The Romantic

Poets

Walt Whitman

1819-1892 Whitman created new poetic forms and subjects to fashion a

distinctly American type of poetic expression He rejected convention themes, traditional literary reference,

allusions, and rhyme – all the accepted customs of the 19th century He used long lines to capture the rhythms of natural speech, free

verse, and vocabulary drawn from everyday speech. “I hear America Singing” – catalog poem “Song of Myself” – empathized with all people (black, American

Indian, women) didn’t care about race or sexual orientation. Considered his ultimate work.

“O Captain, my Captain” was a tribute to the fallen Lincoln

Emily Dickinson1830-1886

An agoraphobic (afraid of open spaces – from age 23 until death 33 years later)

Dressed herself only in white and never left her house (rarely her room)

Wrote nearly 2,000 poems in her lifetime but published only 7 – each anonymously

Her poems were published posthumously by her sister Lavinia

Her five main central ideas: LOVE, NATURE, FRIENDSHIP, DEATH and IMMORTALITY

She is considered one of the founders of Modern American Poetry

Her poems were different … They looked different – where were the

sentences, the commas, semicolons, the periods?! Why all the dashes???

Her poems didn’t rhyme – used slant rhyme (sometimes called near rhyme – words with similar but not identical sounds)

Her figures of speech were too striking for the day Her ideas were too radical – she didn’t stick to the

warm and fuzzy topics. She favored startling images and outlooks. Paved the way for the imagists of the 20th century.

Other American Romantic Poets

Much of their ideas were European and they echoed much of the European techniques

- William Cullen Bryant- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- John Greenleaf Whittier- Oliver Wendell Holmes