11. 1920s American and American poetry

American poetryAmerican poetry, the poetry of the United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies (although before this, a strong oral tradition often likened to poetry existed among Native American societies[1]). Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists' work relied on 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, poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefront of the English-language avant-garde[citation needed].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 during World War I.[2] 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. Toward the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified, as scholars placed an increased emphasis on poetry by women, African Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos and other subcultural groupings. Poetry, and creative writing in general, also tended to become more professionalized with the growth of creative writing programs in the English studies departments of campuses across the countryPoetry in the coloniesAs England's contact with the Americas increased after the 1490s, explorers sometimes included verse with their descriptions of the "New World" up through 1650, the year of Anne Bradstreet's "The Tenth Muse," which was written in America, most likely in Ipswich, Massachusetts or North Andover, Massachusetts) and printed/distributed in London, England by her brother-in-law, Rev. John Woodbridge. There are 14 such writers whom we might on that basis call American poets (they had actually been to America and to different degrees, wrote poems or verses about the place). Early examples include a 1616 "testimonial poem" on the sterling warlike character of Captain John Smith (in Barbour, ed. "Works") and Rev. William Morrell's 1625 "Nova Anglia" or "New England," which is a rhymed catalog of everything from American weather to glimpses of Native women, framed with a thin poetic "conceit" or "fiction" characterizing the country as a "sad and forlorn" female pining for English domination. Then in May 1627 Thomas Morton of Merrymount---an English West Country outdoorsman, attorney at law, man of letters and colonial adventurer---raised a Maypole to celebrate and foster more success at this fur-trading plantation and nailed up a "Poem" and "Song" (one a densely-literary manifesto on how English and Native people came together there and must keep doing so for a successful America; the other a light "drinking song" also full of deeper American implications). These were published in book form along with other examples of Morton's American poetry in "New English Canaan" (1637); and based on the criteria of "First," "American" and Poetry," they make Morton (and not AnneBradstreet) America's first poet in English. (See Jack Dempsey, ed., "New English Canaan by Thomas Morton of 'Merrymount'" and his biography "Thomas Morton: The Life & Renaissance of an Early American Poet" Scituate MA: Digital Scanning 2000). One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), who remains one of the earliest known women poets who wrote in English.[3] The poems she published during her lifetime address religious and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, many of which remained unpublished until the 20th century.Edward Taylor (1645–1729) wrote poems expounding Puritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period.[4] 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 earliest "secular" poetry published in New England was by Samuel Danforth in his "almanacks" for 1647–1649,[5] published at Cambridge; these included "puzzle poems" as well as poems on caterpillars, pigeons, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, Danforth never ventured far from a spiritual message. 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. She was one of the best-known poets of her day, at least in the colonies, and her poems were typical of New England culture at the time, meditating on religious and classical ideas.[6][7]The 18th century saw an increasing emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. This trend is most evident in the works of Philip Freneau (1752–1832), who is also notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude to Native Americans shown in his writings, sometimes reflective of a skepticism toward Anglo-American culture and civilization.[8] However, as might be expected from what was essentially provincial writing, this late colonial poetry is generally somewhat old-fashioned in form and syntax, 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 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.[edit] Postcolonial poetryHenry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1873.The first significant poet of the independent United States was William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), whose great contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on the grandeur of prairies and forests. Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson , (1803–1882), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), and Sidney Lanier (1842–1881). As might be expected, the worksof these writers are united by a common search for a distinctive American voice to distinguish them from their British counterparts. To this end, they explored the landscape and traditions of their native country as materials for their poetry.[9]The most significant example of this tendency may be The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow. This poem uses Native American tales collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who was superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841. Longfellow also imitated the meter of the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, possibly to avoid British models. The resulting poem, while a popular success, did not provide a model for future U.S. poets.Another factor that distinguished these poets from their British contemporaries was the influence of the transcendentalism of the poet/philosophers Emerson and Thoreau. Transcendentalism was the distinctly American strain of English Romanticism that began with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Emerson, arguably one of the founders of transcendentalism, had visited England as a young man to meet these two English poets, as well as Thomas Carlyle. While Romanticism transitioned intoVictorianism in post-reform England, it grew more energetic in America from the 1830s through to the Civil War.Edgar Allan Poe was probably the most recognized American poet outside of America during this period. Diverse authors in France, Sweden and Russia were heavily influenced by his works, and his poem "The Raven" swept across Europe, translated into many languages. In the twentieth century the American poet William Carlos Williams said of Poe that he is the only solid ground on which American poetry is anchoredWhitman and DickinsonThe final emergence of a truly indigenous English-language poetry in the United States was the work of two poets, Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). On the surface, these two poets could not have been less alike. Whitman's long lines, derived from the metric of the King James Version of the Bible, and his democratic inclusiveness stand in stark contrast with Dickinson's concentrated phrases and short lines and stanzas, derived from Protestant hymnals.What links them is their common connection to Emerson (a passage from whom Whitman printed on the second edition of Leaves of Grass), and the daring originality of their visions. These two poets can be said to represent the birth of 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 profoundly stamp the American poetry of the 20th century.