans) led to the rise of a number of ethnically diverse literary communities. In contrast to the overt, publicly sanctioned racism of the first half of the twentieth century, the post World War II era, up to the Contemporary Period, saw noticeable advances and integration of ethnic writers. Generally speaking, ethnic literature explores specific issues ethnic communities face. Yet, implicitly, Ethnic literature also questions the popular understanding of social issues like race, racism, and class, while as the same time bringing into question the ethnocentric and mono-lingual quality of American literature (that is, the implied assumption that white-American, English-speaking males are the standard of writing). Some multi-ethnic writers are, at times, confessional since they write about their personal experience. African American literature, since Harlem Renaissance, has emerged as an essential feature of the American literary landscape. 10

In conclusion, it should be noted that Feminist and Multi-Ethnic literature is narrow only in the sense that they thematically focus on particular communities of people, not that the writings are only for the people of the particular communities. More specifically, these writings attempt to inform the public by deconstructing stereotypes in order to more effectively integrate a variety of voices into the American landscape. In the end, these writers are aspiring for equality and harmony between the sexes and races.

AMERICAN POETRY SEMINAR

BY: KATHERINE C. FITZSIMONS, U.S. PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER, 2007

POST-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD AND NATIONAL BEGINNINGS

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)

He was an ardent patriot who is still remembered as the poet of the American Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, he was captured by the British while on sea duty. After his experience as a sailor in the Revolutionary War, he turned to newspaper and pamphlet writing, but had already decided to become a poet while in college. Much of the beauty of his poetry lies in the sounds of the words and the effects created through changes in rhythm. The following poem was inspired by the fact that some Native American Indians buried their dead in a sitting position. Published in 1788, it is the earliest American poem to romanticize the Indian as children of nature.
The Indian Burying Ground
In spite of all the learned have said, I still my old opinion keep; The posture, that we give the dead, Points out the souls eternal sleep. Not so the ancients of these lands

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The Indian, when from life released, Again is seated with his friends, And shares again the joyous feast. His imaged birds, and painted bowl, And venison, for a journey dressed, Bespeak the nature of the soul, Activity that knows no rest. His bow, for action ready bent, And arrows, with a head of stone, Can only mean that life is spent, And not the old ideas gone. Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,

No fraud upon the dead commit Observe the swelling turf, and say They do not lie, but here they sit. Here still a lofty rock remains, On which the curious eye may trace (Now wasted, half, by wearing rains) The fancies of a ruder race. Here still an aged elm aspires, Beneath whose far projecting shade (And which the shepherd still admires) The children of the forest played! There oft a restless Indian queen (Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)

And many a barbarous form is seen To chide the man that lingers there. By midnight moons, oer moistening dews; In habit for the chase arrayed, The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer, a shade! And long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reasons self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) Considered Americans first naturalist poet, he was born after the Revolutionary War and turned to nature as a source for inspiration. From this idea of nature he developed a view of death, which represents a sharp break from the Puritan attitude toward mans final destiny. We can see this view in his most famous nature poem Thanatopsis. (The title means view of death and he wrote it when he was just 16 years old.) To the Puritans, death was seen as a preliminary to afterlife, but Bryant treats death as part of nature. He thought that man should live in such a way that he wont be afraid to die. He also wrote a number of poems based on famous events in American history, in addition to more traditional ones about country versus city life, nature, and love.
From Thanatopsis To him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall And breathless darkness, and the narrow coffin house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-Go forth, under the open sky, and list To natures teachings, while from all around Earth and her waters, and the depths of air Comes a still voiceYet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thy individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

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ROMANTICISM TRANSCENDENTALISM Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) He is considered the founder of the transcendentalist movement. Although he finished Harvard Divinity School (a religious education) he began to accuse the church of acting as though God were dead, and he left the church. His major ideas included the need for a new national vision, the use of personal experience, a notion of a cosmic force (not God) and the spiritual insights from eastern religions. For example, the following poem relies on Hindu sources to create a cosmic order beyond the perceptions of mere humans. The poem at first confused readers unfamiliar with Brahma, the highest Hindu godthe eternal and infinite soul of the universe.
Brahma If the red slayer think he slay Or the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear. And one to me are shame and fame. The reckon ill who leave me out When me they fly. I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven, But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me and turn thy back on heaven.

