The Canon Is an Argument (Ongoing)

Lest We Forget: The American Canon (Flashback!)

Desire did this to me.

Of course we know the canon is an argument that says as more about who we are now than who we were, but it’s nice to see examples now and then, just to be sure.

This is what Louis Untermeyer thought the American Canon was, as of 1948. Ahem.

1600s

Anne Bradstreet 1612(?) – 1672

John Saffin 1632 – 1710

Benjamin Thompson 1642 – 1714

Edward Taylor 1644(?) – 1729

1700s

Francis Hopkinson 1737 – 1791

Philip Freneau 1752 – 1832

John Quincy Adams 1767 – 1848

Joseph Hopkinson 1770 – 1842

Francis Scott Key 1779 – 1843

John Pierpont 1785 – 1866

Samuel Woodworth 1785 – 1842

Emma Hart Willard 1787 – 1870

Richard Henry Wilde 1789 – 1847

Fitz-Greene Halleck 1790 – 1867

Lydia Sigourney 1791 – 1865

Charles Sprague 1791 – 1875

William Cullen Bryant 1794 - 1878

Joseph Rodman Drake 1795 – 1820

James Gates Percival 1795 – 1856

1800s

Edward Coote Pinkney 1802 – 1828

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882

Charles Fenno Hoffman 1806 – 1884

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 – 1882

John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 – 1892

Edgar Allen Poe 1809 – 1849

Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809 – 1894

Jones Very 1813 – 1880

John Godfrey Saxe 1816 – 1887

Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862

James Russell Lowell 1819 – 1891

Julia Ward Howe 1819 – 1910

Herman Melville 1819 – 1891

Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman 1821 – 1873

Thomas Buchanan Read 1822 – 1873

George Henry Boker 1823 – 1890

Henry Timrod 1829 – 1867

Paul Hamilton Hayne 1830 – 1886

Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886

Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1836 – 1907

Bret Harte 1839 – 1902

Edward Rowland Sill 1841 – 1887

Sidney Lanier 1842 – 1881

Emma Lazarus 1849 – 1887

Edwin Markham 1852 – 1940

Lizette Woodworth Reese 1856 – 1935

Edwin Arlington Robinson 1869 – 1935

Amy Lowell 1874 – 1925

Robert Frost 1875 –

Carl Sandburg 1878 –

Vachel Lindsay 1879 – 1931

Wallace Stevens 1879 –

*T.S. Eliot –

Sara Teasdale 1884 – 1933

Elinor Wylie 1885 – 1928

Jean Starr Untermeyer 1886 –

H.D. 1886 –

William Rose Benét 1886 –

John Hall Wheelock 1886 –

Marianne Moore 1887 –

Robinson Jeffers 1887 –

John Crowe Ransom 1888 –

Conrad Aiken 1889 –

Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 –

Archibald MacLeish 1892 –

E.E. Cummings 1894 –

Horace Gregory 1898 –

Stephen Vincent Benét 1898 – 1943

Hart Crane 1899 – 1832

Léonie Adams 1899 –

1900s

Merril Moore 1903 –

Karl Shapiro 1913 –

Muriel Rukeyser 1913 –

Robert Lowell 1917 –


*T.S. Eliot is not included in the anthology because Pocket Books could not come to an agreement with his publisher.

The canon made a boom-boom.

Note One: As we all know, the canon was a very white male heavy thing back then, but it’s interesting to see that this version of the canon is not as lopsided as the first Donald Hall anthology that came out ten years later.

Note Two: Here’s Untermeyer’s note on his selections:

“No collection of poetry, no matter how large or how inclusive, can call itself complete. There will never be space enough for all the poets of any period; there will always be readers ready to detect and quick to resent the omission of their favorite, no matter how obscure or unimportant he may be.”

On the other hand, Untermeyer, as was his usual, published his wife in the anthology. Which is another important factor in canon formation (attempted).