1

AMERICA 2

‘ America’ is another

name for the United States of America or the U.S. or the U.S. of A

The Americans3

The indigenous peoples of America or

the Native Americans are believed to

have migrated from Asia, beginning

between 12,000 and 40,000 years ago.

In 1492,  the explorer Christopher

Columbus, under contract to the

Spanish crown, made the first

contact with the indigenous people. 

Early American Poetry4

The poetry before the founding of

the United States was largely oral.

Most of the early colonial poetry is

modeled on the British poetry of the

seventeenth century. The influence

of the Puritanism is clearly felt in

early American poetry.

ANNE BRADSTREET5

One of the first recorded poets of the

British colonies was Anne

Bradstreet (1612–1672), one of the

earliest known women poets who wrote in

English

Post-Independence American Poetry

6

The thirteen American colonies

declared themselves as

independent of the British Empire

on 4 July 1776.

The need to be free from British

poetic models and tradition is an

important concern of the Post-

Independence American poets.

Post Independence American Poets

7

Some of the most important

poets of the nineteenth century

were Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803–1882), Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow (1807–1882), and

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849).

Post Independence American Poets

8

The search for distinctive

American voice and identity is

reflected in the presence of

American landscape and native

traditions in their poetry.

AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM 9

The American Transcendentalism began

in 1848 as a protest against the general

state of culture and society. It was

founded on the belief that the

ideal spiritual state "transcends" the

physical and empirical and can be

realized only through the

individual's intuition, rather than through

the doctrines of established religions.

PROMINENT TRANSCENDENTALISTS

10

Prominent transcendentalists

included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry

David Thoreau, and  Walt Whitman (1819

-1892).

Transcendentalism was the distinctly

American strain of

English Romanticism of William

Wordsworth and S.T.Coleridge. Emerson

is believed to have met these two poets.

EMERGENCE OF THE TRUE AMERICAN VOICE

11

Emerson declared in 1837, ‘Our day

of dependence, our long

apprenticeship to the learning of

other lands, draws to a close’.

Two very different poets represent

the emergence of this new spirit

and genuinely American voice.

WHITMAN AND DICKINSON12

Walt Whitman (1819–1892 )

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

TWO AMERICAN POETIC IDIOMS

13

Louis  Untermeyer (Modern American

Poetry) notes that these two poets

represent two major American

poetic idioms—the free metric and

direct emotional expression of

Whitman, and the gnomic obscurity

and irony of Dickinson—both of

which would stamp the American

poetry of the 20th century.

‘HE IS AMERICA’14

Whitman is often called

America’s first ‘poet of

Democracy’.

Modernist  poet 

Ezra Pound said

“He is America.”

WALT WHITMAN 15

Walt Whitman was born into a

working class family in West Hills,

New York, a village near Hempstead,

Long Island, on May 31, 1819, just

thirty years after George Washington

was inaugurated as the first

president of the newly formed United

States.

WALT WHITMAN : A LIFE16

Whitman worked as a journalist,

a teacher, a government clerk,

and a volunteer nurse during

the American Civil War (1861–

1865)  in addition to publishing

his poetry.

WALT WHITMAN : A LIFE17

 After a stroke towards the end

of his life, he moved to Camden,

New Jersey where his health

further declined. He died at age

72 and his funeral became a

public spectacle.

AN AMERICAN EPIC18

Whitman's major work, Leaves of

Grass, was first published in 1855 with

his own money. The work was an

attempt at reaching out to the common

person with ‘an American epic’. He

continued expanding and revising it

until his death in 1892.

LEAVES OF GRASS 19

Walt Whitman, age

37, frontispiece to Leaves of Grass steel

engraving by Samuel Hollyer

LEAVES OF GRASS 20

Leaves of Grass  has its genesis in

an essay called  ‘The Poet’ (1845)

by Emerson, which expressed the

need for the United States to have

its own new and unique poet to

write about the new country's

virtues and vices.

LEAVES OF GRASS 21

The title Leaves of Grass  was

a pun. "Grass" was a term given by

publishers to works of minor value

and "leaves" is another name for

the pages on which they were

printed.

