Chapter 6 - Poetry in the Time of Revolution

Summary

The story of poetry in the time of the American Revolution is a story of the interaction between manuscript, print, and oral culture. From the Stamp Act crisis through the Revolutionary War, colonists used poetry to vent their anger, express their political beliefs, and articulate the principles that defined the new nation. Many women began writing poetry during the Revolutionary era. Boston historian and playwright Mercy Otis Warren is one of the best known female poets of the time. Throughout the eighteenth century, many readers considered Milton's biblical epic Paradise Lost the single greatest poem in the English language. The long poem has become one of the defining features of American poetry, as Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and Herman Melville'sClarel testify. Even the poets Harriet Monroe championed in Poetry turned to long poems to prove their poetic mettle.