|
LITR 4328: American Renaissance .png){kind=small} |
Model
Assignments |
 |
Eric Howell
American Romanticism: The Poetic Three
Undoubtedly, one of the most popular literary scenes throughout American
history lies within the poetry of the American Renaissance. Within the Romantic
era of American authorship, three great poets etched their names into
immortality by way of pen and prolific verse. Although each possesses their own
undeniably unique style, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman also
share in certain commonalities arising and originating from American
Romanticism. These figureheads of American poetry reached ranges never before
explored, placing themselves in a league of their own within the world of
literature.
Examining perhaps the darkest of the three authors, Poe is a prime
example of the dark side of Romanticism, or rather Gothic Romanticism. Although
the genre of the gothic was previously established, Poe and his unique
stylization of horror and despair intensified an already eerie brand of
literature. Developing a style that draws upon elements such as desire and loss,
gothic imagery and color code such as shades of black and hues of crimson, the
haunted mind and repressed fears, as well as excess to the point of extremity,
Poe masterfully creates access to a chilling world of formal verse. These gothic
characteristics are readily apparent throughout the natural flowing yet
meticulous fixed lines of Poe’s The City
in the Sea.
Within the first stanza of Poe’s poem, mention of death and the long ago
and far away set a gothic tone as he writes, “Lo! Death has reared himself a
throne / In a strange city lying alone / Far down within the dim West…” (City
1.1-3). In addition to these gothic elements formulating quick and early, Poe’s
brilliant fixed verse begins to take shape as well as he connects specific
end-rhymes from one line to the next. Building upon the gothic foundation, Poe
highlights and makes use of the bareness of light in accordance to the gothic
color code penning, “No rays from the holy heaven come down / On the long
night-time of that town…” (City 2.1-2).
Signifying that no light from heaven reaches the setting of the poem, Poe
alludes to hell by use of the absence of light or color, which further embeds
his work into the seemingly grim world of the gothic. However, the use of fixed
verse metaphorically provides a divine light throughout the entirety of this
poem, as Poe excellently threads rhyme and meter in such a precise manner like
no other. Simply put, Poe is one of the best at utilizing fixed verse, so much
that his “attention to rhythm and rhyme partly account for his being… among the
most musical writers in English” (White). An obvious identifier to Poe and his
works is the musicality within the poetic lines brought on by his specific use
of rhyme and meter.
Drifting upward from the dark and fixed pits of Poe’s literary hell,
fluctuating between fixed and free verse, Emily Dickinson is found in a
purgatorial sense of Romantic poetics. Dickinson’s one of a kind style is
characterized by the use of improvised punctuation such as dashes, ebbing
between fixed and formal verse, an interest in the spiritual and mystical
dimensions of everyday life, a sense of gothic undertones, as well as overall
abstraction (White). Emily Dickinson’s work elusively shifts and works in a
manner that elevates itself into a fascinating embodiment of American
Romanticism.
In her lyric poem [I heard a Fly
Buzz When I Died], the title alone sparks an interest in readers while
providing a preview of the unique nature of that which is Dickinson (although
she herself did not write the title). Utilizing four-line stanzas, Dickinson
displays the use of formal verse poetry; however, she does not appear to be
confined to the prototypical rhyme scheme often associated with fixed verse.
More so, Emily Dickinson uses more of an opportunistic approach to her rhyme
scheme by playing with half, slant, and off rhymes (White). This method displays
itself within the four stanzas by way of iambic meter. Cleverly, Dickinson
divvies up each line into two syllables and emphasizes the second syllable. In
addition to the meter of the poem, there lies a uniform appearance to each
stanza and line providing the structure associated with fixed verse. Although
the poem hardly makes use of end-rhymes, Dickinson throws one in between lines
fourteen and sixteen rhyming, “between the light – and me -- / and then the
windows failed – and then / I could not see to see –“ (I 4.14-16). The use of
these formal verse aspects places Dickinson’s poetry in a unique position, as
the poem is both formal and free.
One of the defining characteristics to Dickinson and her style is her use
of dashes. The use of these dashes helps break up the formality of the poem,
acting as a counterpoint to formal verse. They force the reader to pause,
briefly, allowing a certain ambiance to overcome while reading the poem, adding
to the element of free verse poetry. Highlighting another aspect of Dickinson’s
style, the use of an almost gothic depiction and mystical dimension of an
everyday occurrence. Although one does not experience the waiting moments of
death everyday, Dickinson portrays lying on a deathbed as just another
experience; nonetheless, she makes this ordinary action of waiting an almost
surreal experience. Writing, “I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away / What portion
of me be / Assignable…” (I 3.9-11), she alludes to writing a will for her
earthly possessions yet questions her overall existence by asking what part of
her can she sign away or do people value? The implications of her allusions
seethe Romanticism and allow her abstract nature to come to life.
Transcending Dickinson and her in-between purgatory-esque (in the middle)
style, Walt Whitman’s free verse poetry appears to be aloft such as heaven
itself. Whitman, like Poe and Dickinson, was a literary rarity whose style
belonged to a class of its own. Making use of free verse poetry while capturing
the essence of Transcendentalism and the Romantic, Whitman helped revolutionize
American poetry.
Whitman was indeed the most realistic of the “big three” Romantic poets,
as he used everyday occurrences as subject material. The free flowing lines of
his poetry captured the everyday, urban American life and turned these ordinary
subjects into “poetic wonder and beauty” (White). As seen in his poem
When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer,
Whitman conveys an intrinsic simplicity when describing an encounter with an
astronomer, “when I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them / When I, sitting, heard the astronomer where he lectured with much
applause…” (Astronomer 1.3-4). At face value, these lines simply feel and sound
as if Whitman and the reader were discussing his matter over coffee; however,
within the next few lines of the poem Whitman creates a feverish ambiance of
transcendence, reaching something much higher. The free verse poet exclaims,
“How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick / till rising and gliding out,
I wander’d off by myself / in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to
time / Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars” (Astronomer 1.5-8). Resembling
Socrates, who waited outside Agathon’s party lost in thought, Whitman adds an
almost philosophical disdain for the chaos of society, reverting back to nature
in a more comforting manner. By using the Romantic element of transcendence,
Whitman establishes these apparent regular occurrences in a vivid, almost
spiritual manner.
In addition to Whitman’s free verse and transcendental tendencies, he
also makes heavy use of Parallelism or anaphora. Parallelism is defined as a
“figure of repetition that occurs when the first word or set of words in one
sentence, clause, or phrase is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of
successive sentences, clauses or phrases; repetition of the initial word(s) over
successive phrases or clauses” (White). This can be observed within the first
four lines of When I heard the Learn’d
Astronomer as the word “when” is replicated at the beginning of each line.
By using the aspect of parallelism, Whitman adds a balance and rhythm to his
work, ultimately making the piece more persuasive.
Although each of these great American Romantic poets greatly differ in
regards to their own individualistic stylization, Poe, Dickinson, and Whitman
draw similarities from Romanticism as a whole. Spanning fully across the
spectrum of formal and free verse, these three literary giants dabble in
elements of the sublime, transcendence, and lyrical ambiance within their poetic
works. By analyzing each poet individually and then comparing and contrasting
their commonalities and differences, we can grow towards fully understanding
just how complex and nuanced American Romanticism is. Although these emblematic
authors are gone, their works continue to live on through the ages, continuously
building upon the foundation in which they laid with their literary gifts,
offering fresh perspective towards literature as a whole.