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) Poes short and tragic life was plagued with insecurity. He was a gifted, but tormented man. He thought about the proper function of literature far more than writers of the past, and therefore became a great critic as well as writer of prose and poetry. Like so many other American writers, he was orphaned at an early age. His strange marriage in 1835 to his first cousin Virginia Clemm, who was not yet 14 had been interpreted as an attempt to find the stable family life he lacked. Many of his stories prefigure the genres of science fiction, horror and fantasy. His works have nothing to do with America, but instead are about dark things. Themes of death-in-life, especially being buried alive or returning like a vampire from the grave appear in many of his works. Poe is not un-American despite his aristocratic disgust with democracy, preference for the exotic, and themes of dehumanization. He proves that American democracy would produce works that lay bare the deepest hidden parts of the human psyche. In America, there was no firm complex social structure like in Europe it was every man for himself. Poe accurately described the underside of the American dream of the self-made man and showed the price of materialism and excessive competition loneliness, alienation and images of death-in-life. The Raven (1845), is Poes best-known poem. In this eerie poem, the haunted, sleepless narrator, who has been reading and mourning the death of his Lost Lenore at midnight, is visited by a raven (a bird that eats dead flesh hence a symbol of death) who perches above his door and ominously repeats the poems famous refrain nevermore. The poem ends in a frozen scene of death-in-life. The Raven [First published in 1845] by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-Only this and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore-For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door--

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Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door-Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-Merely this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my sour within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is and this mystery explore-Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-'Tis the wind and nothing more. Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he, But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then the ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore-Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er She shall press, ah, nevermore! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!-Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore-Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting-"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted--nevermore!

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if its soul in that one word he did outpour Nothing farther then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered-Till I scarcely more than muttered: "Other friends have flown before-On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." Then the bird said "Nevermore." Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of 'Never--nevermore.'" But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

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BRAHMIN POETS Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) Longfellow was born in Maine but grew up in Massachusetts. He went to Europe after college, and upon return to the United States he taught at Harvard University for 18 years. He was the first American to be honored with a statue in poets Corner in Westminster Abbey, London. He brought European culture to Americans attention and dealt with topics like home, family, nature, and religion. He was the most popular American poet in the late 19th century.
From Divina Commedia I Oft I have seen at some cathedral door A laborer pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his paternoster oer Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Become an undistinguishable roar. So, as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate, Kneeling in prayer and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) He is considered one of the greatest and most original American poets. His work speaks boldly of the worth of the individual and the oneness of all humanity. Mostly self-educated, Whitmans work was considered to break defiantly with traditional poetic themes and style. This break signified a great step in the establishment of an American literary identity. He was also a particular source of inspiration to the Beat Movement, which would emerge roughly 100 years later. In 1855 Whitman issued the first of many edition of his most famous work of poetry Leaves of Grass. In the long preface he announced the beginning of a new kind of democratic literature, which would be simple and unconquerable. The work praised the human body and the physical senses. The most well known poem from this collection is called Song of Myself. The symbolic narrator, the I, is seen as a reflection of the oneness of humanity. Some of Whitmans other well-known works are: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking and O Capitan! My Captain!, which was about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Like Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman is another in the line of Northeastern intellects. Unlike his Concord contemporaries though, Whitman was born (and subsequently spent most of his life) in the Long Island area of New York. Whitman was viewed by almost all of his uneducated family and friends as a lazy individual because of his distaste for physical labor and his tendency to each day take long walks which most people viewed as very unproductive. Like other writers (such as Thoreau) it was largely a string of failures in other professions and (like Poe) a drifting toward literature that eventually led Whitman toward writing. Whitmans style is very simple and highly sensual (some critics have even made the argument that some of it is highly homosexual).

