Shirley Satterfield

Ralph Waldo Emerson: America’s Most Influential Essayist

Emerson may have been an ordained minister and the son of an ordained minister, but he was anything but a Christian. He was the, in fact, the man credited with being the primary leader of the American transcendentalist movement and the father of it.

Actually though, transcendentalism was really nothing new in the world but hearkened back to the more ancient nature religions of the past pre-Christian eras of history. The core value of this “new” post Christian American philosophy is that both man and nature are good and that everything in nature is God and that God is diffused throughout nature. This is called pantheism. In other words, everything that exists is God and contains God and thus reality cannot be understood outside the realm of nature.

The values of individualism and self reliance were also paramount in Emerson’s transcendentalist philosophy, in which the highest state of man is to be an independent free thinker whose thought transcends the traditional norms of society. Thus the values of individualism and self reliance were important to both Emerson and his protege David Henry Thoreau and still hold sway over American people today as being perceived to be the ultimate freedom for the freedom loving American people.

Born on May 25, 1803 in aristocratic Boston, Massachusetts to a Unitarian minister father and a staunch Anglican mother, Emerson indeed became a Unitarian minister after graduating from Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School, which was in the keeping with the family tradition of his forefathers being in the ministry. But not believing in the miracles of the Bible, he got disillusioned with Christianity and left the ministry. He then began to write his very influential essays and poems and to give speeches at various colleges and universities. His first published transcendentalist essay was entitled “Nature” and he went onto deliver a highly influential speech at Harvard University entitled “The American Scholar” which the then prominent poet Oliver Wendell Holmes went on to call “America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence” . And Emerson’s influence is still felt in the halls of higher learning today since the objective of most schools today is to teach the students the principles of independent critical thinking. In this way Emerson is still an important influence on American education, touching nearly all of us.

Emerson went on to give many important speeches which he edited into a final essay format which he divided into two groups; Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series and some of the things that he said are as follows:

1, Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven.

2, But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

3. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

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Emerson was considered to be an American mystic because of his focus on the intuition and spirit, however he was not a Christian mystic because he did not belive in a personal God.

He died on April 27, 1882 in the city of Concord, Massachusetts.

Francis Scott Key: On The Fence in Freedom’s Defense

Some poets are famous for only one poem, and Francis Scott Key, a Fredrick, Maryland lawyer is the amateur poet who was famous for writing the immortal words of America’s national anthem; The Star Spangled Banner.

He had boarded an English warship during the War of 1812 to secure the release of one prisoner of war by the name of Dr. William Beans. The War of 1812 was a naval war over maritime rights between the two nations on the high seas and the British bad habit of impressing American merchant seamen into into service in the British Navy. And it was in the morning after one especially fierce battle on September 14, 1814 that Key felt inspired to write the words of the poem originally entitled the “Defense of Fort M’ Henry”as he beheld the sight of a tattered American flag still flying high over Baltimore’s own fort, Fort M’ Henry. And the words are truly stirring.

The Star-Spangled Banner
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
But unfortunately this ‘ home of the free and land of the brave’ as expressed in the first stanza of this four stanza poem was not a totally free country; America in 1814 was still half slave and half free, and the poet himself was on the fence between the two opinions on the issue.

Key himself was a slave owner by the year of 1800, and for this, both he and his poem received bad reviews in abolitionist circles, but in Key’s defense, he was also a man who was experiencing a measure of personal growth in his morals and values, so he freed most of his slaves in the 1830’s and hired one man back and paid him wages to manage his farm. However Key was also a lawyer who played both sides by representing slaves who were trying to gain their freedom at no charge to them, but also he represented slave owners who were trying to recover their runaway slaves. So this man was definitely on the fence regarding freedom and liberty for all and still had a lot of growing to do in his views by his death in the year of 1843 (as did the rest of the nation).

And grow the nation did, but slowly, and it took the growing pains involved in fighting a bloody Civil War to bring civil liberty to everyone which was beautifully expressed in a fifth stanza added to the “Star Spangled Banner’” by poet Oliver Wendell Holmes eighteen years after Key’s death during the Civil War.

When our land is illum’d with Liberty’s smile,
If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,
Down, down, with the traitor that dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By the millions unchain’d who our birthright have gained
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.