[10]The development of these idioms, as well as more conservative reactions against them, can be traced through the works of poets such as Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935), Stephen Crane (1871–1900), Robert Frost (1874–1963) and Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Frost, in particular, is a commanding figure, who aligned strict poetic meter, particularly blank verse and terser lyrical forms, with a "vurry Amur'k'n" (as Pound put it) idiom. He successfully revitalized a rural tradition with many English antecedents from his beloved Golden Treasury and produced an oeuvre of major importance, rivaling or even excelling in achievement that of the key modernists and making him, within the full sweep of more traditional modern English-language verse, a peer of Hardy and Yeats. But from Whitman and Dickson the outlines of a distinctively new organic poetic tradition, less indebted to English formalism than Frost's work, were clear to see, and they would come to full fruition in the 1910's and 20's.Modernism and afterThis new idiom, combined with a study of 19th-century French poetry, formed the basis of American input into 20th-century English-language poetic modernism. Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) were the leading figures at the time, with their rejection of traditional poetic form and meter and of Victorian diction. Both steered American poetry toward greater density, difficulty, and opacity, with an emphasis on techniques such as fragmentation, ellipsis, allusion, juxtaposition, ironic and shiftingpersonae, and mythic parallelism. Pound, in particular, opened up American poetry to diverse influences, including the traditional poetries of China and Japan.Numerous other poets made important contributions at this revolutionary juncture, including Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886–1961), Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914), Marianne Moore (1887–1972), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), and Hart Crane (1899–1932). The cerebral and skeptical Romantic Stevens helped revive the philosophical lyric, and Williams was to become exemplary for many later poets because he, more than any of his peers, contrived to marry spoken American English with free verse rhythms. Cummings remains notable for his experiments with typography and evocation of a spontaneous, child-like vision of reality.Whereas these poets were unambiguously aligned with high modernism, other poets active in the United States in the first third of the 20th century were not. Among the most important of the latter were those who were associated with what came to be known as the New Criticism. These included John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), Allen Tate (1899–1979), and Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989). Other poets of the era, such as Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), experimented with modernist techniques but were also drawn towards more traditional modes of writing. Still others, such as Robinson Jeffers(1887–1962), adopted Modernist freedom while remaining aloof from Modernist factions and programs.In addition, there were still other, early 20th Century poets who maintained or were forced to maintain a peripheral relationship to high modernism, likely due to the racially charged themes of their work. They include Countee Cullen (1903–1946), Alice Dunbar Nelson (1875–1935), Gwendolyn Bennett (1902–1981), Langston Hughes (1902–1967), Claude McKay (1889–1946=8), Jean Toomer (1894–1967) and other African American poets of the Harlem Renaissance.The modernist torch was carried in the 1930s mainly by the group of poets known as the Objectivists. These included Louis Zukofsky (1904–1978), Charles Reznikoff (1894–1976), George Oppen (1908–1984), Carl Rakosi (1903–2004) and, later, Lorine Niedecker (1903–1970). Kenneth Rexroth, who was published in the Objectivist Anthology, was, along with Madeline Gleason (1909–1973), a forerunner of the San Francisco Renaissance. Many of the Objectivists came from urban communities of new immigrants, and this new vein of experience and language enriched the growing American idiom.World War II and afterArchibald Macleish called John Gillespie Magee, Jr. "the first poet of the war".[11] World War II saw the emergence of a new generation of poets, many of whom were influenced by Wallace Stevens. Richard Eberhart (1904–2005), Karl Shapiro (1913–2000), Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) and James Dickey (1923-1997) all wrote poetry thatsprang from experience of active service. Together with Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) and Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966), they formed a generation of poets that in contrast to the preceding generation often wrote in traditional verse forms.After the war, a number of new poets and poetic movements emerged. John Berryman (1914–1972) and Robert Lowell (1917–1977) were the leading lights in what was to become known as the Confessional movement, which was to have a strong influence on later poets like Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) and Anne Sexton (1928–1974). Though both Berryman and Lowell were closely acquainted with Modernism, they were mainly interested in exploring their own experiences as subject matter and a style that Lowell referred to as "cooked" -- that is, consciously and carefully crafted.In contrast, the Beat poets, who included such figures as Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), Gregory Corso (1930–2001), Joanne Kyger (born 1934), Gary Snyder (born 1930), Diane Di Prima (born 1934), Amiri Baraka (born 1934) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born 1919), were distinctly raw. Reflecting, sometimes in an extreme form, the more open, relaxed and searching society of the 1950s and 1960s, the Beats pushed the boundaries of the American idiom in the direction of demotic speech perhaps further than any other group.Around the same time, the Black Mountain poets, under the leadership of Charles Olson (1910–1970), were working at Black Mountain College. These poets were exploring the possibilities of open form but in a much more programmatic way than the Beats. The main poets involved were Robert Creeley (1926–2005), Robert Duncan (1919–1988), Denise Levertov (1923–1997), Ed Dorn (1929–1999), Paul Blackburn (1926–1971), Hilda Morley (1916–1998), John Wieners (1934–2002), and Larry Eigner (1927–1996). They based their approach to poetry on Olson's 1950 essay Projective Verse, in which he called for a form based on the line, a line based on human breath and a mode of writing based on perceptions juxtaposed so that one perception leads directly to another.Other poets often associated with the Black Mountain are Cid Corman (1924–2004) and Theodore Enslin (born 1925), though they are perhaps more correctly viewed as direct descendants of the Objectivists. And one-time Black Mountain College resident, composer John Cage (1912–1992), along with Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004), wrote poetry based on chance or aleatory techniques. Inspired by Zen, Dada and scientific theories of indeterminacy, they were to prove to be important influences on the 1970s U.S avant-garde.The Beats and some of the Black Mountain poets are often considered to have been responsible for the San Francisco Renaissance. However, as previously noted, San Francisco had become a hub of experimental activity from the 1930s thanks to Kenneth Rexroth and Gleason. Other poets involved in this scene included Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) and Jack Spicer (1925–1965). These poets sought to combine a contemporary spoken idiom with inventive formal experiment.Jerome Rothenberg (born 1931) is well-known for his work in ethnopoetics, but he was also the coiner of the term "deep image," which he used to described the work of poets like Robert Kelly (born 1935), Diane Wakoski (born 1937) and Clayton Eshleman (born 1935). Deep Image poetry was inspired by the symbolist theory of correspondences, in particular the work of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The term was later taken up and popularized by Robert Bly. The Deep Image movement was also the most international, accompanied by a flood of new translations from Latin American and European poets such as Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo and Tomas Tranströmer. Some of the poets who became associated with Deep Image are Galway Kinnell, James Wright, Mark Strand and W. S. Merwin. Both Merwin and California poet Gary Snyder would also become known for their interest in environmental and ecological concerns.The Small Press poets (sometimes called the mimeograph movement) are another influential and eclectic group of poets who also surfaced in the San Francisco Bay Areain the late 1950s and are still active today. Fiercely independent editors, who were also poets, edited and published low-budget periodicals and chapbooks of emerging poets who might otherwise have gone unnoticed. This work ranged from formal to experimental. Gene Fowler, A. D. Winans, Hugh Fox, street poet and activist Jack Hirschman, Paul Foreman, Jim Cohn, John Bennett, and F. A. Nettelbeck are among the many poets who are still actively continuing the Small Press Poets tradition. Many have turned to the new medium of the Web for its distribution capabilities.Los Angeles poets: Leland Hickman (1934–1991), Holly Prado ( born 1938), Harry Northup (born 1940), Wanda Coleman (born 1946), Michael C. Ford (born 1939), Kate Braverman (born 1950), Eloise Klein Healy, Bill Mohr, Laurel Ann Bogen, met at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, in Venice, California. They are lyric poets, heavily autobiographical; some are practitioners of the experimental long poem. Mavericks all, their L.A. predecessors are Ann Stanford (1916–1987), Thomas McGrath (1916–1990), Jack Hirschman (born 1933). Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, created by George Drury Smith in 1968, is the central literary arts center in the Los Angeles area.Just as the West Coast had the San Francisco Renaissance and the Small Press Movement, the East Coast produced the New York School. This group aimed to write poetry that spoke directly of everyday experience in everyday language and produced a poetry of urbane wit and elegance that contrasts with the work of their Beat contemporaries (though in other ways, including their mutual respect for American slang and disdain for academic or "cooked" poetry, they were similar). Leading members of the group include John Ashbery (born 1927), Frank O'Hara (1926–1966), Kenneth Koch (1925–2002), James Schuyler (1923–1991), Richard Howard (born 1929), Ted Berrigan (1934–1983), Anne Waldman (born 1945) and Bernadette Mayer (born 1945). Of this group, John Ashbery, in particular, has emerged as a defining force in recent poetics, and he is regarded by many as the most important American poet since World War II.American poetry todayThe last thirty years in United States poetry have seen the emergence of a number of groups, schools, and trends, whose lasting importance has, necessarily, yet to be demonstrated.The 1970s saw a revival of interest in surrealism, with the most prominent poets working in this field being Andrei Codrescu (born 1946), Russell Edson (born 1935) and Maxine Chernoff (born 1952). Performance poetry also emerged from the Beat and hippie happenings, and the talk-poems of David Antin (born 1932) and ritual events performed by Rothenberg, to become a serious poetic stance which embraces multiculturalism and a range of poets from a multiplicity of cultures. This mirrored a general growth of interest in poetry by African Americans including Gwendolyn Brooks (born 1917), Maya Angelou (born 1928), Ishmael Reed (born 1938),Vim Karénin, Nikki Giovanni (born 1943), and Detrick Hughes (born 1966).Another group of poets, the Language school (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, after the magazine that bears that name), have continued and extended the Modernist and Objectivist traditions of the 1930s. Some poets associated with the group are Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman and Leslie Scalapino. Their poems—fragmentary, purposefully ungrammatical, sometimes mixing texts from different sources and idioms—can be by turns abstract, lyrical, and highly comic. Critics of the Language school point out that, by abandoning sense and context, their poetry could just as well be written by the proverbial infinite roomful of monkeys with typewriters.[citation needed]The Language school includes a high proportion of women, which mirrors another general trend—the rediscovery and promotion of poetry written both by earlier and contemporary women poets. A number of the most prominent African American poets to emerge are women, and other prominent women writers include Adrienne Rich (born 1929), Jean Valentine (born 1934) and Amy Gerstler (born 1956).Although poetry in traditional classical forms had mostly fallen out of fashion by the 1960s, the practice was kept alive by poets of great formal virtuosity like James Merrill (1926–1995), author of the epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), Richard Wilbur, and British-born San Francisco poet Thom Gunn. The 1980s and 1990s saw a re-emergent interest in traditional form, sometimes dubbed New Formalism or Neoformalism. These include poets such as Molly Peacock, Brad Leithauser, Dana Gioia, Donna J. Stone, Timothy Steele, and Marilyn Hacker. Some of the more outspoken New Formalists have declared that the return to rhyme and more fixed meters to be the new avant-garde. Their critics sometimes associate this traditionalism with the conservative politics of the Reagan era, noting the recent appointment of Gioia as Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. More recent examples of New Formalism, however, have sometimes crossed over into the more experimental territory of Language poetry, suggesting that both schools are being gradually absorbed into the poetic mainstream.Haiku has also attracted a community of American poets dedicated to its development as a serious poetic genre in English. The extremely terse Japanese haiku first influenced the work of Pound and the Imagists, and post-war poets such as Kerouac and Richard Wright wrote substantial bodies of original haiku in English. Other poets such as Ginsberg, Snyder, Wilbur, Merwin, and many others have at least dabbled with haiku, often simply as a syllabic form. Starting in 1963, with the founding of the journal American Haiku, poets such as Cor van den Heuvel, Nick Virgilio, Raymond Roseliep, John Wills, Anita Virgil, Gary Hotham, Marlene Mountain, Peggy Willis Lyles, George Swede, vincent tripi, Jim Kacian, and others have created significant oeuvres of haiku poetry, evincing continuities with both Transcendentalism and Imagism and often maintaining an anti-anthropocentric environmental focus on nature during an unparalleled age of habitat destruction and human alienation.The last two decades have also seen a revival of the Beat poetry spoken word tradition, in the form of the poetry slam. Devised in 1984, by Chicago construction worker Marc Smith, these competitive audience-judged poetry performances emphasize a style of writing that is topical, provocative and easily understood. Poetry slam opened the doorfor a new generation of writers and spoken word performers, including Alix Olson, Apollo Poetry, Taylor Mali, and Saul Williams, and inspired hundreds of open mics across the country. Poetry has also become a significant presence on the Web, with a number of new online journals, 'zines, blogs and other websites.During this time frame there were also major independent voices who defied links towell-known American poetic movements and forms such as poet and literary critic Robert Peters, greatly influenced by the Victorian English poet Robert Browning’s poetic monologues, became reputable for executing his monologic personae like his Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria into popular one-man performances.Robert Pinsky has a special place in American poetry as he was the Poet Laureate of the United States for three terms. No other poet has been so honored. His "Favorite Poem Project" is unique, inviting all citizens to share their all-time favorite poetic composition and why they love it. He is a professor at Boston University and the poetry editor at Slate. "Poems to Read"[12] is only one demonstration of his masterful poetic vision, joining the word and the common man.[citation needed] In general, poetry in the contemporary era has been moving out of the mainstream and onto the college and university campus. The growth in the popularity of graduate creative writing programs has given poets the opportunity to make a living as teachers. This increased professionalization of poetry, combined with the reluctance of most major book and magazine presses to publish poetry, has meant that, for the foreseeable future at least, poetry may have found its new home in the academy and in small independent journals.。

