Home > Poetry of the United States
The history of United States poetry as a literary art begins during the colonial era. Unsurprisingly, most of the early poetry written in the colonies and fledgling republic used contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century, when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad, American poets had begun to take their place at the forefront of the English-language avant garde. This position was sustained into the 20th century to the extent that Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential English-language poets in the period around World War I. By the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write.By the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified, as scholars placed an increased emphasis on poetry by women, Afro-Americans, Hispano-Americans and other subcultural groupings. Poetry, and creative writing in general, also tended to become more professionalized with the growth of Creative Writing programs on campuses across the country.
1 Poetry in the colonies
One of first the recorded poets of the English colony was Anne Bradstreet ( 1612– 1672). Bradstreet is, in fact, one of the earliest known women poets in English. Her poems are untypically tender evocations of home and family life and of her love for her husband. In marked contrast, Edward Taylor ( 1645Events February 15 New Model Army is founded officially June 14 English Civil War: Battle of Naseby 12,000 Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers June 28 English Civil War the Royalists lose Carlisle July 2: Fight at Alford, Aberdee– 1729Events July 30 Baltimore, Maryland is founded. First printing press was established in Ottoman Empire (app. 300 years after it was first used in western civilization) by Ibrahim Muteferrika. Births January 12 Edmund Burke, statesman, philosopher January 2) wrote poems expounding PuritanThe Puritans were members of a group of radical Protestants which developed in England after the Reformation. Terminology The word puritan is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth c virtues in a highly-wrought metaphysicalMetaphysical may refer to: Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy dealing with the ultimate nature of reality; or The Metaphysical poets, a poetic school from seventeenth century England who correspond with baroque period in European literature. A style of p style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period. This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the poetry written in the colonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries.
The eighteenth century saw an increasing emphasis on America as fit subject matter for its poets. This trend is most evident in the works of Philip Freneau ( 1752Events February 11 Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the US, is opened. March 23 The Halifax Gazette the first Canadian newspaper June 15 Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (kite + key + lightning) September 14 The British E– 1832Events February 12 Ecuador annexes the Galapagos Islands February 12 serious cholera epidemic begins in London from the East London. It is declared officially over in early May but deaths continue. At least 3000 victims March 24 In Hiram, Ohio a group of), who is also notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude to Native Americans shown in his writings. However, as might be expected from what was essentially provincial writing, this late colonial poetry is generally technically somewhat old-fashioned, deploying the means and methods of Pope and Gray in the era of Blake and Burns.
On the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place. As the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was in not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative, to say the least. This can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London.
Another distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. One of the most well-known poets of her day, at least in the colonies, her poems were typically New England, meditating on religious and classical ideas.
