English Poetry Timeline

17th Century in British colonies
Primarily metaphysical and devotional
Imitative and derivative of British poetry
Famous poets:
Anne Bradstreet (1st book of American poetry, 1650)
Edward Taylor

Began at Yale in mid-18th century
Primarily satirical in nature
Patterned after famous British satirists such as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Gay
Famous poets:
Joel Barlow
John Trumbull
Timothy Dwight

18th Century
Still patterned after English modes and methods
Famous poets:
Phillis Wheatley (1st significant black American poet)
Philip Freneau

Early and mid-19th century
New, fresh direction deviating somewhat from British patterns; sentimental in nature, focusing on emotional impact, somewhat moralistic
Includes Gothic poetry (dark, focusing on the supernatural)
Famous poets:
Edgar Allan Poe (Gothic)
“Fireside Poets”—William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (John Greenleaf Whittier), Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., (James Russell Lowell)

Mid- to late 19th century (ended by the Civil War)
Characterized by a fascination with nature, the “Sublime,” and transcending the material world
First uniquely American form of literature (essays and poems)
Famous poets:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Margaret Fuller

Two greatest poets of the 19th century were influenced by Emerson, but unique in their own work: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson
Paul Laurence Dunbar revealed the condition of African Americans in the mid- to late-19th century era

Premodernist poetry (late 19th century) predates but leans toward the style of the Modernism period
Famous poets:
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Robert Frost
Imagist poetry (1909-1917) advocated free verse, concrete imagery, and mundane subject matters
Famous poets:
Ezra Pound
Amy Lowell

1920s
Started in Harlem, New York
Uniquely African American movement that stretched into literature, art, and music—contributed to the Jazz Age
Famous poets:
Countee Cullen
James Weldon Johnson
Claude McKay
Langston Hughes (most famous author of the Harlem Renaissance)

Early post-WWII
Often disparagingly called “academic poetry”
Cautious, conservative, intellectual, technically sophisticated, using closed or traditional forms
Famous poets:
Elizabeth Bishop
Robert Lowell
Theodore Roethke

Late 1950s
Highly emotional, personal, and “confessional” in nature
Famous poets:
Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton
John Berryman

Late 20th century
Artistic, surrealistic poetry related more to surrealist art than previous literature
Famous poets:
Frank O’Hara
John Ashbery

1980s and 1990s: Women’s Poetry, Language Poetry, Neoformalism
End of 20th century: Multicultural Poetry
Famous poets of note:
Mary Oliver
Robert Hayden
Audre Lord
Billy Collins
Sharon Olds