EARLY AMERICAN POETRYPoetic tradition in America followed that in Britain for nearly 200 years. The Puritan poets like Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor likened their work to the British metaphysical poets, and followed in the footsteps of Milton, Spenser and Donne in theirpoems. Their poetry was highly didactic, mostly for use in teaching Puritan ethics. Thefirst published American poet Bradstreet broke from it in some way, merely because shewas female, and it was considered that she should devote herself to home and family. InThe Prologue (1650), Bradstreet writes “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits,/ *than+ A poet’s pen.…” Bradstreet’s instincts were tolove that world more than the promised world of Puritan theology. Thus, her poetry isenergized by the struggle to overcome the love for the world of nature (Miller and Wendell para. 10). They also noted that the colonial poets mostly encircled their workwith privacy, like poetic letters, so the writing was mo re private. Taylor’s work was verymeditative. In God's Determinations Touching His Elect, written in approximately 1680,one of Taylor’s most important works, he celebrated God's power in the triumph of goodover evil in the human soul (Miller and Wendell para. 11).We must remember that the colonists were considered to be lower class for more than 200 years by the British and many critics, thought American literature was nonexistent. However, American poets, such as Ebenezer Cook and Richard Lewis, were known to poke back at the British snobbery, as in the poem The Sot-Weed Factor(1708). However, by the time of the American Revolution, the poetry got more seriousand celebrated independence and the new American ideals in epic poetry, still followingBriti sh forms. The Rising Glory of America by Phillip Freneau (1772) and Barlow’s The Vision of Columbus (1787) were examples of revolutionary poetry. Phyllis Wheatly was2one of the most prominent early black poets, who remained mostly unknown until thetwentieth century. The poetess followed British poetics tradition, but the poetry also conveyed her disapproval of slavery. Her poems on various subjects, religious and moral, were published in England in 1773. Other poems by early black poets were notpublished until the nineteenth century.NINETEENTH CENTURY INNOVATIONIt really wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that an American tradition began to emerge with the new poetics of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson. Leaves of Grass (1855) broke tradition in both content and form. Whitman stepped out of Victorian modesty into bold American frank expression, and praised things unmentionably. In it heeulogized the body and the senses in the most immodest manner. Most of the volumeswritten by Dickenson were “self published” in manuscript books which she has mailed tocorrespondents during her life time. The rest of her works was not publicly published until after her death. She began writing in traditional styles, but as time passed, Dickenson played with form and content, altering meter and rhyme schemes, developing her own distinctive style. She also added visual elements to her printed copies of poetry, which contemporary readers were not able to see until they were published as written originally.The Fireside Poets followed, and were called so because they often used firesideas a symbol of family unity and home. William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Greenleaf Whittier were the most prominent poets. They created an American epic style which equaled theBritish poetry in forms and, more or less, put American poetry on its own multiple feet.3They were followed by the Abolitionist poets, both black and white, and some became apart of this tradition.THE TWENTIETH CENTURY OPENED NEW DOORSBy the last part of the nineteenth century, regional schools began to spring up, includingblack poets, like Dunbar, who was the most outstanding of the dialect poets. Other poets like Masters and Robinson represented their own regions. Robert Frost is considered to be New England poet. Frost seemed to try out all various forms in poetryduring his career, but then developed his own blank verse using a conversational meter.He used mostly plain words of simple conversational English and made good use of simple themes and subjects, many of which dealt with nature. His works, most likely, were the largest break in the history of the American traditional poetry, they were a bridge to modern American poetry, in particularly, for such poets as Pound, Eliot, Williams, Hughes and many more. These poets still used some parts of traditional form,but poetry suddenly blossomed off the standard columned page. They wrote in free verse without any forced rhyme in a conversational rhythm. Langston Hughes experimented with different voices and dialects, sometimes he used two or more withinthe same poem, as in Weary Blues (1926), adding oral tradition to standard English writing to create a conversation between two heritages. This set the stage for modernistpoets, who experimented with form, sound and content.The modernist poets explored visual and sound cues, with William CarlosWilliams painting with words, and Pound and Eliot using sound to create musical poeticschemes similar to modern ballads with punctuated drums. Gertrude Stein delved deeply into language and its various aspects and meanings to self. Poets like Marianne4Moore began to experiment with forms until they explored all the different ways the poem could be created in – perfectly organized literary forms, often strict, and complete.The middle of the twentieth century saw a lot of changes as poets branched outinto a new territory. Poetry exploded in many different direction and schools, until midcenturywhen innovative poets began to imitate themselves. Then suddenly the Confessional Poets appeared on the scene, bringing with them a more introspective, and frankly expressive of their reality, style which moved poetry into a new role. They were the first group of poets to be the basis of teaching poetry in America. Poetry wasnot some mystical art bestowed upon the minority and read by even fewer, but the language and concern of the majority of people. Poets like Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman and Theodore Roethke took poetry into the totally new territory,with realistic self, introspection of the reality of the self as it was and not as they wantedit to be. Some say that the Confessional Poets wrote to relieve themselves of their demons. It is confirmed by the APA that rereading one's work changes the cognitive processes and it may offer some insight into this kind of poetry. Anne Sexton famouslysaid, “Poetry led me by the hand out of madness” (Marx 2).JOHN BERRYMANJohn Berryman struck out in a new direction with his Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956), which was a conversation with Anne Bradstreet that went on from her trip acrossthe Atlantic at the tender age of eighteen to her death. This long poem departed totallyfrom any