I Hear America Singing I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his, as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutters song, the plowboys on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission, or at sundown The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the dayat night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong, melodious songs.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts into a prominent family. She never was married and spent her time at home. Rarely did she ever leave home and only attended college for one year. She began her writing at home and without much studying or formal education. After she died, her sister found more than 1,800 of her poems. Only seven of her poems were published in her lifetime and it wasnt until later that she is now ranked as one of the best of Americas poets. The first volume of her work, Poems of Emily Dickinson, was published in 1890, four years after her death. She writes about some of the most important things in her life. Love and a lover she never had, nature, mortality and immortality, success which she thought she never received and failure which she considered he constant companion. She is one of the most well-known and foremost poets in American literature. Like Poe, Dickinson explores the dark and mysterious parts of the mind, focusing greatly on death and the grave, though not in such a violent or frightening way. Her work is known for its simplicity of style and common images, which bring attention to such subjects as the pains and wonders of love; sexuality; the incomprehensible nature of death; the horrors of war; as well as God, and religious belief. Dickinson often used variations of meters and rhyme. Her short lyrical lines, full of powerful images and metaphors, differed greatly from the style of her contemporary, Walt Whitman, who used long lines, little rhyme and irregular rhythm. A nonconformist, like Thoreau, Dickinson often reversed meanings of words and phrases to great effect. Dickinsons poems continue to intrigue readers and critics.
Im Nobody Im nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then theres a pair of us dont tell! Theyd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog.

REALISM AND REACTION

THE CHICAGO SCHOOL OF POETRY Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) He was born in Illinois of Swedish immigrant parents. Poet, historian, biographer, novelist, musician, essayist, Sandburg was the son of a railroad blacksmith. A journalist by profession, Sandburg went on to write an impressive biography of Abraham Lincoln. He wrote urban and patriotic poems with simple and childlike rhymes in the style of Walt Whitman. Sandburg recited many of his poems by singing them. The poems Chicago and The Harbor are two fine examples of his short but powerful style.
Excerpt from Chicago Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nations Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) He was a poet of transition, living at the time following the Civil War, when American was rebuilding and changing and growing more materialistic. He grew up in a small town in Maine, which later furnished the setting for many of his poems and characters. He felt alienated from his family and society. After studying at Harvard, he moved to New York because he was too miserable to stay at home in Maine. He couldnt be successful enough as just a writer, so he took a job loading shale during the building of the New York subway system. Then, President Roosevelt discovered his poetry and helped Robinson get a job in a Customs House. With the poetic revival after WWI, he began popular and won the Pulitzer Prize three times in the 1920s, a record only exceeded by Frost, who won the Prize four times. The core of his philosophy is that mans highest duty is to develop his best attributes; failure consists only in a lack of effort. He was very aware of mans spiritual side and not interested in the surface aspects of mans life. The following poem, Richard Cory, represents Robinsons best-known statement on the hollowness of conventional success. Since Cory knows his life is worthless in spite of his success, he puts an end to it.
Richard Cory WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked. And he was richyes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

MODERNISM AND EXPERIMENTATION THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE WARS (1914-1945) e. e. cummings (1894-1962) He was one of the most innovative and celebrated poets of his generation. Like Williams, he also used colloquial language and powerful images. Yet it was the form of his writing that was the most unconventional. His was known for taking creative liberties with his syntax and layout, as well as doing away with other grammatical rules of punctuation, spelling, as well as the use of capital letters (as seen in the way he wrote his name). Cummings was even known to invent new words. While his poetry often appeared to be complex, the themes were often common, and at times romantic (in the tradition of Transcendentalists). The playfulness and strangeness of his poems, in many ways characterize this period of poetic expression.
Next To Of Course God America I next to of course god america I love you land of the pilgrims and so forth oh say can you see by the dawns early my country tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute? He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) The father of modern, Imagist poetry was Ezra Pound. Though he lived abroad for most of his life, through his letters and correspondence, he was a great influence on many of the important writers of his period. His most significant work was really his life work, a collection of poems called The Cantos, which he wrote and published until his death, and contains such lines as: The ants a centaur in his dragon world. Though rich and vivid imagery, these poems allude to the history and literature from many cultures and eras, which make them virtually indecipherable to the average reader. Pound was one of the most influential American poets of this century. He was a link between the United States and Britain and even worked as a secretary for the famous British writer William Butler Yeats. Pound helped to create a new style of poetry known as Imagism, which was clear and highly visual. He believed poetry should avoid set clichs and phrases. Pounds 1914 anthology (collection of works) of ten poets Des Imagistes offers examples of Imagist poetry by outstanding poets like William Carlos Williams, Hilda Doolittle, and Amy Lowell.
In a Station of the Metro (1916) Inspired by Japanese haiku The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) He was one of the most well educated poets of this period; and, like Pound, his poems are full of images and allusions to classical literature. As a professional poet he not only enjoyed success in both England and in the US, he was also seen as a commanding literary figure. Some of his most significant poems are The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), and Ash-Wednesday (1930). His poetry was considered highly experimental and innovative for its time. Eliot was born to a well-to-do family in Missouri and received the best education of any major American writer of the time. Eliot attended Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Oxford University. He studied Sanskrit and Oriental philosophy, which influenced his poetry. His poems are of the modernist style, illogical and abstract. He is best remembered for his formulation of the objective correlative, which he described in The Sacred Wood as a means of expressing emotion through a set of objects, a situation, or a chain of events that would be the formula for that particular emotion. Eliots poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) is an excellent example of objective correlative. For example, Eliot uses the image of coffee spoons to reflect the boring existence and the wasted life of Prufrock.
Beginning of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread across the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question Oh, do not ask, What is it? Let us go and make our visit.

