Poetry and Short Stories
Emily Dickinson:
 poet during American Renaissance
 Rarely left her house during the last ten years of her life due to her agoraphobia
 Wrote poems about nature death, and loneliness with an unconventional style
 Poems published after death
Walt Whitman:
 Wrote Leaves of Grass (The entire universe is his subject.)
 Poems are free of traditional metrical pattern, philosophy resembles Emerson's
 Believed physical world is the embodiment of the spirit
Edgar Lee Masters:
 Poet, novelist, and biographer
 Wrote “George Gray”
 Wrote in traditional forms and about his oppressive small-town life
Robert Frost:
 Began writing poems for publication in the 1890’s with very little success
 Spent much of his time writing on a farm in New Hampshire after leaving both
Dartmouth and Harvard colleges
 Sailed to England and published A Boy's Will and North of Boston
 Received recognition among his return to America
 Often focused his poems on the woods, mountains, and small farms of New England
 Starts with description of a natural subject and shifts to provide advice and insight
 Won 4 Pulitzer Prizes and is regarded as one of the greatest American poets
 Notable works: The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,
Directive, Home Burial, Fire and Ice, After Apple Picking, Mending Wall, Death of a
Hired Man
Carl Sandberg:
 Born of Swedish immigrants, raised in Illinois, left school early to work
 Accounted fighting during his eight months of service during the Spanish American War
 Spoke about Walt Whitman and American life for the Lyceum Lecture Circuit
 Moved to Chicago and reported for the daily news, poems began to focus on daily
Chicago life and atmosphere
 Published works include Chicago Poems, his biography of Abraham Lincoln, The
American Songbag a collection of folk songs which he began rather well known for
performing, and Always the Young Strangers poems written on a North Carolina farm
later in his life
 Formally recognized by Congress, the Illinois governor, and the king of Sweden
 Notable works: Chicago, Prayers of Steel, Grass
E.E. Cummings:
 Known for his unusual arrangements of his poems
 Graduated from Harvard University
 Poems were warm
 Famous poems are anyone lived in a Pretty How Town & pity this busy monster,
manunkind
The Harlem Renaissance:


1920’s- Flowering of black writing, art, music, and thought
Harlem- Cosmopolitan center of black life in America (poets who lived there include:
Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and County Cullen)
 McKay- (1890-1948) Oldest of the Harlem Renaissance writers and the first to publish
- Born in Jamaica, moved to Kingston at age 14 and wrote poems in Jamaican dialect
- Published 2 collections of poems and won medal and award $ at age 22
- Award money allowed him to be educated in the U.S.
- 1922- Published most important collection of poems (Harlem Shadows)
- Wrote novels (Home to Harlem) to protest against injustices done to blacks
 Toomer- Born in Washington D.C. and studied various subjects in New York, Massachusetts,
Wisconsin and Illinois before publishing work in New York during the Harlem
Renaissance
- Cane - his novel consisting of prose, sketches, stories, poems and a One Act play
- Cane's initial success was rather minimal, but historians recognize it as one of the
greatest and most notable works of the Harlem Renaissance that influence black
writing in both the United States and Africa.
- Other Notable work - November Cotton Flower
 Hughes- Wrote about the joys, troubles, and hopes of African Americans
- Graduated from Columbia University
- Very diverse in his writing
- Worked as a cook’s helper in Africa and Europe
- Famous poems are The Negro Speaks of Rivers and As I Grew Older
 Cullen- (1903-1946) Born in NYC
- Master’s degree in English literature from Harvard
- Color- His first collection of poems published in 1925
- Books = Copper Sun and The Ballad of the Brown Girl
- Preferred old-fashioned/traditional poetic styles, looked to John Keats as model for
poetry
 All these 4 poets and Zora Neale Hurston = inspired by Charles Johnson
 Black writing reflected the spirit of the times, sense of expanded opportunity, importance
of personal fulfillment, and wide literary trends (struggle between traditional and
experimental literature).
 2 aims: 1) define/renew black heritage and 2) make other Americans aware of black life
Imagism:
 Movement that began in London in 1912 with Ezra Pound (named it and defined its
principles)
 Direct concentration on image
 Use of language of common speech
 Creation of new rhythms
 Freedom of subjects
 Compress thoughts and feelings (complexity) into a single moment
 Other Imagists = William Carlos Williams and Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961)
- Influential, wrote about common places or things
-
Most famous poem is the Red Wheel Barrow (so much depends/upon a red wheel
barrow/glazed with rain water/beside the white chickens)
- Hilda- translated Greek poetry/drama + themes/forms reflected interest in classics
 Amy Lowell- (1874-1925) Interested in Imagism when read H.D.’s poem
- From family of wealth and achievements
- Won Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for What’s O’Clock- Collection of poems
- Came to London to become leader of the movement
- Pound thought she was sentimental, so he severed ties with Imagism and decided
his ideas had turned into Amygism.
 John Gould Fletcher- (1886-1950) Poet from AK
- Dropped out of Harvard 4 months before graduation and published several collections
of traditional poems before discovered Imagism and came under influence of Lowell
- Joined them and appeared in new annual anthology- Some Imagist Poets
 1st innovative movement in modern American poetry (emphasis on new rhythms, exact
images, and language)
“To Build A Fire”: Jack London
 Man is a soldier in another country (naturalism- man vs. nature)

Man = inexperienced and very ignorant

Believes that frostbite is "nothing serious"

Relies on knowledge

Man's companion is dog with wild, ancient instincts who knows intent and goes along
with nature instead of fighting against it

Man stops sled, tries to build fire to warm himself but fails, succumbs to frostbite and
hypothermia
Nature does not actively work to kill the man; nature does its brutal duty- man dooms
himself due to his blundering

 Foreshadowing- cold and gray skies
“In Another Country”: Ernest Hemmingway
 Entry during a war with a leg wound

Talks to a major (whose wife is dead)

"If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He
should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose."

The man is to go back to the US and is getting married soon; the major tells him that "a
man should never marry".

Misses his dead wife