American Renaissance & American Romanticism
Whitman's influence
*It's commonly acknowledged that all American poets must come to terms with Whitman, either following in his style (Stevens, Ginsberg) or reacting against it (T. S. Eliot).
pro: (wild people, experimental forms,
raw emotions): Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, Diane
Wakowski, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Wolfe, + many others
con: (refined people, style, and subjects): T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Dickinson, Marianne Moore
*Whitman also has considerable international influence. He was admired by contemporary British poets such as Tennyson and Swinburne, whom he influenced. His free-verse style also influenced continental European poets in France and Italy, etc.
*Compared to tightly focused and quirkily lyrical poets like Dickinson, Whitman translates well.
*Whitman's style and subject matter also
influential on South and Central American poets: Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, J. L. Borges
If interested in Neruda, see Il Postino (The Postman)
*Whitman widely seen as the first great modern poet, in terms of poetic style and lifestyle.
Lifestyle: artist as bohemian, non-conformist, “other,” outsider trying to connect.
+ freeing of verse & expansion of
poetic subject matter shook up poetic world, now standard
"You Gotta Know these Latin American Writers"
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Jorge
Luis Borges, Argentine writer, poet, essayist, short-story author
1899-1986
early life in Europe as well as Argentina
head of National Library of Argentina
Many, many collections of translated poetry, short stories, essays
From one internet biography:
After World War I the Borges family lived in Spain, where he was a member of avant-garde Ultraist literary group. His first poem, 'Hymn to the Sea,' written in the style of Walt Whitman, was published in the magazine Grecia.
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Pablo
Neruda, great 20th-century poet of Chile
1904-1973
1971 Nobel Prize for Literature
Communist senator in Chilean congress before exile
Il Postino (1994 film)
. . . The American poet Walt Whitman, whose framed portrait Neruda later kept on his table, become a major influence on his work. "I, a poet who writes in Spanish, learned more from Walt Whitman than from Cervantes," Neruda said in 1972 in a speech during a visit in the United States.
(http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/neruda.htm)
from Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations, ed. by Richard Burgin, 1998, regarding Neruda:
We did meet
forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said,
jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?'
Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in
English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature."
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Octavio
Paz, Mexican poet, essayist, diplomat
1914-1998
1990 Nobel Prize in Literature
born in village near Mexico City during Mexican Revolution
grandfather a novelist, father a liberal reformer
1962 Mexico's ambassador to India
most famous book: The Labyrinth of Solitude re Mexican character