Robert Frost (1874-1963) He was a key figure in this revival of American poetry (he in fact read an original poem at President John F. Kennedys inauguration, which was something Americans were not used to and helped to spark a new, national interest in poetry). Known for his deceptively simple poetry (using common images like apple picking, stone walls, and paths through woods), he was able to attract a wide readership. And while his poetry was superficially simple, they were full of deeper meaning. Unlike his modernist contemporaries, Frost was one of the last American poets to employ traditional rhyme and meter. Two of his most popular poems are The Road Not Taken (1916) and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923). Frost was born in California but raised on a farm in the Northeastern United States. He went to England, attracted by new movements in poetry there.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here He gives his harness bells a shake To ask is there is some mistake; The only other sounds the sweep

To watch his woods fill up with snow.Of easy wind and downy flake. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) He wrote poetry most of his life, but he did not publicly enter the poetry scene until he was well into his 40s. In fact, Stevens was an insurance executive who wrote poems in his spare time. His poems are know for their humor as well as using a range of imagesfrom elements of popular culture to lush tropical scenes. Probably from his experience in the insurance business, many of his poems deal with unimaginative lives. Some of his best-known poems are Sunday Morning, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, and The Idea of Order at Key West. Born in Pennsylvania, Stevens was educated at Harvard and New York University Law School. He practiced law in New York City and then became an insurance executive, but his business acquaintances did not know he wrote poetry. His poetry dwells upon themes of imagination, necessity for form, and belief that the order of art corresponds to the order of nature. In his poem Disillusionment at ten OClock Stevens shows that the human imagination will always find a creative outlet, maybe in dreams, and that a seemingly dull life is actually full of color.
Disillusionment of Ten OClock (1931) The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, Or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace And beaded ceintures. People are not going To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots, Catches tigers In red weather.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) He was not what one might consider a professional poet. As a practicing pediatrician who delivered over 2000 babies, Williams was known to write poems on prescription pads. His work uses strong images, is known for colloquial speech, and uses a kind of natural rhythm. Unlike Frost, he strongly broke with traditionally popular meter. In many ways his poems are like quick simple descriptions of ordinary objects like a wheelbarrow or a bowl of plumbs (from his poems The Red Wheelbarrow and This is just to say). Williams relaxed style and spontaneity is seen as an influence on the Beat writers of the 1950s.Williams was a practicing childrens doctor and delivered more than 2,000 babies. He wrote poetry on his doctors prescription pads. He favors Imagism and colloquial speech. As seen in his poem The Red Wheelbarrow

Williams finds interest and beauty in everyday people, objects, and events. Williams influenced the Beat poets and believed that poetry should be relaxed and natural instead of a perfect piece of art; poems should capture an instant of time in the way that a photograph does. He called his writing objectivist because of the importance of concrete, visual objects.
The Red Wheelbarrow (1923) So much depends Upon A red wheel Barrow Glazed with rain Water Beside the white Chickens