There were many patriotic songs like “America the Beautiful” and “My Country Tis of Thee” being considered for the honor of being named America’s National Anthem, but on March 3, 1931 ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, now the anthem of the US Navy, was declared to be the National Anthem by the Congress of the United States and was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.

And America has been experiencing intense social justice growing pains ever since the Civil War and the penning of those poignant words and continues to struggle in the American quest for equality and freedom to this very day.

Mary Oliver and Her Wise Connection to the Natural World

Mary Oliver was such a natural born poet that she started writing by the young age of 14, eventually winning the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. And the New York Times said of her “that she was by far this country’s best selling poet. But Oliver was first and foremost nature’s most prominent post modern poet.

She grew up in the semi rural Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights, Ohio and was by and large a lover of the great outdoors. Born to Edward William and Helen Oliver on September 10, 1935, and she described her childhood as being lonely and difficult and her family as dysfunctional, so she felt strongly drawn to the woods outside and escaped into a world of poetry. Nature was her comfort and poetry her retreat Oliver said of her hometown,

It was pastoral, it was nice, it was an extended family.
I don’t know why I feel such an affinity with the
natural world except it was available to me.

Perhaps the sky, the birds and the trees became her “extended family because her own family had emotionally abandoned her. And it’s poems such as The Kitten that shows the poets unique perspective on nature and how she was one woman, as one critic put it, “thar stood on the line between earth and sky…human and animal.”

The Kitten

More amazed than anything
I took the perfectly black
stillborn kitten
with one large eye
in the center of its small forehead
from the house cat’s bed
and buried it in a field
behind the house.

I suppose I could have given it
to a museum,
I could have called the local
newspaper.

But instead I took it out into the field
and opened the earth
and put it back
saying it was real,
saying, life is infinitely inventive,
saying what other amazements
lie in the dark seed of the earth
lie in the dark seed of the earth, yes,

I think I did right to go out alone
and give it back peacefully, and cover the place
with the reckless blossoms of weeds.

Here, in just plain, ordinary everyday English, Oliver mesmerizes the reader with the wonder of this anomaly of nature while holding the hapless dead creature to the highest standard of dignity, as if it was a human being.

Oliver never finished earning her college degrees at Ohio State University and Vassar University, but at age 17 she paired with Norma Millay to organize the papers of the late Pulitzer Prize winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, no doubt getting a real education on how to write fine poetry. Oliver’s own prize winning book was entitled American Primitive.

Oliver died shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer on January 17, 2019 at age 83.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sweet Lady Poet of the Love Sonnet

Elizabeth Browning was the proverbial child prodigy who began writing at the early age of 11, and her lifetime body of work boasted of the largest collections of childhood poetry in existence. Then after being accepted as an adult into some of Britain’s most prestigious literary circles during the Victorian era, she bedazzled both readers and other poets alike with her love sonnets, becoming an influence on such great American poets as Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson. In fact, she was so renown in Great Britain that she was being considered for the office of Poet Laureate by the Royal Family.

Born on March 6, 1806 to a well off Englishman named Edward Moulton Barrett, she was the eldest child of 12 children and spent a happy childhood in a large country home in Durham, England. However, she fell ill at age 15 succumbing to headaches, and after the death of a brother, she became a bit reclusive and shy. But, she was not too shy to be swept off her feet by another poet, Robert Browning, who fell deeply in love with her after reading her beautiful verses about love, but fearing the disapproval of her father, she kept her marriage a secret for a week while still living under his roof as if she were still single. And he did indeed disown her, and her most famous Sonnet “How Do I Love Thee” tells of her legendary love for the man, a poem that is a pure joy to read.

How Do I Love Thee

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling is out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with passion put to use
In my old griefs, and my childhood’s faith.
I loved thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall love thee better after death.

Now this kind of love smacks of intense unconditional, almost everlasting commited love “beyond death,” if possible, howbeit she had to keep it discreet by calling it her “most quiet need,” she had a controlling father after all, and she did live in Victorian times when Christianity ruled and propriety was the order of the day, and girls were mostly educated at home, and when all outward manifestations of outward passion had to be kept under one’s strict control at all times.

Her most famous book was entitled Sonnets from the Portuguese, all love poems and she died on June 29, 1861 in Florence, Italy, but not before this poetess made giant inroads for many English speakin female poets that came after her.