![]() These writers, the so-called "Fireside Poets" (because of the homespun, familiar, conventional qualities of their verse), were the dominant poets of their time.Ĭontrast Whitman's poetry to theirs, and the differences leap forward. ![]() To broaden your sense of poetry at mid-century, take a quick look at some verse by other writers in our anthology: William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Greenleaf Whittier for example. The state of American poetry in 1855 has been fairly well represented by the examples we have read by Emerson and Poe: rhyming verse, in formal stanzas, using a rather conventionally ornamented style. Whitman was 36 years old when Leaves of Grass was published, and in one sense nothing could have foretold its appearance. ![]() ![]() This assignment calls for you to read Whitman's "Preface" to the first edition (1855) of Leaves of Grass, as well as the first fifteen stanzas, or "cantos" of that book's premier poem-"Song of Myself." ![]()
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