Interested in American poetry? For National Poetry Month, we compiled a brief introduction to some of the most famous American poets and poems. We hope our list provides some inspiration for further reading. Enjoy!
America's Most Famous Book of Poetry
Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. He has been criticized for imitating European styles and writing poetry that was too sentimental.
On August 27, 1829, he wrote to the president of Bowdoin that he was turning down the professorship because he considered the $600 salary "disproportionate to the duties required". The trustees raised his salary to $800 with an additional $100 to serve as the college's librarian, a post which required one hour of work per day.[30] During his years teaching at the college, he translated textbooks from French, Italian, and Spanish;[31] his first published book was a translation of the poetry of medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique in 1833.[32]
Longfellow began publishing his poetry in 1839, including the collection Voices of the Night, his debut book of poetry.[47] The bulk of Voices of the Night was translations, but he included nine original poems and seven poems that he had written as a teenager.[48] Ballads and Other Poems was published in 1841[49] and included "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus", which were instantly popular.[50] He became part of the local social scene, creating a group of friends who called themselves the Five of Clubs. Members included Cornelius Conway Felton, George Stillman Hillard, and Charles Sumner; Sumner became Longfellow's closest friend over the next 30 years.[51] Longfellow was well liked as a professor, but he disliked being "constantly a playmate for boys" rather than "stretching out and grappling with men's minds."[52]
The rapidity with which American readers embraced Longfellow was unparalleled in publishing history in the United States;[116] by 1874, he was earning $3,000 per poem.[117] His popularity spread throughout Europe, as well, and his poetry was translated during his lifetime into Italian, French, German, and other languages.[118] Scholar Bliss Perry suggests that criticizing Longfellow at that time was almost a criminal act equal to "carrying a rifle into a national park".[119] In the last two decades of his life, he often received requests for autographs from strangers, which he always sent.[120] John Greenleaf Whittier suggested that it was this massive correspondence which led to Longfellow's death: "My friend Longfellow was driven to death by these incessant demands".[121]
Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day.[135] As a friend once wrote, "no other poet was so fully recognized in his lifetime".[136] Many of his works helped shape the American character and its legacy, particularly with the poem "Paul Revere's Ride".[119] He was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. Longfellow's popularity rapidly declined, beginning shortly after his death and into the 20th century, as academics focused attention on other poets such as Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Robert Frost.[137] In the 20th century, literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted: "Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow's popular rhymings."[138] Twentieth-century poet Lewis Putnam Turco concluded that "Longfellow was minor and derivative in every way throughout his career ... nothing more than a hack imitator of the English Romantics."[139] Author Nicholas A. Basbanes, in his 2020 book Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, defended Longfellow as "the victim of an orchestrated dismissal that may well be unique in American literary history".[140]
Literary Modernism was a movement which was characterized by a radical break with traditional ways of writing in favor of new forms of expression. Imagism was the first organized Modernist literary movement in the English language. It stressed on clarity, precision and economy of language. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was the most influential and prominent figure of the Imagist movement. In his poetry, he intentionally used confusing juxtapositions, yet led the reader to an intended conclusion. He rejected Victorian and Edwardian grammar and structure; and instead created a unique form of speech, employing odd words and jargon. Ezra Pound is credited with single-handedly crafting the tradition of Modernist literature as he was primarily responsible for discovering, advancing and shaping the work of several major writers associated with the movement including T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and E.E. Cummings.
Sylvia Plath is regarded as a pioneer in the genre of Confessional poetry, a term used to define poems which focus on the individual; her experience, her psyche, her trauma and the like. Her first poetry collection The Colossus and Other Poems was published in 1960. Plath committed suicide, at the age of 30, on February 11, 1963, by placing her head in the oven with the gas turned on. Some of her best known poems were written in the months leading to her suicide. They were published after her death as part of her renowned poetry collection Ariel. The poetry of Plath is known for featuring intense coupling of violent or disturbed imagery with playful use of alliteration and rhyme. Sylvia Plath is considered among the leading writers of the 20th century and she remains one of the most popular female poets in the English language.
Also a novelist, playwright and painter; Edward Estlin Cummings is most famous for his poems which were radical for their use of unconventional punctuation and phrasing. Most of his verse is in lowercase and he capitalizes words only when it is relevant to the work. The structure and use of compound words in his poems is of significance to the verse and not arbitrary. Also, satire is pervasive in his works. A typical Cummings poem is spare and precise, employing a few eccentrically placed key words. E. E. Cummings was not a very renowned poet for a large part of his career but was able to gain widespread fame and recognition by the 1950s. One of the most innovative poets of his time, he is now regarded as a towering figure in literary modernism. Cummings remains one of the most famous American writers with his poems on love and nature, and his erotic poetry being extremely popular.
Centered at the Harlem neighborhood in New York City, Harlem Renaissance was an African American movement which peaked around the mid-1920s and during which African Americans took giant strides politically, socially and artistically. Langston Hughes is the most famous person associated with the Harlem Renaissance and among the most influential leaders of the movement. He was one of the early innovators of the genre of poetry known as Jazz Poetry, which demonstrates jazz like rhythms. Many of his poems are based on African American culture and blacks being denied the American dream of equal opportunity for all. Also a novelist, playwright, and columnist, Langston Hughes is most renowned for his poetry and he is regarded as one of the greatest African American poets ever.
Naturally, the older a poem is, the more famous it tends to be. Someone like Byron has had centuries for his work to sink into the public consciousness; a poet like Dylan Thomas only a few decades. This is why, when I was researching the most famous poems in order to write this article, they were almost exclusively Victorian or earlier.
Hughes, who claimed Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period such as Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language itself alongside their suffering.
Giovanni (b. 1943) is a well-known African-American poet and activist, who has written about one of the most significant Civil Rights activists, Rosa Parks, on several occasions (including writing a book for younger readers, Rosa, all about her).
In addition to 16 volumes of poetry, Langston Hughes has written several plays, books for children, novels, short stories, nonfiction books, and essays. He was, in fact, the first Black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined')ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'elifnotes_com-large-leaderboard-2','ezslot_2',160,'0','0']);__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-elifnotes_com-large-leaderboard-2-0');
Allen Ginsberg was a thoroughly modern artist in that he used his status as a recognized public figure to advance causes ranging from the sexual revolution to human rights to religious freedom (or freedom from religion) and beyond. But to think of him first as an activist and second as a poet is to get it backward: first and foremost, the outspoken man was an amazing writer of poetry, and in an era where poetry drew more clout than it does these days, no less.
In this 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, this Indian-American poet uses approaches to the language itself, at times using rhyming couplets, at times writing almost in prose. So too does the content vary, at times focused on the immigrant story, at times quintessentially American. His poetry feels entirely current today, for it is. Quite likely, in the form of a latter-day Eliot, that will remain true for decades hence. Or more. 2ff7e9595c
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