HARLEM RENAISSANCE Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was probably the most well known writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Evoking the spirit of the blues (a style of music similar to jazz), traditional spirituals, and jazz rhythms, Hughes explored the joys and suffering of the black experience in America. He is one of the first black writers to embrace his African-nessthe heritage and cultural identity with Africa. Many of his poems are full of sharp social commentary concerning racial inequality, which was still rife in America. His work is significant because it served to galvanize and unify the African American community. Hughes was seen as a cultural organizer and leader, authoring black literary anthologies and setting up black theater groups in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Hughes was the first African American writer to be able to live off his writing. He incorporated blues, spirituals, colloquial speech, and folkways into his poetry. One of his most beloved poems is The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which suggests that African culture, just like the great rivers of the world, will endure and deepen.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921, 1925)

Ive known rivers: Ive known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and Ive seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset Ive known rivers Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

THE ANTI-TRADITION Robert Lowell (1917-1977) (also known as a Confessional poet) Lowell began traditionally but became influenced by experimental currents. Lowell was well educated and linked with the political and social establishment, but he was able to create an

identity outside of this background. He was put in jail for a year for objecting to WWII, and he later publicly protested the Vietnam War as well. His style mixes the human with the majestic. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Lord Wearys Castle (1946). The violence contained in his early work is overpowering in poems like Children of Light (1946) which tells the harsh story of Puritans who killed Indians and whose descendents burned surplus grain instead of shipping it to hungry people: Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones/ And fences their gardens with the Redmans bones. When he became an anti-traditionalist, he wrote Life Studies (1959) which initiated a new style called confessional poetry because he bared his most tormenting personal problems with honesty and intensity.

The Drinker The man is killing timetheres nothing else. No help now from the fifth of Bourbon Chucked helter-skelter into the river, calendar Even its cork sucked under. telephone book. Stubbed before-breakfast cigarettes Burn bulls-eyes on the bedside table; A plastic tumbler of alka seltzer Champagnes in the bathroom. functions. No help from his body, the whales Warm-hearted blubber, foundering down Leagues of ocean, gasping whiteness. The barbed hooks fester. The lines snap tight. hiss. When he looks for neighbors, their names blur in the window, His distracted eyes see only glass sky. His despair has the galvanized color Of the mop and water in the galvanized bucket. Once she was close to him As water to the dead metal. He looks at her engagements inked on her A list of indictments. At the numbers in her thumbed black A quiver full of arrows. Her absence hisses like steam, The pipes sing Even corroded metal somehow He snores in his iron lung, and hears the voice of Eve, Beseeching freedom from the Gardens Perfect and ponderous bubble. No voice Outsings the serpents flawed, euphoric The cheese wilts in the rat-trap, The milk turns to junket in the cornflakes bowl, Car keys and razor blades Shine in an ashtray. Is he killing time? Out on the street, Two cops on horseback clop through the April rain To check the parking meter violations Their oilskins yellow as forsythia.

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) (also considered to be an Idiosyncratic poet) He grew up in Michigan and helped his father with the family flower business, which is how he developed a love of nature. After graduating from Harvard, he taught in a number of universities and continued to write while teaching. His volume of poetry The Waking: Poems 1933-1953 won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and his collected poems, Words For The Wind, won the National Book Award in 1959. His works have been called personal, lyrical, and spontaneous. He manipulates rhyme and rhythm so skillfully that the reader often senses the emotion of the poem before understanding it intellectually. He faces up to the terrors of modern life by expressing a joyful defiance to them.
The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me; so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.

BEAT POETS Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) He was a leading voice of this Beat Movement. His work, in line with beat themes, is known for addressing controversial issues and taboo subjects. His most significant poem, Howl (1956), is a kind of emotive stream of words (which employs the stream of consciousness technique) that is seen as a kind of anthem of beats. The poem deals with the themes of a deep sense of morning for America, sexuality and drugs. Some of his other works include Kaddish and other Poems (1961), which explore his Jewish heritage, and Reality Sandwiches (1963). Most of the Beat Poets, or beatniks, like Ginsberg migrated from the East Coast to San Francisco, California in the 1950s. Beat poetry is oral, repetitive, and meant to be recited during poetry readings in underground clubs. The poetry is a cry of pain and rage at what the poets see as Americas loss of innocence and a tragic waste of human and material resources. Ginsberg revolutionized traditional poetry with his beatnik style, a forerunner of modern-day rap music.
Howl (1956) I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of coldwater flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