previous poetry in its form and content. Berryman created a conversation withBradstreet’s ghost and narrated their imagined life together, without getting rid of herhusband as it was the poet, Berryman, who was the ghost in the poem, invisible for everyone but her. He did not consider her to be a great poet, but he implied that she 5might have been under constraints of her Puritan feminine form. Berryman imagined trysts with Bradstreet mostly because the love for Ann was not mutual as her husbandignored her.The poem start s with Berryman’s note of admiration for Bradstreet. He shares a kinship with her as an outcast. “Both of our worlds unhanded us” (Berryman verse 2 line8). He imagines that he is with her on her trip to America. He speaks of himself all through the first part, even experiencing the difficult ocean voyage and the harsh timesin the wilderness. Then he moves into introspection of his emotional well being as if these sufferings are connected. “I was happy once/ Something keeps on not happening;I shrink?” (Be rryman 10-5). It is often difficult to tell which character is speaking, asBerryman moves easily into Bradstreet’s in verse 15: “I am drawn, in pieties that seem/the weary drizzle of an unremembered dream/ Women have gone mad/ attwenty-one”(Berryman 15). Berryman follows the life of Bradstreet through sexual encounters, childbirth and the deaths of her children until he reclaims the narrative in verse 25. Thenhe seems to move between the two personae almost like a real conversation, imaginingthings like love and nakedness, things shocking and wicked to her. Perhaps he is her devil and her lover. “ – I have earned the right to be alone with you/ – What right can that be?” (Berryman 27-7). This conversation continues, punctuated by dashes (–), as the spe akers change until verse 37 returns to Berryman’s interior monologue and crosses at some points into undivided dialogue or separate monologues. He follows through the fire until it ends with her death and his mourning.Zieger mentioned other imagined relat ionships in Berryman’s poetry, so this canbe considered uniquely his.I contend that Berryman pursues this late-modernist reconstruction overtly in terms of his imagined relations with male poetic predecessors and6contemporaries; I also suggest, however, that this reconstruction is stronglyover-determined by new relations in a field of poetic production imagined by Berryman as increasingly "invaded" or inhabited by talented women, live speakers rather than ventriloquized ghosts, and by the profound impact of atleast one of those potentially displacing contemporaries, Sylvia Plath. (Zeiger84)This becomes interesting, considering Berryman’s struggle for manic-depression, whichis characterized by wide mood swings of a person with split personality but not separated as in schizophrenia. He remains the same person with hugely different perspectives, brought on by the extremes of the chemical imbalance (Maruish and Moses 158). Most manic depressives still went undiagnosed because diagnosis and treatment wer e quite primitive in Berryman’s time. Many critics, including Zieger (1997),seem to ignore this idea. Perhaps, they are not aware of some aspects of Bipolar Disorder. It is my thought that his bipolar nature makes Berryman even more interesting.I think Berryman has to be read with manic-depression in mind, as his workmakes much more sense than most critics will admit, when this is a part of the context.He changed his name from Smith and left his home in MacAlester, Oklahoma to live inthe northeast. Many critics assume that his problems with alcohol derive from his inability to get over his father’s suicide in his early childhood, leading to his own suicidein 1972, stemmed from these problems. However, bipolar disorder is hereditary and thisexplains bo th, his father’s suicide, his alcoholism and the subsequent suicide. Manic depressives often use alcohol to relieve the deep wrenching and unexplainable depression. Bipolar disorder is chemical, so the mood swings have their origin in bodychemistry and not in what is happening in the lives of the victims. That is the main 7reason the theory is misunderstood, even by the sufferers who always try to find the cause in self. Berryman’s struggles are easily seen in his work.Henry, the alter-ego in the 77 Dream Songs (Berryman 1969) seems like entirely another person. Since there is not enough space here to analyze the whole set of 77Dream Songs, I will simply mention a few hints to manic depression. In verse 1: “Huffy Henry hid the day/ unappeasable Henry sulk ed/ … But he should have come outand talked” (Berryman 1). The sulking Henry is something which slows the magnanimousness of the manic persona. Song 29, which begins with: “There sat down,once, a thing on Henry’s heart/ so heavy, if he had a hundred year s/ & more, & weeping,sleepless in all them time/…” (29), is an expression of a depression which is so deep that it seems like a black hole and it is not getting better by the end of the poem. In Dream Song 40, “I’m scared of only one thing, which is me” (40), provides more evidence for his condition. It seems that Berryman was hospitalized once per year from1959 until his death in 1972 (Athey 34). He was diagnosed with various problems fromexhaustion to alcoholism, but was never actually diagnosed with bipolar disorder, though his poems and his life style provide plenty of evidence via V-Axis diagnostics fora diagnosis of bipolar disorder (First 55). In accordance with Gene Lyons’s review ofPaul Mariani’s biography of Berryman’s, the manic depression is seen in his early works, is an extraordinary sadness and loneliness that evolve out of artistic hopelessness alternating to undependable exultation. The poet's entire mature life sheds a light on the impacts that disease made on him.Berryman's boozing, his alternating grandiose and persecutory delusions, his extreme irritability and outbursts of (mostly ineffectual) violence, his history of appallingly crude sexual behavior, even his suicide – as well as his father's,8since mood disorders can run in families – all point toward that diagnosis. (Mariani 113)In her review, Lyons sets some sort of task for Paul Mariani. The information in Berryman’s biography is misconceiving when it concerns his disease. According to Mariani, dismissal of those deluded by their own self-complacency and supposed “sanity” is worse than “silly” (Mariani 135). In fact, manic depression is a treatable illness, and Paul Mariani, as Berryman’s biographer should have known about it.In spite of what had to be extreme suffering, or perhaps because of it, John Berryman created a whole new kind of poetry with variations which could provide analytic fodder for a very large book. One wonders how much more he might have produced had he been properly diagnosed and treated with at least some antidepressants. Lithium, according to some of my acquaintances is not as useful, andprobably should be avoided if the victim can control behavior during the manic phases,but the depressive phases can often end in suicide.。

