American Literature

Whitman, Emerson, Crane, and Cummings
Walt Whitman along with other poets and writers have celebrated America just because of its existence and upon celebrating the existence of America, they have created the American ideal toward transcendentalism and experimentation with all elements of life and literature.  This wide realm of possibilities for American poets and writers existed because America was a new country in need of an identity through its art and a philosophy explained through poetry.  Walt Whitman in addition to Ralph Waldo Emerson, E.E. Cummings, and Hart Crane all displayed the innovative spirit of America through influencing each other and adding to the early celebration of American existence via experimentation.  Though it should be noted that Whitman and Emerson, as transcendentalists had the ardent task of creating a space with which to make poetry and essays pleasing enough to evoke an audience.  Crane and Cummings, however emerged as poets who showed that American art was brave enough to encounter even the most idiosyncratic styles of the American existence.  No poets task was easy in a young country, however their legacies all live on and continue to influence American artists to modernity.
 
Ralph Waldo Emerson should be given credit as the first American writer to be both poetic in his essays and to influence other poets and writers to be self reliant and innovative in both American life and art.  In the overview of Nature and Selected Essays, it is said that Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europes traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances (Ziff, 2001).  Indeed it was necessary for Americans to develop a sense of their own identities and to free themselves from the constraints of European colonialism.  It is fair to say that Emerson not only wrote essays to influence the philosophy of individuals but he also wrote history as it was occurring.  The same can be said of the poets, who followed Emersons call to create an America that was free and open to new ideas and unique art.

Though Emerson is well known for his extensive essays on nature and the self determination of man, his poems are both metaphorical and musical.  They are inspiring as a call to action for Americans to march to the their own rhythm and pace, where he seems to be an activist of sorts.  The activism that can be seen here is the right for individuals to discard previous conceptions of what makes poetry and prose desirable and to reach out to find new ways of expression.  In Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emersons essays are presented before his poems giving the reader insight into his wishes for other artists and for America as a whole.  He says, Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard.  He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number But, leaving rule and pale forethought, He shall aye climb (2003, 513).  Farther along in Emersons epic-like work he says most profoundly, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise (513).  It becomes clear that Emerson champions new and innovative ways in which to live life and to make art.  By doing this he seems to be saying in the previous passages that a poet will succeed if he or she denies convention and utilizes the element of surprise in literary undertakings.

Walt Whitman most certainly answered Emersons call for American innovation in art and developed into one of the most influential poets of the American existence and the transcendence of life to death.  In Whitman Poetry and Prose, Whitman offers his preface to Leaves of Grass as his opinion on the need for Americans to continue to create and discard the influences of Europe in order to be free in life and art.  He says here

No reminiscences may suffice either.  A live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest...namely from its own soul.  This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of present actions and grandeur of the subject of poets.-As if it were necessary to trot back generation to generation to the eastern records.

Whitman, too served as an influence and an activist against the crude and unnecessary boastings of American Capitalism and enterprise.  He undertakes his writing as a dismissal of economics and a call for a more natural, social life.  Therefore both he and Emerson supported philosophies that made them more than just poets, they were the voice of the rational way to live without the incumbency of the past or the Capitalist innovations at the present.

Freedom as the cornerstone of America is demonstrated in the freedom of both Whitman and Emersons writing.  Whitman presented himself as the wanderer of the land that is the United States. Though he does not seem aimless in his travels, he seems to be curious in finding every destination and being a part of the fabric of all the people, places, and things around him.  Just as Emerson wrote about nature and the inherent beauty of it, Whitman similarly showed how spiritual transcendentalism could further aid in freedom, by the ability to roam and to ponder as he did.  He says in his poem Song of the Open Road, I think heroic deeds were all conceivd in the open air, and all free poems also, I think I could stop here myself and do miracles. I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me, I think whoever I see must be happy (2004, 141).

Though Whitman here seems to show optimism for his journey, his personality seemed to be reflected as more caged and conflicted with all the conformity he saw no use for.  Therefore Whitman serves as an influence of all that American can see on a geographical landscape, but also all they can be in terms of unique and therefore, happy.

Unfortunately, innovative poet Hart Crane was unhappy with his life and the inability to be openly homosexual in the early twentieth century.  However, his distaste for technology in favor of nature is well in line with Whitman and an obvious influence can be seen in Cranes work.

