AMERICAN POETRY MOVEMENT

Poetry Movement Dates Themes Notable Poets

 Anne
 Construction of an
Bradstreet
American identity
 Phillis
1550s-  Religious values
Colonial Poetry Wheatley
1860s
 Political rhetoric
 Henry
during the War of
Wadsworth
Independence
Longfellow
 Optimism about
humanity
 Appreciation
for the
natural world  Henry David
Thoreau
 The unity of
1820s- humanity with the Ralph Waldo
Transcendentalism 1850s

natural world Emerson
 Rejection of  Walt Whitman
societal
conveniences

 Support for
humanitarian issues
 Ezra Pound
 Radical stylistic
departures from  T.S. Eliot
previous poetry  E. E.
movements (i.e., Cummings
1890s- Romanticism and
Modernism
1950s Victorian poetry)  Gertrude Stein

 Use of clear,  William

concise imagery Carlos
Williams
 Free-flowing verse
 Frank O'Hara
 Development of
 Langston
African American
Hughes
identity