2.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Harvard professor, very popular poet
 John Greenleaf Whittier
 Quaker farm family
 James Russell Lowell
 Aristocracy
 Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Poet-physician, highly honored

3.  1807-1882
 1stAmerican poet to create a
national interest in poetry
 VERY popular…75th birthday treated like holiday
 Adapted traditional European forms/themes to
American subjects
 Romanticized view of America‟s history and
democratic ideals
 Poetry = optimistic, sentimental

4.  1809-1894
 Descendant of Anne Bradstreet
 Studied law for a bit, changed to
medicine
 Doctor, poet, professor
 Essays = exaggeration, quotable
 “OldIronsides”  protesting
destruction of battleship
Constitution (War of 1812)
 Poem saved ship, made Holmes
nationally recognized poet

5.  Meter : systematic arrangement of stressed and
unstressed syllables
 Foot : basic unit of meter
 Iamb : most common foot in American poetry;
unstressed syllable, stressed syllable
˘ = breve (unstressed) „ = ictus
(stressed)

6.  Example : Iambic Tetrameter  four iambs per line
The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray
 Mood : atmosphere; the feeling created in a reader
by a literary work
 Influenced by setting, tone, subject, word choice