The United States of America was a very young country during the 19th Century. Many American poets emerged as internationally renowned figures during this time, sculpting America's image and identity for both Americans and the rest of the world. This website is a place for learners to understand the context of and to gain the tools to explicate the poetry of this time.
In order for one to understand much of the 19th Century American poetry, one needs to understand the history and context for these works. To review the history, please go to the "19th Century America" tab at the top of the screen, and go to the "Timeline" tab.
After reviewing the history and before reading the poetry, one needs to know how to understand the meaning of a poem. Go to the "Poetry Explication" tab at the top of the screen, and go to the "Explication Worksheet" to learn about how to explicate poetry.
Once you have learned about how to explicate poetry, go to the "19th Century American Poets" tab. Five poets should appear from the drop down menu. Click on each one. A short biography of the poet is shown on the page, as well as two poems. There is an audio recording for each poem. Please listen to the recording to hear how the poem should be read. Begin explicating using the explication worksheet as a guide. Submit a copy of your explication to your teacher for feedback. Once you have practiced explicating the poetry on this site, move onto to new poems. You should be able to find many more poems at your library or at http://www.poets.org/.
The poem audio recordings were read by Jaime Moore, Joshua Smith, and Russell Heimlich.