I had an English professor who swore America had one great romantic poet: Edgar Allen Poe. America’s other famous poets had followed the Romantic period , and celebrated realism and the beauty of nature instead. 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 find a quiet regard for 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, almost napping.” And instead of using a different word for rhyme, 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 had say was as huge 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
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