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American Poetry: United States
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A penchant for satire continued in the American Revolutionary era, when American poetry was centered on Connecticut and a group of poets known as the Connecticut Wits (or Hartford Wits). This group, most of whose members were associated with Yale University, included David Humphreys, John Trumbull, and Joel Barlow. Along with other writers they produced The Anarchiad (1786-1787), a mock epic poem warning against the chaos that would ensue if a strong central government, as advocated by the Federalists, was not implemented in the United States. American poets used the British literary model of the mock epic as a tool to satirize and criticize British culture. Trumbull’s mock epic M’Fingal (1775-1782) lampooned the British Loyalists during the Revolution.
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Brian Culhane received the Emily Dickinson First Book Award, recognizing an American poet over the age of 50 who has yet to publish a first book of poetry. In addition to publication of his winning manuscript, Culhane received a prize of $10,000. Culhane, 53, was born in 1954 in New York City and earned a BA from the City University of New York and an MFA from Columbia University. He received a PhD from the University of Washington, studying epic literature and the history of criticism. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife and children, and teaches film and English at the Lakeside School. Through the Washington Commission for the Humanities, he has lectured on Frost and Thoreau throughout Washington state.
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One of the primary themes in “American Poetry” is the relationship between the character of the United States and the state of poetry within the country’s artistic confines. The poem presents an image of an art that is virtually all-encompassing, because it is practiced in a country with supposedly limitless possibilities — including the mundane and the spectacular, the realistic and the romantic. The poem teases its readers, because it does not provide a pat answer to the complex question, “What is American poetry?”
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Like poetry by Chicano and Latino writers, Asian-American poetry is exceedingly varied. Americans of Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino descent may often have lived in the United States for eight generations, while Americans of Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese heritage are likely to be fairly recent immigrants. Each group has grown out of a distinctive linguistic, historical, and cultural tradition.
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The poetry of the United States naturally arose first during its beginnings as the Constitutionally-unified thirteen colonies (although prior to this, a strong oral tradition often likened to poetry existed among Native American societies[1]). Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists' work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century, when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad, poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefront of the English-language avant-garde.
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In the United States, the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress serves as the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans. During his or her term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry. The position has existed under two separate titles: from 1937 to 1986 as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" and from 1986 forward as "Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry." The poet laureate is appointed annually by the Librarian of Congress and serves from October to May.
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