1. American poetry’s two characteristics

“American poetry’s two characteristics” explains the two characteristics which mark American poetry. On the one hand, several of its major figures promoted American poetry as essentially different from any other nation’s. Although the reasons they offer vary, they typically claim that American experience demands a different kind of expression. Such poets advocate for novelty, for a break with what is perceived to be outmoded and foreign. On the other hand, American poetry might be more rightly called profoundly transnational. American poetry often welcomes techniques, styles, and traditions originating from outside it. The two characteristics do not exist separately from each other. Rather, they work in a productive dialectic, inspiring both individual accomplishment and the broader field. Examples include Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and Langston Hughes.

American Poetry: A Very Short Introduction

American Poetry: A Very Short Introduction proposes a new theory of American poetry showing that two characteristics mark the vast, contentious literature. On the one hand, several of its major poets and critics claim that America needs a poetry equal to the country’s own distinctiveness. On the other hand, American poetry welcomes techniques, styles, and traditions that originate from outside the country. Its influences range far beyond America’s borders. The force of these two competing characteristics drives both individual accomplishment and the broader field. The story moves through historical periods and honors the poets’ artistry by paying close attention to the verse forms, meters, and styles they employ. Its examples range from Anne Bradstreet, writing a century before America’s establishment, to the poets of the Black Lives Matter movement. Individual chapters consider how other major figures such as T. S. Eliot, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson emphasize convention or idiosyncrasy and turn to American English as an important artistic resource.

The Legacy Book in America, 1664–1792

Legacy books in colonial America were instruments for the transmission of cultural values between generations: the dying mother (usually) instructing and advising children on the path to salvation and heavenly reunions. They were a popular and influential form of women’s discourse that distilled the ideologies of the religious establishment into practical and emotional lessons for lay persons, especially the young. This collection draws together legacy texts written by colonial American women and girls: five mother’s legacy books and two legacies by children, organized here chronologically. These legacies were writ­ten in anticipation of dying, making awareness of death central to the texts. All are highly personal, revealing the thought processes and emotive patterns of their authors, and all are meant for the comfort and instruction of the loved ones these dying women and girls were leaving behind. Published between 1664 and 1792, these texts provide insight into early New England culture through to the first years of the republic. Included are: • Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear Children (1664) • Susanna Bell, The Legacy of a Dying Mother to Her Mourning Children (1673) • Sarah Goodhue, The Copy of a Valedictory and Monitory Writing (1681) • Grace Smith, The Dying Mother’s Legacy (1712) • Sarah Demick, Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sarah Demick (1792) • Hannah Hill, A Legacy for Children (1714) • Jane Sumner, Warning to Little Children (1792) • Benjamin Colman, A Devout Contemplation on … the Early Death of Pious & Lovely Children (1714) • A Late Letter from a Solicitous Mother To Her Only Son (1746) • Memoirs of Eliza Thornton (1821)

Protestant Baroque

Much traditional scholarship on the Baroque sees the notion of the Protestant Baroque as contradictory. This chapter explores ‘emergent’ or ‘partial’ Baroque characteristics in two Protestant poets, Mary Sidney and Aemilia Lanyer, followed by the Protestant women of Little Gidding, the ‘Arminian nunnery’, whose ‘storying’ and biblical harmonies show how broader cultural dynamics could permeate even a marginalised group of women, who have only recently attracted critical attention. I look across the Atlantic to examine the English equivalent of the colonial Baroque prominent in Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic culture, and consider two New England writers – briefly, Anne Bradstreet and more thoroughly, Anne Hutchinson – to analyse the extent to which New England can be set within the scope of not just colonial but specifically Protestant colonial Baroque.

American Literature in the World: An Anthology from Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler, edited by Wai Chee Dimock et al.

A book review of: Wai Chee Dimock, et. al., editors, American Literature in the World: An Anthology from Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler. Columbia UP, 2017.