İDE 223 – American Poetry

September 29, Tuesday

American Lifestyle and Literature until the 19th Century

 Before the colonists arrived, literature in the North America was composed of oral works of
chants and religious songs in general. Even after the colonists came, there were no important
example of English poetry until the 18th century.
 The 18th century marked the Enlightenment period in the Americas as well. The dominant
religious system of Puritanism, which defended the way to salvation as God’s grace, lost its
position in the centre to the idea of human sympathy in morality.
o Putting human sympathy in the centre means putting the individual in the centre. It is
related to humanism but based on the philosophy of sentimentalism by John Locke
and Adam Smith. It connects empathy and human feelings and believes that humans
are innately good, therefore, their feelings show us their good.
 With the Great Awakening, the religion accepted a sentimental representation. Also, the Bible
is interpreted in rational thought by another group which employed the unitarian opposition to
the idea of trinity.
 This age saw the rapid expansion of trade and the beginning of modern consumerism.
American Lifestyle and Literature in the 19th Century

 When the time came to 1820s, the United States was a nation whose literature was tied to
Europe and Britain. British magazines and poetry were published shortly after their original
publication. Sir Walter Scott was a popular figure in the Americas.
 The United States was seeking its own literature. There was a search of national identity in
daily life and literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “The Poet” (1844), was the most
important work of literary criticism of this period.
o Emerson defended the formation of a literature that would show America not as great
but as it was. He stated that American writers should use the materials of their own
time and literature, that everything that was original about America was not reflected
into literature. This essay of his influenced Walt Whitman.
 Herman Melville stated that American republican progressiveness differed the U.S. from the
rest of the world and it should be carried into literature as well.
 American literature of the period was not new in terms of form or content, but in terms of the
American themes like trauma of rapid change, the idea of making success of a failure, nature
as the part of the daily life and lifestyle, much more pronounced and stressed continental
individualism. Such themes began to come out in the works of American literature.
 Important literary figures of the age included the great fiction writer Washing Irving, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, a seminal figure who represented the age, Herman Melville and Walt
Whitman, the national poet of the new people and continent.
 During these times, the capitalist American system based on consumerism, abuse of labour
and artificial needs was just beginning. Many of the writers including Henry David Thoreau,
Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville reacted against this.
 Transcendentalism was the major poetic movement of the period. It was the American branch
of Romanticism. It was active from the late 1830s to early 1840s. Emerson, Whitman and the
other poets were referred as natura mystics.
o Mysticism is an interpretation of religion or belief in which the individual sees
himself in part of God and tries to reach a unity with God. In this case, nature mystics
see nature like a God and have a pantheistic approach towards it, seeing it as a
significant force in life.
  Some, including Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson, were interested in the women question
and expressed their thought on the issue. Walt Whitman was the only male figure who argued
the sexes should be equal.
 There was an influx of refugees from the Napoleonic Wars and Ireland, composing of mostly
Catholics, which lead to xenophobia. People became pretty impassionate against Catholicism.
October 1, Thursday

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 He had a very normal personal life, unlike his contemporaries who were eccentric.
 He was a unitarian minister and a preacher. Unitarian Church believed human beings were not
doomed and Jesus was not a godly person but an important human being.
 He was influenced by German High Criticism, which interpreted the Bible in the light of
common mythological stories found in mythologies.
 He does not see himself as a great poet. He thinks he writes prose as a poet as well. He has a
few important essays like “Nature” and “The Poet.” The latter was about the theory of poetry
and American poetry and argues that true poetry should not be too restricted by meter, though,
he was unable to implement this to his poetry and used traditional meter.
 He joined a group of churchmen called the Transcendentalist Group, who were affected by
Coleridge and Locke.
 In “the Divinity School Address” speech he shared some radical thoughts about religion and
was criticised.
 He emphasises Jesus as only a mortal, who is just a model for how people should connect with
the God. He defends that everyone can be like Jesus, considering the individual moral
sentiment and a potential to communicate the good God everyone has.
 Later in his life he became an advent abolitionist.
October 6, Tuesday

Henry David Thoreau

 He is more important as a prose writer than a poet. He is well-known for his observations of
nature which he writes about in prose. He also writes about political issues. His poems are
about himself.
o His essay “Resistance to Civil Government” influenced many civil rights movement
activists. He advised standing for what you believe is right rather than applying some
other rules.
 His writings include travel writings, but he has travelled so little and spend the most of his life
around Concord, where Emerson also lived. He was an introvert who did not have a great
social life but had a small circle of friends, which included Emerson.
 He was influenced by Thomas Carlyle. He is a very principled man who experimented non-
consumer life. He wrote about his experiences and thoughts of simple life in Walden (1854),
which can be considered as a summary of him.
o Walden is full of natural observations and recordings of his own experiences that
turned to a parable of human existence.
 He was quite a radical person, rejecting earning a living and simply preferring living. He had a
pantheistic philosophy, which was another version of transcendentalism, much like
Wordsworth’s understanding.
October 8, Thursday