ONE'S-SELF I SING.

“ ONE'S-SELF I sing—a simple,

separate Person; Yet utter the

word Democratic, the word En-

masse ……………

Of Life immense in passion,

pulse, and power, Cheerful—for

freest action form'd, under the

laws divine, 

The Modern Man I sing”

22

One of the most

important poems in Leaves of

Grass

“ One’s Self I Sing”

TERRY MULCAIRE ON “One’s Self I Sing”

23

‘A poetic universe of productive

tension is hinted by that "Yet"; the

tense equipoise between individualism

and democracy, this poem suggests, is

the foundational theme of Whitman’s

book. The poem then goes on to

introduce the site and symbol for this

reconciliation of individual to mass: the

body.’

I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC

 I SING the Body electric;

The armies of those I love engirth me, and I

engirth  them; 

They will not let me off till I go with

them, respond to  them, 

And discorrupt them, and charge them

full with the charge of the Soul.

24

This radical power of the human body is

celebrated in the poem ‘ I Sing the Body Electric’.

 I SING the Body electric;

‘The Self’ and the ‘ I’25

Whitman seems to put himself in the

center, but the "self" of the poem's

speaker - the "I" of the poem - should

not be limited to or confused with the

person of the historical Walt Whitman.

This is an expansive persona, one that

has exploded the conventional

boundaries of the self. As he says, ‘I am

large, I contain multitudes’

OTHER FAMOUS POEMS OF WHITMAN

26

Some other famous poems of Whitman

are ‘ Out of the Cradle Endlessly

Rocking’, ‘ I hear America Singing’ , ‘A

Noiseless patient Spider’.

His poems like ‘When Lilacs Last in the

Dooryard Bloom’d , and ‘ O Captain,

My Captain’ are elegies on the death

of Abraham Lincoln

EMILY DICKINSON 27

One of the most important American

poets and contemporaries of Walt

Whitman is Emily Dickinson. She

was born 10 December 1830, in

Amherst, Massachusetts, where she

lived until her death on 15 May

1886. 

EMILY DICKINSON 28

Although she was a prolific

private poet, fewer than a dozen

of her nearly eighteen hundred

poems were published during

her lifetime.

I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there's a pair of us? Don't tell! they'd

advertise – you know!How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –  To tell one's name – the

livelong June –  To an admiring Bog!

29

EMILY DICKINSON AT NINE I'm Nobody! Who are You? 

EMILY DICKINSON

EMILY DICKINSON : A LIFE30

Dickinson was a private and

introverted person who disliked

fame as the poem ‘ I am Nobody’

shows.  Adrienne Rich notes that

this privacy was freedom to her.

Dickinson’s life as well her poetry

stands in complete contrast to

Whitman.

EMILY DICKINSON’S STYLE31

Dickinson's poems are unique.

They contain short lines,

typically lack titles, slant rhyme ,

and unconventional

capitalization and punctuation. 

EMILY DICKINSON : MAJOR THEMES

32

Many of her poems deal with

themes of death and immortality,

two recurring topics in letters to

her friends.

The influence of American

Transcendentalism is also felt in

her works.

‘BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH’

“ Because I could not stop for

Death – He kindly stopped

for me –  The Carriage held

but just Ourselves – 

And Immortality.”

The noted critic Allen Tate says about this typical Dickinson poem ‘ If the word great means anything in poetry, this poem is one of the greatest in the English language’.

33

THE TRADITION OF AMERICAN POETRY

34

The tradition of American poetry can

be represented by the contrasting

figures of Whitman and Dickinson.

What unites both is the distinctive

and individualistic voice that is very

American and very powerful.

35

The passionate quest for

genuine American identity and

the spirit of non-conformity

continued in the twentieth

century.

THE TRADITION OF AMERICAN POETRY

THE RISE OF MODERNISM36

Modernism emerged in the early

part of the twentieth century as

a reaction against the

sentimental and romantic

Victorian poetry.

THE RISE OF MODERNISM37

 Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and T. S.

