The Romantic Poets

Walt Whitman  Whitman created new poetic forms and subjects to fashion a distinctly American type of poetic expression  He rejected convention themes, traditional literary reference, allusions, and rhyme – all the accepted customs of the 19 th century  He used long lines to capture the rhythms of natural speech, free verse, and vocabulary drawn from everyday speech.  “I hear America Singing” – catalog poem  “Song of Myself” – empathized with all people (black, American Indian, women) didn’t care about race or sexual orientation. Considered his ultimate work.  “O Captain, my Captain” was a tribute to the fallen Lincoln

Emily Dickinson  An agoraphobic (afraid of open spaces – from age 23 until death 33 years later)  Dressed herself only in white and never left her house (rarely her room)  Wrote nearly 2,000 poems in her lifetime but published only 7 – each anonymously  Her poems were published posthumously by her sister Lavinia  Her five main central ideas: LOVE, NATURE, FRIENDSHIP, DEATH and IMMORTALITY  She is considered one of the founders of Modern American Poetry

Her poems were different …  They looked different – where were the sentences, the commas, semicolons, the periods?! Why all the dashes???  Her poems didn’t rhyme – used slant rhyme (sometimes called near rhyme – words with similar but not identical sounds)  Her figures of speech were too striking for the day  Her ideas were too radical – she didn’t stick to the warm and fuzzy topics. She favored startling images and outlooks. Paved the way for the imagists of the 20 th century.

Other American Romantic Poets Much of their ideas were European and they echoed much of the European techniques - William Cullen Bryant - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - John Greenleaf Whittier - Oliver Wendell Holmes