2012-2013学年 第二学期 《美国文学》期末考试试卷（A 卷）专业：英语 年级：2010级 考试方式：闭卷 学分：2 考试时间：110分钟I ．Multiple Choices (每小题 1分，共20分)Directions: Select from the four choices of each item the one thatbest answers the question.1. Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more_____________. A . rational B . humorous C. optimisticD . pessimistic2. Which of the following is not written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the best-known American authors of the 20th century? A. The Sun Also Rises B. The Old Man and the Sea C. Mosses from the Old ManseD. Hills Like White Elephant3. The Romantic writers would focus on all the following issues Except the __________ in the American history. A. individual feeling B. survival of the fittest C. strong imaginationD. return to nature4. Almost all Faulkner ’s heroes turned out to be tragic because__________. A. all enjoyed living in the declining American South.B. none of them was conditioned by the civilization and Social institutions.C. most of them were prisoners of the past.D. none were successful in their attempt to explain the inexplicable.5. As an autobiograp hical play, O’Neill’s ________ (1955) has gained its status as a world classic and simultaneously marks the climax of his literary career and the coming of age of American drama._.A. The Iceman ComethB. Long Day’s Journey into NightC. Beyond the HorizonD. Bound East for Cardiff6. Which of the following statements is right about Robert Frost’s poetry?A. He combined traditional verse forms with the difficult and highly ornamental language.B. He combined traditional verse forms with the pastoral language of the Southern area.C. He combined traditional verse forms with a simple spoken language, the speech of New England farmers.D. He combined traditional verse forms with the experimental.7. Edgar Allen Poe was characterized by his __________.A. psycho-analysisB. novels set in the WestC. free verseD. political pamphlets8. Which of the following is depicted as the mythical county in William Faulkner’s novels?A. CambridgeB. OxfordC. MississippiD. Yoknapatawpha9. ____________ was the first great American writer to write for pleasure rather than utility. He is considered to be founder of American literature by some critics.A. James Fenimore CooperB. Washington IrvingC. Ezra PoundD. Mark Twain10. We can perhaps summarize that Walt Whitman’s poems are characterized by all the following features except that they are _______________.A. lyrical and well-structuredB. conversational and crudeC. simple and rather crudeD. free-flowing11. The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck reveals the miserable lives of __________ .A. factory workersB. sailorsC. landless farm laborersD. veterans12. Among the American realistic writers, _________ focused his attention on the rising middle class and the way they lived.A. Herman MelvilleB. Henry JamesC. Mark TwainD. William Dean Howells13. Which of the following is a representative novel of naturalism by an American writer? 2A. Innocents AbroadB. McTeagueC. Daisy MillerD. The Grapes of Wrath14. The first symbol of self-made American man is _________.A. Benjamin FranklinB. Washington IrvingC. George WashingtonD. Mark Twain15. The Imagist writers followed three principles. They respectively are direct treatment, economy of expression and ________.A. local colorB. ironyC. clear rhythmD. blank verse16. Robert Frost is famous for his lyric poems. Which of the following lyric poems wasnot written by Robert Frost?A. “The Raven”B. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”C. “After Apple-picking”D. “The Road Not Taken”17. “The lost generation”refers to the writers who relocated to Paris in the post WWⅠyears to reject to values of American materialism. All the following but ________are involved in this group.A. F. S. FitzgeraldB. Ernest HemingwayC. Theodore DreiserD. John Dos Passos18. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them _________.A. AnglicansB. CatholicsC. NormansD. Puritans19. Which one of the following statements is applicable to the understanding of Transcendentalism?A. It is strongly influenced by social Darwinism.B. Belief in individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.C. Man has no free-will.D. It holds that determinism governs everything.20. In __________, Captain Ahab is obsessed with the revenge on a whale which shearedoff his leg on a previous voyage, and his crazy chasing of it eventually brings death to allon board the whaler except Ishmael, who survives to tell the tale.《美国文学》A卷第3页共18页4A. TypeeB. White JacketC. Moby DickD. Billy BuddII ．Explain the Following Literary Terms Briefly (每小题7分，共14分)Directions : Please write down the answers on the Answer Sheet.21. Local Colorism 22. Stream of ConsciousnessIII ．Identification of Fragments (每小题7分，共21分)Directions : Please give the name of the author and the title of the literary work from which it is taken and then briefly comment on itin English. Please write down the answers on the Answer Sheet.23. “‘That ’s right.’ He said; ‘I ’m no good now. I was all right. I had money. I ’m going to quit this,’ and, with death in his heart, he started down toward the Bowery. People had turned on the gas before and died; why shouldn ’t he? He remembered a lodging house where there were little, close rooms, with gas-jet in them, almost pre-arranged, he thought, for what he wanted to do, which rented for fifteen cents. Then he remembered that he had no fifteen cents.”24. “All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed restlessly above the camp. Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which food could not fill.25. “Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why that would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.IV . Short Essay Questions (每小题10分，共 30 分)Directions : Please write down the answers on the Answer Sheet.《美国文学》A 卷 第5页 共18页26. The relationship between man and nature is a recurrent theme, perhaps one of the most important themes, in American literature. Write a short essay on it by contrasting tow or three American literary works, or two or three American literary movements, to tell what you know about their different views of nature. 27. Please make a comment on Eugene O ’Neil.28. Please briefly comment on Theodore Dreiser ’s novel Sister Carrie.V ．Appreciating a Literary Work (计 15 分)Directions:In this part, you are required to write a commentary paper in no less than 100 words. Please write it on the AnswerSheet .A Clean, Well-Lighted PlaceErnest HemingwayIt was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him."Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said. "Why?""He was in despair." "What about?" "Nothing.""How do you know it was nothing?" "He has plenty of money."They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the cafe and looked at the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him."The guard will pick him up," one waiter said. "What does it matter if he gets what he's after?""He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago."The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer with his glass. The youngerwaiter went over to him."What do you want?"The old man looked at him. "Another brandy," he said."You'll be drunk," the waiter said. The old man looked at him. The waiter went away."He'll stay all night," he said to his colleague. "I'm sleepy now. I never get into bed before three o'clock. He should have killed himself last week."The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from the counter inside the cafe and marched out to the old man's table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of brandy."You should have killed yourself last week," he said to the deaf man. The old man motioned with his finger. "A little more," he said. The waiter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile. "Thank you," the old man said. The waiter took the bottle back inside the cafe. He sat down at the table with his colleague again."He's drunk now," he said."He's drunk every night.""What did he want to kill himself for?""How should I know.""How did he do it?""He hung himself with a rope.""Who cut him down?""His niece.""Why did they do it?""Fear for his soul.""How much money has he got?" "He's got plenty.""He must be eighty years old.""Anyway I should say he was eighty.""I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o'clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?""He stays up because he likes it.""He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me.""He had a wife once too.""A wife would be no good to him now.""You can't tell. He might be better with a wife.""His niece looks after him. You said she cut him down.""I know." "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing.""Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him.""I don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those 6《美国文学》A 卷 第7页 共18页who must work."The old man looked from his glass across the square, then over at the waiters."Another brandy," he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over."Finished," he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to drunken people or foreigners. "No more tonight. Close now.""Another," said the old man."No. Finished." The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook his head.The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from his pocket and paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta(西班牙货币单位) tip. The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity."Why didn't you let him stay and drink?" the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the shutters. "It is not half-past two.""I want to go home to bed." "What is an hour?""More to me than to him." "An hour is the same.""You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home." "It's not the same.""No, it is not," agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry."And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?" "Are you trying to insult me?""No, hombre （老兄）, only to make a joke.""No," the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal shutters. "I have confidence. I am all confidence.""You have youth, confidence, and a job," the older waiter said. "You have everything.""And what do you lack?" "Everything but work.""You have everything I have.""No. I have never had confidence and I am not young." "Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.""I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waiter said."With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.""I want to go home and into bed.""We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe.""Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long.""You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.""Good night," said the younger waiter."Good night," the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself, It was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada （没有，虚无）y（所以）pues（既然，那么）nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. （这是一段模仿祷告词，其中的名词和动词都被虚无所取代，表明一切事物和行为都是虚无。

