American Poems (1625-1892)
Edited by W. C. Bronson
and American poetry edited by Percy H. Boynton[2]. Both of these books have good notes and I am recommending the Bronson because I happen to be better acquainted with it, and because I think its notes fit very well into this reading scheme. This collection does not include any of our recent poetry, which is really in a class by itself and can best be had in such anthologies as Untermeyer’s Modern American poetry[3]. I hate to leave this subject of poetry, for I have left unmentioned the three most original, most daring, most gifted of them all, Whitman, Emerson and Poe. I will take just space enough to mention two poems of each of these that everyone should know: “The problem” and “Days” by Emerson; “The haunted palace” and “The conqueror worm” by Poe; “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” and “Come up from the fields, Father” by Whitman.
But I must now suggest a volume of short stories. Which volume? The short story as a literary form, in theory and conscious art, anyway, was invented by Edgar Allen Poe. He set a model for all time, and few, if any, of those who have followed him have equaled him in his own peculiar field. For there are many varieties of short stories that have been developed since Poe staked out the short-story claim. And as for short-story writers, they are as thick as fleas.
As part of the object of this course is to scrape a small acquaintance with American literature, as well as to have a good time reading, I am going to suggest that you take your choice of Poe’s Tales, Hawthorne’s Twice told tales, a volume of Bret Harte’s short stories, Sarah Orne Jewett’s Deephaven, or Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s A humble romance. A still better scheme would be to read one or two of the best from each of these authors, as well as others among our story writers. Suppose we take “The fall of the house of Usher” by Poe; “The ambitious guest” by Hawthorne; “The outcasts of Poker Flat” by Harte; “A New England nun” by Mrs. Freeman; “A man without a country” by Edward Everett Hale, and “Posson Jone” by George W. Cable. They will be equal in bulk to a fair volume, and equal in thrill and fun to all winter at the movies.
No two of these are the least alike. If I had named one of O. Henry’s, like “The gift of the Magi,” that would still be different. O. Henry is the shortest of short-story writers. From the slow discursive sketch of Irving to the crisp brief incident, with the unexpected turn at the end, as invented by “O. Henry” (William Sydney Porter was his human name), runs the short story, and represents the most highly developed, most artistic of literary prose forms. These that I have named and many more can be had in the single volume