Eliot (1888–1965) steered American

poetry toward greater density,

difficulty, and opacity, with the use of

techniques like fragmentation, ellipsis,

allusion, juxtaposition, ironic and

shifting personae, and mythic

parallelism. 

TWO EARLY MODERNISTS38

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)

IMAGISM 39

Modernist poetry in English is

generally considered to have emerged

with the appearance of the Imagist

movement. Imagism favored precision

of imagery and clear, sharp language

and rejected the sentiment and

discursiveness typical of

much Romantic and Victorian poetry.

They emphasized the use of free verse.

OTHER MODERNIST POETS40

Other modernist poets of the period

include Gertrude Stein (1874–

1946), Wallace Stevens(1879–1955),

William Carlos Williams (1883–

1963), Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886–

1961), , Marianne Moore(1887–

1972), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962),

and Hart Crane (1899–1932).

ROBERT FROST41

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is one the most influential American poets of the twentieth century.

ABOUT ROBERT FROST42

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco

on March 26, 1874. He moved to New

England at the age of eleven and

became interested in reading and

writing poetry during his high school

years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He

was enrolled at Dartmouth College in

1892, and later at Harvard, though he

never earned a formal degree.

POETRY OF ROBERT FROST43

He is highly regarded for his realistic

depictions of rural life and his command

of American colloquial speech. Though

his poems avoid the experimental

excesses and techniques of the

modernist contemporaries, a very

modern and very American sensibility is

felt in Frost’s poetry. The influence of

Imagism is also seen on his poetry.

The New England Poet44

His work frequently employed settings

from rural life in New England in the

early twentieth century, using them to

examine complex social and

philosophical themes. A popular and

often-quoted poet, Frost was honored

frequently during his lifetime,

receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for

Poetry.

MENDING WALL45

A typical Frost poem is ‘Mending Wall’,

which appeared in North of Boston

(1914). It is  meditative lyric that

reports and assesses a dialogue

between neighbors who have joined in

the annual occupation of rebuilding the

wall which separates their farms.

GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS

46

The poem reexamines the stock

belief regarding the relationship

between human beings and the

relationship of human beings

with nature.

47

The speaker in the poem a New

England farmer questions

conventional wisdom of mankind

-‘Good fences make good neighbors’

and indicates that forces of nature

do not accept human boundaries.

GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS

MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

48

‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy

Evening’ which appeared in Frost’s

1922 collection New Hampshire is

widely known. The last stanza of the poem is

extremely famous:“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.”

MEYERS ONSTOPPING BY THE WOODS

49

Though the poem is read simplistically as

the conflict between ‘beauty’ and ‘duty’ or

between the romantic world view and the

pragmatic one, Jeffery Meyers says ‘The

theme of "Stopping by Woods"-is the

temptation of death, even suicide,

symbolized by the woods that are filling up

with snow on the darkest evening of the

year. The speaker says, "The woods are

lovely, dark and deep," but he resists their

morbid attraction.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN50

One of the most famous American

poems is ‘The Road Not Taken’ by

Robert Frost. It was published in the

collection Mountain Interval in 1916.

The speaker in the poem is a traveler

who is remembering his journey. He

says that he had to make a choice

between two roads at an important

juncture in his life.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED BY

51

The speaker concludes by saying:I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–

I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

The traveler's choice in living unconventional life indicates his philosophical outlook, his individualism and non-conformist attitude.

THE JOURNEY OF AMERICAN POETRY

52

The journey of American poetry

can be summed up as follows:

The attitudes of American poets

are like those of the speaker-

individualistic, non-conformist

and always keen to venture into

unknown territories.

The American Tradition of the New

53

The major American poets like

Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson

and Robert Frost have always

believed in taking the Road

which is usually not taken and

which ‘ wanted wear’.

54

Consequently, they have made

all the difference to literary

traditions by opening new

pathways and streets and hence

have been immensely influential

internationally.

The American Tradition of the New

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED BY:

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN

POETRY WITH REFERENCE TO

WHITMAN, DICKINSON AND FROST