POST-MODERNISM Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) He was one of the most prolific writers of this Post-modern period. As a true man of letters he wrote not only novels and poems, but short stories, plays, essays, criticisms, and text books. Warrens best-known work is his novel All the Kings Men (1946), which is a study of a powerful southern governor, Willie Stark, who was modeled after the historical Louisiana politician, Huey P. Long. Moving away from the classical themes and the image centered-ness of the modernist period, this text explores mans corruptibility in light of power. Much of Warrens work deals with the theme of self-understanding, democracy, as well as the tension between present and past. Some of his other works include World Enough and Time (1950), The Cave (1959), as well as his collection of poetry Now and Then: Poems 1976-1979 (1979). Warren was the first Poet Laureate of the United States.
Masts at Dawn Past second cock-crow yacht masts in the harbor go slowly white. No light in the east yet, but the stars show a certain fatigue. They withdraw into a new distance, have discovered our unworthiness. It is long since The owl, in the dark eucalyptus, dire and melodious, last called, and Long since the moon sank and the English Finished fornicating in their ketches. In the evening there was a strong swell. Red died the sun, but at dark wind rose easterly, white sea nagged the black harbor headland. When there is a strong swell, you may, if you surrender to it, experience A sense, in the act, of mystic unity with that rhythm. Your peace is the seas will. But now no motion, the bay-face is glossy in darkness, like An old window pane flat on black ground by the wall, near the ash heap. It neither Receives nor gives light. Now is the hour when the sea

Sinks into meditation. It doubts its own mission. The drowned cat That on the evening swell had kept nudging the piles of the pier and had seemed To want to climb out and lick itself dry, now floats free. On that surface a slight convexity only, it is like An eyelid, in darkness, closed. You must learn to accept the kiss of fate, for The masts go white slow, as light, like dew, from darkness Condensed on them, on oiled wood, on metal. Dew whitens in darkness. I lie in my bed and think how, in darkness, the masts go white. The sound of the engine of the first fishing dory dies seaward. Soon In the inland glen wakes the dawn-dove. We must try To love so well the world that we may believe, in the end, in God.

CONTEMPORARY: MULTICULTURALISM AND FEMINISM

BLACK AMERICAN POETS Maya Angelou (1928- )

Born Marguerita Johnson, Maya Angelou spent most of her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, where her family owned the general store that began the setting for Grandmothers Victory, the fifth chapter of her autobiography. After a difficult childhood, Angelou became a dancer, actress, and writer. She was active in the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, Jr. Contemporary black Americans have produced many poems of great beauty and considerable range of themes and tones. It is the most developed ethnic writing in America and is extremely diverse. Angelous writings have taken various literary forms, including drama and her wellknown memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970). She also wrote a collection of verse entitled Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie (1971). Angelou was selected to write a poem for the presidential inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993.
To A Husband Your voice at times a fist Youre Africa to me Tight in your throat At brightest dawn Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms The Congos green and In the room, Coppers brackish hue, Your hand a carved and A continent to build Skimming boat With Black Mans brawn Goes down the Nile I sit at home and see it all To point out Pharoahs tomb. Through you.

Rita Dove (1952- ) She has been a professor of creative writing and writes novels, short stories, and poems. Her collection of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, making her the second black poet to receive a Pulitzer. In this prize-winning work she celebrates her

grandparents though a series of lyric poems. She said the work is meant to reveal the rich inner lives of poor people. She was named poet laureate of the Unites State in 1993.
Lady Freedom Among Us don't lower your eyes or stare straight ahead to where you think you ought to be going don't mutter oh no not another one get a job fly a kite go bury a bone with her old fashioned sandals with her leaden skirts with her stained cheeks and whiskers and heaped up trinkets she has risen among us in blunt reproach she has fitted her hair under a hand-me-down cap and spruced it up with feathers and stars slung over her shoulder she bears the rainbowed layers of charity and murmurs all of you even the least of you don't cross to the other side of the square don't think another item to fit on a tourist's agenda consider her drenched gaze her shining brow she who has brought mercy back into the streets and will not retire politely to the potter's field having assumed the thick skin of this town its gritted exhaust its sunscorch and blear she rests in her weathered plumage bigboned resolute don't think you can ever forget her don't even try she's not going to budge no choice but to grant her space crown her with sky for she is one of the many and she is each of us

NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN POETS

Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- )

A Native American who is part of the Laguna Pueblo, Silko writes poetry that uses colloquial language and traditional stories to fashion haunting, lyrical poems. Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, of mixed ancestry and still lives with her husband and children on a Native American reservation. Silko is preoccupied with the act, process, and ritual of storytelling as a way of celebrating tradition, preserving memories, and sustaining her culture. Silko achieves a Japanese haiku-like resonance in the poem In Cold Storm Light (1981)
In Cold Storm Light Out of the thick ice sky Running swiftly Pounding Swirling above the treetops Louise Erdrich (1954- ) The snow elk come, Moving, moving White song Storm wind in the branches.

Erdrich is of Chippewa and German-American descent and grew up in North Dakota. She is a poet, essayist and novelist who creates powerful dramatic monologues that work like compressed dramas. She is the author of Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986) and Tracks (1988), and with her husband, The Crown of Columbus (1992). They depict Native American families coping with alcoholism, unemployment, and poverty on the reservation. In Family Reunion (1984) a drunken, abusive uncle returns from years in the city. As he suffers from heart disease, the abused niece, who is the speaker, remembers how this uncle had

killed a large turtle years before by stuffing it with a firecracker. The end of the poem links uncle Ray with the turtle he has victimized.
Family Reunion Somehow we find our way back, Uncle Ray Sings an old song to the body That pulls him Toward home. The gray fins that His hands have become Screw their bones in the dash Board. His face Has the odd, calm patience of a Child who has always Let bad wounds alone, or a Creature that has lived For a long time under water. And The angels come Lowering their slings and litters.

MEXICAN-AMERICAN CHICANO POETS Lorna Dee Cervantes (1954- ) She was born in San Francisco, California and founded Mango Publications, a press mainly devoted to Chicano literature. She often uses Spanish words in her poems and recalls the grandeur of Mexico in her poems, and declares that an epic corrido chants through her veins. (A corrido is the Spanish word for a rich, oral ballad). She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1978. Refugee Ship wet like cornstarch I slide past mi abuelitas eyes bible placed by her side she removes her glasses the pudding thickens mama raised me with no language I am an orphan to my spanish name the words are foreign, stumbling on my tongue I stare at my reflection in the mirror brown skin, black hair I feel I am a captive aboard a refugee ship a ship that will never dock a ship that will never dock

ASIAN-AMERICAN POETS Janice Mirikitani She is a sansei, or a third-generation Japanese American, and the editor of Ayumi, an anthology of Japanese American writing. Her poems pay tribute to anonymous poor immigrants from Asia who filled the sweatshops and the laundries of America. She talks about Japanese Americans, who, like her father, were taken to WWII relocation camps, one at Tule Lake. She expresses her solidarity with Asian women.
For My Father He came over the ocean carrying Mt. Fuji on his back/Tule Lake on his chest hacked through the brush of deserts and made them grow strawberries we stole berries from the stem we could not afford them for breakfast his eyes held nothing as we whipped us for stealing.

the desert had dried his soul. wordless he sold the rich full berries to hakujin whose children

pointed at our eyes they ate fresh strawberries on corn flakes. Father, i wanted to scream

at your silence. Your strength was a stranger i could never touch. iron in your eyes to shield

the pain to shield desert-like wind from patches of strawberries grown from tears.

FEMINISTS Marge Piercy (1936- ) Born in Michigan, she is not only a poet, but also a novelist and essayist and has published at least fifteen books of poetry and fifteen novels. She was the first member of her family to attend college. She graduated and went on to earn a Masters Degree from Northwestern University. Her awards include a fellowship from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Literature Award from the (Massachusetts) Governors Commission on the Status of Women. The subjects of many of her poems are objects and experiences in the natural world, as well as love, sex, and human relationships. A central theme in her work is the powerful tension between ones inner identity and the force of outer, personal, social, and cultural pressures. A womans sexual identity and individual personality in contemporary society are in conflict with these outer forces that attempt to determine who and what she is.
Barbie Doll

This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. She went to and fro apologizing. Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending.

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