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 He is the most well-known poet of his time. He is a precursor of Robert Frost and his poetry.
  He is very talented at languages. He brought European culture and language to the States. He
took European form and meter of poetry and used them with local subject matters,
domesticated them.
 His poems are narrative. His poetry ranges from everyday life to personal life. Generally, he
talks about everyday life. There is a tone of melancholy in his works. He mixes sadness and
hope, accepting the sad part of life but also believing in the light side of life.
October 13, Tuesday

Edgar Allan Poe

 He is famous for his poetry, horror and mystery stories, and the invention of detective fiction.
He is a very influential figure. He became famous with “the Raven.”
 His life is melodramatic in many aspects like someone has made it up.
 His style of criticism is similar to sarcastic British manner that viciously attacks the criticised
work.
 His early poems are not technically good and are the imitations of English romantics. His later
poetry is good in technique, but the contents are still romantic-gothic matters.
 His idea is that poetry should only try to be beautiful. The effect of the work on the reader is
important for him. That is why he writes poems and short stories to maintain that effect.
October 20, Tuesday

Walt Whitman

 His poems are full of tenderness, love, and compassion for all the people including himself,
which makes him and his poetry different than others. He is a pantheist. He is so expressive
and open.
 His ideas and topics are a taboo for the period he wrote them. He was seen as a disgrace by
other poets of the time. He influenced the American poetry of the 20 th century.
 He has many nationalistic poems that try to create an American identity.
 He tries to keep a fidelity to his concept of art. He remains at pushing his own understanding
in his poems.
November 19, Thursday

Harlem Renaissance

 Harlem Renaissance is a cultural phenomenon of the early 20 th century, precisely 1920s-

1930s. It is also known as the New Negro Movement.
 Harlem is a black neighbourhood in the New York City. Many intellectuals and educated lived
there and produced a great cultural atmosphere.
 It is called “renaissance” because after the years of slavery and oppression blacks were able to
form their own culture. They turned to local folk and African sources and created their unique
African American music, literature, painting, and visual arts.
o They built a separate African American identity but also integrated with white
identity.
November 24, Tuesday

American Poetry After 1945

 Post-war poets created their own types of poetry and wrote manifests for their movements.
o Modernists had isolated themselves from the public (distanced themselves from their
poetry and feelings – poetry objectlike and free from person) but post-war poets
opened back to the public and a more personal poetry emerged.
 o Modernists focused on results and polished their poetry – everything was about
control. New generation wrote more natural, organic, flowing poetry. They used more
experimental styles and autobiographical topics (confessional poetry that deals with
extremely personal and sometimes taboo).
 Two important transforming shocks: Ginsberg’s Howl (1954) – very different from modernist
poetry of the previous decades, and Lowell’s Life Studies (1959).
o Ginsberg led a return to Whitman’s tradition from San Francisco, a new cultural
centre, where an alternative poetic tradition was formed.
 They aimed to restore poetry with a more vital relationship with the contemporary life unlike
the modernists who focused on images and instant experiences.
 Beat Generation, connected to the protest of established culture, lead the 1960s counterculture
movement. Poetry became completely social and political in the 1960s.
o They protested the standardised and mechanised societal traditions, chose a bohemian,
decadent lifestyle much like the decadents of the late Victorian era.
 There are four main movements during this period: Confessional Poetry, Black Mountain
School, New York School, and San Francisco Renaissance.
Confessional Poetry

 Opened the modernist form and turned it into organic in which form revealed in relation to the
poem’s content.
 Put poet’s feelings and thoughts on the foreground.
Black Mountain School

 A college that became very influential during the period and the poetry movement developed
around its teachers and critics.
 Its manifest is Projective Verse by Charles Olson.
 The poet’s feelings at the moment of writing should decide on the form. Poem should be in
touch with the body. Poem represents the feeling at the moment of composition –
spontaneous.
New York School

 Began as a movement in abstract painting and influenced the poets with its abstractness.
 Instead of focusing on poem or feelings, focuses on the composition process of poetry –
postmodern in this sense.
 Poem is a communication between two people.
San Francisco Renaissance

 A cultural phenomenon than a movement. An alternative type of poetry, art and music to the
East Coast.