It is perhaps not an accident that a homosexual presence remains furtively on hand in both poems, in the free-ranging tramps of the River, in the vagabond Whitman of Cape Hatteras. For the great problem that stymied Crane after 1926 had to do with the conflict between his identity as a gay male and his identity as a poet. Numerous unpublished lyrics, most written between 1927 and 1931, attest to the struggle Crane undertook to invent a discourse that would honestly translate aspects of his homosexual experience into poetry.

It is interesting to note that Brunner describes Cranes poetic inventions as part of the homosexual experience, a part of poetry that is largely ignored as a facet of the American experience.  There are chapters and books dedicated to regional voices in specific time periods of American discourse and its ensuing poetry and other art, as well there are collections of African-American and womens voices in poetry, but Crane seems to present as the most innovative from both his idiosyncratic experience of being a homosexual male and to his unique style that reflects an entire, largely ignored subculture.

The identity of the poet as a self-proclaimed American cannot be ignored in the poems of the three writers discussed to this point.  Therefore their works all demonstrated the need for diversity and the result of taking the euphemistic road less traveled.  The result for Crane was more painful, but it seemed a pain lessened by at least Whitmans influence on Cranes journey of self discovery and identity.  As far as influence is concerned, it is interesting that Brain Reed in his book Hart Crane After His Lights says that there is one assumption about early American writers that the lineage goes from Wordsworth-Emerson-Whitman-Stevens-Ashbury (2006,169).  Though American poets certainly did influence one another in their bold call to action for a voice that represented a freedom from feudalism and the European way, voices such as Cranes demonstrated the freedoms that come from experimentation with life and with poetry.  Similarly, Crane proves how soothing the act of writing can be to the American minority, in whichever group he or she falls into.

Cranes poetry shows his influence and his gift.  Though Emerson, Whitman, and Crane all seemed very reactionary in their works, this should not deter away from the uniqueness and beauty of their work.  It has been said of Crane that misery and despair were redeemed through the apprehension of beauty, and in some of his greatest verses he articulated his own quest for redemption. He also believed strongly in the peculiarly naive American Romanticism extending back through Walt Whitman to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Though romanticism here is viewed as naive and therefore negative, the idea of redemption through poetry is much a part of the American spirit.  One tries to understand his or her place in the world and their identity within it, only to find that the world is such a vast and beautiful place.  It seems that all of these writers saw the limits to their identities as Americans, but no limit to the vast beauty of what could be seen in nature.  As well, all these poets seem to have a burning desire to point out the contradictions of life along with the imbalances of America.  This can be seen in Harts poem To Brooklyn Bridge where he says
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagulls wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away
--Till elevators drop us from our day.

Due to the introduction of more technological advances came not only Harts criticism of the inability of the American lens to include the natural, but this also effected other modernists of the time.  E. E. Cummings was similarly interested in nature and his idiosyncratic experiences in life also helped to forge a new type of poetry via experimentation.

It has been said of Cummings that he was many things, including a pacifist, a social iconoclast, a poet that used harsh satirical verse, as well as the erotic (Lauter, 1994, p. 1421).  Cummings does introduce many more elements of poetry that use no recognizable syntax and most certainly satire to illustrate human nature as opposed to actual nature.  As a survivor of harsh conditions during World War I, Cummings most likely saw the beauty of the ability to be free in this nation while others did not enjoy the bounty of America.  His satire therefore, is reactionary as are all the works of the previous poets.  His eroticism may be an extension and an outlet for the aggression that was felt during his trial for espionage and his unwillingness to conform.  However reactionary, Cummings also holds in common with the other poets, the love of nature and demonstrates a type of catharsis when writing about this topic.

In Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town he says, children guessed (but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more (Cummings, 1940, 1429).  Obviously, the style that Cummings uses is very different from the previous poets.  He seems very deliberate in making his audience pause to see that they are missing, much like the people of the town that he speaks of.  It is also evident that he is harshly sarcastic when contrasting people and nature.  While the elements and the seasons change, the people he speaks of in this piece only grow older and do not change or improve their lives.  They seem almost impervious to what is around them and the poem seems to mock this.  As well, Cummings seems to be making a social statement against groups of people, however he seems more lively and loving when talking about erotic encounters with another individual.

