Identity Politics Is the Enemy of Poetry

The sovereignty of the individual and his own thoughts is what made American poetry in the 19th century distinctly American. Walt Whitman’s “barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world” marked a break from the constrictive influence of England’s long literary history. The same can be said of Emily Dickinson. She was a contemporary of Whitman’s, although they never met. Her singular, eccentric poems established the other half of the framework for American poetry.