专业英语八级英美文学知识分类模拟题4专业英语八级英美文学知识分类模拟题4单项选择题1. ______ was the only female American prose writer in the 19th century.A.Emily DickinsonB.Jane AustinC.George EliotD.Harriet Beecher Stowe答案：D美国19世纪唯一的女散文作家是Harriet Beecher Stowe(哈利特·比彻·斯托)。

Emily Dickirson(艾米丽·迪金森)是女诗人。

另外两位是英国女作家。

2. Harriet Beecher Stowe's works mainly focus on ______.A.romanticismB.local colourismC.naturalismD.transcendentalism答案：BHarriet Beecher Stowe(哈利特·比彻·斯托)的作品充满了乡土气息。

3. Which of the following is the masterpiece by Harriet Beecher Stowe?A.Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal SwampB.Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories'C.Uncle Tom "s CabinD.The Gilded Age答案：CSwamp(《德雷德：阴暗大沼地的故事》)和Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories(《山姆·罗森的炉边故事》)也是她的作品，但没有前者有名。

The Gilded Age(《镀金时代》)是Mark Twain(马克·吐温)的作品。

4. ______ is the masterpiece written by William Dean Howells.A.The Rise of Silas LaphamB.The Innocents AbroadC.The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead WisonD.The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg答案：AThe Rise of Silas Lapham(《塞拉斯·拉帕姆的发迹》)是威廉·迪恩·豪威尔斯的名作。

Definition1、Psychological Realism is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of character’s thoughts and motivations. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which springs from external action. In Psychological Realism, character and characterization are more than usually important. 心理现实主义是一种深入探究人物思想和动机复杂性的现实主义写作。

它比以往更强调内部特征和动机，以及来自外部行动的内部行动。

在心理现实主义中，性格和人物塑造比通常更重要。

2、Imagism is a literary movement launched by British and American poets early in the 20th century that advocated the use of free verse, common speech patterns, and clear concrete images as a reaction to Victorian sentimentalism. 意象主义是20世纪早期由英美诗人发起的一场文学运动，主张使用自由诗歌、共同的语言模式和清晰的具体形象，作为对维多利亚时代感伤主义的反应。

