Appunti e riassunti di Letterature Anglo-americane, prof. Kidder

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was an important figure of the American Renaissance, a journalist and writer. He supported the American working class and, for this reason, he wanted to use a simple, rural, and ordinary language to be understood by them. In fact, he wrote simple poems for simple people.

His writing

Among his works are "The People, Yes" and "Biography of A. Lincoln" (even E. Lee Masters wrote the biography of A. L.).

The complete poems

• Chicago: It’s a poem in which he compares Chicago with a boy and talks about the vices and virtues of this town, where he lived and where he went in 1913.
• Grass: It’s a short poem in which the author talks about the war.
• Fog: This poem is divided into two sections. The first stanza is characterized by the description of the fog, and it is compared to a little cat. In fact, we can see, but above all, we can feel the fog. The second, or the last stanza, is characterized by what happens when the fog arrives.
• Cool Tombs: It is dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, full of sorrow for his death. It is a sort of tribute to him.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson, from an early age, had a vocation for poetry. He attended Harvard College for two years and achieved economic stability thanks to the Pulitzer Prize, which he won three times. He celebrated isolated and wasted life with melancholy.

The trilogy

That includes "Merlin," "Lancelot," and "Tristam," poems in imitation of Medieval narratives from which emerges the escapism and the desire to return to the glorious past. The metrically regular verse, traditional form, and elevated diction of his poetry dignify the subject matter.

Collected poems (1921)

• Luke Havergal: Rhyming couplets. It’s associated with the western gate at the end of life. Symbols include autumn and nightfall.
• Richard Cory: Alternating rhymes. Written and designed with his sister-in-law when his brother, after the failure of their company, had started drinking. In the USA, it was the period of the Great Panic, and we can see a reference in verse 14. It has a touch of dark pessimism, is simple, and conveys the idea that appearance can be deceiving. Life is brilliant in appearance but really unsatisfied.
• Miniver Cheevy: He dreams of a medieval life, but at the end, we discover that he was drunk. It’s a narrative poem in which the author tells us the story of Miniver, who passed all his life thinking about what might have been if he had been born earlier in time.
• Mr. Flood’s Party: It’s a dramatic poem. It takes place between a desert road of Tilbury town (a fictional town that resembles Gardiner—the town in which the author grew up) and Mr. Flood’s house. The themes are loneliness, the passage of time, and desperation.

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was born in 1868 and was an important author in the United States. About his life: he studied law to please his father, went to Chicago where he met several intellectuals of the Renaissance, and settled in New York at the Chelsea Hotel, where many writers lived too. He became famous in 1915 for his publication of Spoon River Anthology.

Spoon River Anthology

This work is a collection of short free-form poems, in which he describes the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River. There are about 220 characters, and all the characters are dead, buried in the cemetery on the hill, but continue their love and quarrels beyond the grave. Their dissonant voices converge in a lament for a wasted life. Sex is described as a basic human motive. About the style, it is considered rough, flat, and unpoetic. It is composed of an introduction (the poem "The Hill"), and the following poems are epitaphs. The author, to write it, was influenced by the real life of Petersburg and Lewiston, where he grew up.

• Trainor the Druggist: It talks about the chemist and his death. He died during an experiment.
• Margaret Fuller Slack: It talks about the wasted life of Margaret Fuller, who dedicated her life to the family and not to her career.
• Doc Hill: It talks about a doctor who loved his patients and gave them all his love because he didn’t receive it from his family.
• Abel Melveny: Unused objects compared to the unused life of the protagonist.
• Lucinda Matlock: It talks about the life of his paternal grandmother, wasted and devoted to the family.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

When Ezra Pound was a child, he had the dream of becoming a poet. He was the promoter of Imagism, and about imagism, he said: "An IMAGE is that which presents an intellectual and emotional in an instant of time." This movement promotes a return to classical values, clarity, precision, and economic language. With imagism, there is the presentation of the object, and not only its description, but, I repeat, its direct presentation. He was influenced by the "social credit theory" of Douglass, who attributed to money all the ills of society. He worked in London and Paris, helped his friends to become famous and to publish their works (for example, Eliot or Joyce). Conservative in politics with fascist ideas, he supported Mussolini, describing him as a deliverer and criticizing American society, so at the end of II World War, he got arrested. But ten years later, when he was released, he didn’t change his controversial character.

The Cantos

It’s a long incomplete poem formed by cantos. There are about 116 cantos, and this work is characterized by classical references and elements about culture, in general. There, the author combines biography, history, fusing memories, descriptions, and meditations.

The Collected Poems

Among the collected poems, we can find the best representation of imagism in the poem "In the Station of the Metro," influenced by his own experience at La Fayette in Paris, where he lived for some years.

• Hugh Selwyn Maulberley: There are 18 short poems divided into two sections in which he uses this pseudonym to talk about himself. He talks about himself in the third person.
• The River Merchant’s Wife: It’s a beautiful and dramatic love-story. The history of a couple that grew up together and first, they’re young and happy. After that, for work commitments of her husband, the wife (the narrator of the poem) has to live in solitude, far from her love.