The New Era in American Poetry Author:Louis Untermeyer General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1919 Original Publisher: H. Holt Subjects: American poetry Literary Criticism / Poetry Juvenile Nonfiction / Poetry / General Literary Criticism / American / General Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / General Poetry / American / General Notes: This is a black... more » and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: ROBERT FROST I Have already referred to Whitman as not only the great precipitant but as the liberator of emotions that had been too long stifled. This latter quality can scarcely be overestimated. So wide was his sweep, so grandiose his program, that he had neither the time nor the inclination to melt down and refine his amazing output. The result is that he is likely to be praised in the future as a spirit of revolt -- and praised more as a pioneer, less as a poet. Lacking the self-critical and selective quality, he was often an artist by accident rather than by intention. With Whitman, the literary pendulum swung to the other extreme. Where the New England poets were all intellect, Whitman was all emotion; where they spun their moral conceits for fireside circles, he shouted a fraternal paganism to all America. If his insurgency did nothing else, at least it carried his " barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." And it was the shout, with its release of vigorous and vulgar health, that concerned him most. What is exquisite in his poetry is less Whitman than he would have cared to admit. If one searches for " the perfect phrase," " the final word," one will have to carve one's way through huge collops of raw poetry to find it. The breadth, the prodigal energy, the immense and jubilant acceptance, a roughshod faith in life and death, -- these were what he left t...« less