3、Black Humor is the use of morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern fiction and drama. It is used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world. Ordinary characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony. 黑色幽默是在现代小说和戏剧中使用病态和荒谬的黑色喜剧目的。

向某人介绍一位诗人及代表作英语作文全文共3篇示例，供读者参考篇1Introducing a Poet and Their MasterpieceIntroductionPoetry has the power to inspire, evoke emotions, and capture the essence of the human experience. In this essay, I would like to introduce you to a renowned poet and their masterpiece that has left a lasting impact on readers around the world. Through their words, this poet has painted vivid images, explored complex themes, and touched the hearts of many.Poet IntroductionThe poet I would like to introduce to you is Langston Hughes, an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Hughes was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement that took place in the 1920s and 1930s in Harlem, New York. His poetry often reflected the experiences of African Americans, capturing the struggles, joys, and dreams of a marginalized community.Representative WorkOne of Hughes' most famous poems is "Harlem," also known as "A Dream Deferred." This powerful poem delves into the consequences of unfulfilled dreams and the impact of oppression and racism on individuals. Here is an excerpt from the poem:What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?Perhaps it just sagslike a heavy load.Or does it explode?In these lines, Hughes poignantly captures the frustration and despair that can arise when dreams are delayed or denied. The imagery of a dream withering away like a raisin or festering like a sore evokes a sense of loss and hopelessness. The explosive ending of the poem leaves a powerful impact on readers, prompting them to reflect on the consequences of ignoring the dreams and aspirations of others.ConclusionLangston Hughes' poetry continues to resonate with readers today, as his words speak to universal themes of identity, community, and resilience. Through his masterful use of language and imagery, Hughes has left a lasting legacy in the world of literature. I hope this introduction to Langston Hughes and his masterpiece has inspired you to explore more of his works and delve into the rich tapestry of African American literature.篇2Introduction to a Poet and Their Representative WorksToday, I would like to introduce you to a renowned poet whose works have left a lasting impact on the world of literature. This poet is none other than Emily Dickinson, an American poetwho is best known for her unique and innovative style of writing. Born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson lived a relatively secluded life, rarely venturing outside her family home. Despite this, her poetry has achieved widespread acclaim for its depth, insight, and originality.One of Emily Dickinson's most famous poems is "Because I could not stop for Death," a haunting meditation on the nature of death and the passage of time. In this poem, Dickinson personifies death as a gentlemanly figure who arrives unexpectedly to lead the speaker on a journey through the afterlife. Through vivid imagery and powerful metaphors, Dickinson explores the mysteries of mortality and the inevitability of our own demise. This poem is a classic example of Dickinson's ability to tackle complex and profound themes in a concise and evocative manner.Another one of Dickinson's notable works is "Hope is the thing with feathers," a short and poignant poem that celebrates the enduring resilience of the human spirit. In this poem, Dickinson compares hope to a bird that never stops singing, even in the darkest of times. Through her skillful use of metaphor and imagery, Dickinson conveys the message that hope is a vital force that sustains us through life's trials and tribulations. Thisuplifting and inspirational poem has resonated with readers of all ages and continues to be regarded as a timeless classic.In addition to her thematic depth and emotional resonance, Dickinson is also known for her innovative use of language and form. She frequently employed unconventional punctuation, capitalization, and syntax in her poems, creating a distinctive and highly individualistic style. Dickinson's poems are characterized by their brevity and conciseness, often packing a powerful emotional punch in just a few lines. Her spare and economical language forces readers to slow down and contemplate the deeper meaning behind her words, leading to a rich and rewarding reading experience.Overall, Emily Dickinson's poems continue to captivate and inspire readers around the world with their profound insights, emotional richness, and lyrical beauty. Through her exploration of themes such as love, nature, death, and the human condition, Dickinson has left an indelible mark on the world of poetry. Her unique voice and innovative approach to language have earned her a well-deserved place among the literary greats, solidifying her status as one of the most influential and enduring poets of all time. I hope you will take the time to explore Dickinson's worksfurther and discover the depth and beauty of her poetry for yourself.篇3Introducing a Poet and Their MasterpiecesToday, I am thrilled to introduce to you one of my favorite poets and delve into some of their most renowned works. The poet I will be talking about is Emily Dickinson, a prominent figure in American literature known for her unique style and profound insights on life, death, and nature.Emily Dickinson, born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, led a reclusive life and wrote nearly 1,800 poems, most of which were discovered and published posthumously. Despite her introverted nature, Dickinson's poetry is imbued with vivid imagery, lyrical language, and a keen sense of observation.One of Emily Dickinson's most famous poems is "Because I could not stop for Death", which explores the theme of mortality and the passage of time. In this poem, the speaker personifies Death as a kindly carriage driver who takes her on a leisurely ride through the stages of life and eventually to eternity. Through vivid descriptions of the journey, Dickinson reflects on the inevitability of death and the eternal nature of the human soul.Another iconic work by Emily Dickinson is "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -", a haunting meditation on death and the final moments of life. In this poem, the speaker describes the scene of their own deathbed, with a fly buzzing in the room as they prepare to pass into the unknown. Dickinson's use of vivid imagery and precise language creates a sense of tension and unease, capturing the solemnity of the moment of death.Apart from these two masterpieces, Emily Dickinson's body of work spans a wide range of themes and emotions, from love and nature to faith and the fragility of existence. Her poems often explore the mysteries of the human experience with a sense of wonder and introspection, inviting readers to contemplate the deeper layers of life and consciousness.In conclusion, Emily Dickinson's legacy as a poet continues to inspire and resonate with readers around the world. Her profound insights, lyrical language, and unique perspective on life make her an enduring figure in the realm of poetry. I hope this introduction to Emily Dickinson and her masterpieces has sparked your curiosity and appreciation for her work.。