America's poets changed the world of literature, but each one had their own unique style. I once had an English professor who insisted America had only one great romantic poet: Edgar Allen Poe. America's other most famous poets, he said with a fond smile, had written after the Romantic period , and instead celebrated realism and the wild beauty of nature. There's a connection between the folksy wisdom of Mark Twain and the raw joy of a poet like Walt Whitman. And even in the poems of Emily Dickinson, you'll find a quiet regard for the glories of the natural world.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
The romance of Poe is evident in his poems and in his life. His wife died two years after their marriage in 1835, and his most famous poems are about mourning a lost love. In "The Raven" he describes a man "grieving for the lost Lenore," who's suddenly haunted by a black raven that won't leave, seeming to taunt him by repeating the word "nevermore." "Ulalume" describes a man wandering in the night, only to realize he's absent-mindedly walked to a tomb on the anniversary of his wife's death. And in "The Bells" he lists out the ceremonies that are celebrated by ringing bells - including a wedding, and then a funeral.
But Poe's poems also show off his perfect technique. Within rhyming lines are repeating sounds giving an extra energy in the words, and he knew when to repeat entire phrases. For example, in his most famous poem - "The Raven" - there's triple alliterations, like when Poe writes that he "nodded, nearly napping." And instead of using a different word for rhymes, he sadly repeats the name "Lenore" at the end of consecutive lines. In some poems, he even hid the name of other poets (including Sarah Anna Lewis and Frances Sargent Osgood), using one letter of their name in each line of the poem.
WALT WHITMAN
Walt Whitman's rhythm was exactly the opposite of Poe's - irregular and wild. He wrote long soaring lines about the joys of his country - the wilderness, locomotives, and his fellow Americans. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Whitman wrote several poems of tribute, including "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." But through all of his works ran a great love that he'd say was as big as America
itself.
"Song of Myself" sprawls through 52 stanzas, in which Whitman actually sees in himself Americans - the old and the young, the soldiers, the hunters, and the Indians. "In the faces of men and women, I see God," Whitman says, and his poem presents his an exhilarating passion for life. He says he'll reject the "creeds and schools" that have taught the formalities of poetry, in order to free the nature within him. Whitman's most famous line of poetry is probably the one where he speaks proudly of his raw poetry, saying that he will "sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world!"
EMILY DICKINSON
She shared Whitman's love for the peace of nature, but she celebrated it in an entirely different way. It was a quiet dignity - only seven of her poems were ever published in her lifetime - and she spent nearly her entire life in the city of Amherst, Massachusetts. She never married and became reclusive in her old age, watching the town from an upstairs window. But her inner life seem to grow in compensation, offering intense bursts of private emotion.
In several of her poems, the narrator is already dead, and sees life with a dark perspective. ("Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me...")
In another poem that she writes that death is a dialogue between the spirit and the dust - and then records their conversation. But like Whitman, she'd find inspiration from the natural scenes around her - though they mirror her own dark thoughts. ("Apparently with no surprise to any happy Flower, The Frost beheads it at its play - in accidental power.")
Poetry changed a great deal when the modern era arrived, and poetry became even more subjective. In a way this makes 19th-century poets even more exciting, because they're celebrate the strong sense of self that would become murkier when the next era began.