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Assignments |
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Brandon Burrow
A Formal Introduction: Three Poets
of American Romanticism
Our study of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Walt
Whitman this semester was invaluable because it modeled the three main ways of
approaching poetry during American Romanticism. Poe laboriously crafted concise
and sing-song stanzas with an intended effect in mind as we learned from reading
“The Philosophy of Composition.” He paid special attention to moments of tension
and worked to create the perfect emotional climax to hook his reader and take
them on a dark journey. Walt Whitman became the father of free verse and is one
of if not the most influential poets on modern poetry. He wrote progressively
and sensually from the heart, leading to a freedom of expression and rawness not
present in poetry before him. Dickinson was a blend of the two. She was a mad
scientist in her bedroom, writing not for publication but for herself, as she
experimented with a mixture of formal and free verse, punctuation and grim
topics. Taken together, they are examples of styles blending and transcending
into something entirely fresh for a new generation of writers and readers.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The City in the Sea” you can
immediately see some hallmarks of his style within the first stanza. An isolated
city “lying alone,” the personification of Death, and the sadness of “melancholy
waters” are all representative of Poe’s trademark macabre, lonely subject
matter. He balances the dark subject matter with melodic rhymes throughout the
poem, carrying a rhyme scheme and utilizing traditional verse as usually does in
his poetry. Formally, the inclusion of many dashes, normally associated with
Dickinson, is a departure from Poe’s typical style and creates pauses in the
reading like choppy waves assaulting the doomed town. In the final stanza, Poe
uses exclamation marks as punctuation: “But lo, a stir is in the air! / the
wave—there is a movement there!” to create a climax in the action of the poem
that foreshadows the rapid conclusion of the poem and the overtaking of the city
by the sea.
In Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” we see
a shorter offering than Whitman usually wrote, and it appears almost formal
because it did not go long enough to look like more than a single stanza.
Whitman uses his common device of anaphora, the repetition of a word at the
beginning of sequential lines to create a sense of rhythm or movement, in this
case “when” in the first four lines. He writes in free verse and does not
conform to a meter or rhyme scheme, but the length of his line grows during the
action of the astronomer’s speech suggesting that it is long-winded and more
than is necessary.
However, the idea that Whitman explores within the poem
is essential to American Romanticism. When the narrator learns of the scientific
explanation behind the stars receiving the “charts and the diagrams, to add,
divide, and measure them;” it takes away some of their natural beauty and the
meaning attributed to them by the individual. While the astronomer is applauded
by the majority, the narrator feels “tired and sick;” unable to accept the cold
scientific measurement for truth, but rather must wander off by himself to
contemplate and construct his own meaning as he gazes “in perfect silence at the
stars” (8). The realism of empirical data is present in the poem, but it finds
itself overthrown by an Emersonian ideal of the union of man and nature creating
true meaning. Responses to the Age of Reason and the soullessness of science are
frequent in poetry of this time and are also present in readings we had for Poe
and Dickinson, namely Poe’s “Sonnet – To Science” and Dickinson’s “[I felt a
funeral in my brain].”
In Emily Dickinson’s “[I heard a fly buzz when I died]”
the title itself seems to be representative of her famous panache for
experimenting with form. The narrator experiences the presence of the fly in the
space between life and death, represented by the brackets that encapsulate the
title of the poem. Dickinson does stay true to some of her common tendencies,
with 4 lines per stanza and the Dickinson dash in full effect, creating another
almost distracted narrative that threads in between the lines of poetry. “I
heard a fly buzz—when I died—” and “between the light—and me—” distance the
reader and make me think of stray thoughts running through the narrator’s mind
as she lays on her death bed (1, 14). Taken in a Gothic sense, the fly can be
seen as a harbinger of death, floating between the light and the narrator
causing the “windows,” of her eyes through which she sees the world to fail her
so that she can “not see to see” (15-6). The poem is somber enough to be by Poe,
but the stylistic choices made mark it as undoubtedly Dickinson.
The varied styles of these three poets are a great
introduction to learning to analyze poetry. The presence of similar themes and
topics in their works give a reference point to what defines American
Romanticism, while the idiosyncrasies present in their poetry provides a basis
for understanding different approaches and how they affect the reader. Having
studied them I am more aware of the conscious choices made by poets and have a
better vocabulary for analyzing and comparing poetry of any era.