What can be woven together from all four poets is the transcendental way in which nature was substituted more often than sacred works or religious figures.  These authors, it can be said, were very constitutional in that they did respect religious freedoms and quite literally the freedom to abandon any religious ideal.  Though it can be said that the United States was founded on the ideals of religious freedom, these men all sought to add to the American identity through their reactive art.  For them nature was the only static quality in an ever-changing world filled with technology and industry and nature, although powerful and unpredictable held a sort of captive beauty to them.  It seems as is these poets felt an urgent need to use their poems as a virtual snapshot of all that was seen through their eyes.  As well, some of the pieces reviewed were very musical while others seemed to read like a political manifesto.

Though it must be said that the lineage of the authors can be argued as to what influence each poet had to one another and to others not even mentioned here.  However the lineage of these men can be paralleled to the lineage of the birth of a nation to the twentieth century.  There was a need for a national identity that was called for by Emerson and, as well a need to preserve the beauty of the changing landscape while simultaneously discarding remnants of Europe and its hold on the American artists.  Though ironically enough when the modernists Cummings and Crane emerged the most innovative works while Emerson and Whitman were considered by some too romantic and naive.  Though if one were to read closely into the poems, themes of social injustice and a demand for equality along with criticism of the American capitalist system can be easily seen. This is certainly not naive.

Along with all of this criticism of the American ignorance toward more existential questions of the purpose of life and more specifically, American life, was also an answer to the questions posed.  These poets all seemed to be working with their own reactive inner dialogues that posed the questions of the purpose of life and found the answers in the beauty of nature as well as in the satisfaction of producing poetry that contained aesthetic value to them and their audience.  The poets certainly held much hope that their audience would serve to be reactive and revolutionary in art and life, as well.  These poets all engaged in trying to shape themselves and America, but also seemed altruistic enough to care for fellow human beings.  Therefore these writers were all in a sense, freedom fighters for all the rights that were implied or written into the history of America.  Sadly, the modernists could not be as innocent and hopeful as their predecessors due to their circumstances, but their contributions to the literary world certainly helped to at the least, give an understanding into the insight of a certain subgroup of people namely homosexuals and pacifists.

Whitman and Emerson, as well, seemed to be content in their label as men tasked with challenging the status quo and demanding self-reliance of those around them and of those they influenced.  Certainly, poetry is not an easy endeavor in terms of acquiring money and status, therefore the ideas of self-reliance and personal freedom had to assist poets such as Crane and Cummings through this philosophy.  The influence on actual poetic styles is debatable, however Whitman, Emerson, and Crane all show similar features in their pieces.  Cummings, on the other hand, presents himself as almost anarchic in his destruction and rebuilding of previous styles of poetry.  Interestingly enough however, the other writers show signs of anarchic thought but not style.  Whitman and Emerson especially were fortunate enough to be the builders of the American poetic framework.  However they had to destroy the European influences, as well as the technological and increasingly bureaucratic nature of American capitalism and consumerism.

For all the criticism toward the naivety of the Romantic poets, their work is far from naive and instead very political as well as philosophical.  What seems more important is the criticism that Whitman and Emerson held toward institutions and remnants of European descent and their effect on America.  Therefore these men had to be extremely intelligent in order to understand the opposition and to work under a unique framework that challenged this.  Though they may even be considered socialists by todays standards, they certainly did champion for social justice and the right to express their concerns through writing.  It can even be added that the two held a political agenda that may have been missed over the din of acknowledged politicians and philosophers.

Though Cummings and Crane were not considered naive, their work has not always been favored as extremely valuable.  As modernists, they had high expectations to move art into a more supposedly realistic vision of a more technological America.  Some critics have shown Crane to be a mere extension of Whitman with only a few added geographical differences, such as with technological features.  Cummings, on the other hand, does not seem to be linked in to the other three poets as much, although he seemed to find comfort and aesthetic value in the natural while simultaneously experimenting with new ways of composing poetry.  All of these pieces from all four writers show the existential wanderings and wonderings of each and to every question posed is an answer.  However, all writers had to break down former systems and the status quo before engaging in their tasks.

In closing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and E. E. Cummings all helped to destroy previous structures and conceptions that proved to be a hindrance to American art.  Emerson and Whitman can be considered both founding fathers and freedom fighters to both poetry and self reliance.  Cummings and Crane helped to modernize American poetry through the innovative American spirit while still capturing elements of the work of their predecessors.  The lineage of the writers is debatable, though a common thread can be observed in all.  What cannot be debated is the naivety of the Romantic poets, as they carved their names into the American way of forging ahead into the unknown with not only questions, but answers as well.