American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century

As we prepare to celebrate the millennium it is natural to look back both at our achievements and our catastrophes. There are innumerable of the latter and current events show that we have learned little or nothing from the past, but they can be balanced by enormous achievements in every field, not least among them in literature. Every century has, in retrospect certainly, its own character and its interpretations by or in relation to our own: the nineteenth century, in the UK at least, has veered from uncritical rejection to equally uncritical approval; in the USA it is different as...