Emerson Poems (Everyman's Library POCKET POETS) - Hardcover

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841597627 ISBN 13: 9781841597621

Publisher: Everyman, 2004

Synopsis

Known for challenging traditional thought and for his faith in the individual, Emerson was the chief spokesman for the Transcendentalist movement. His poems speak to his most passionately held belief: that external authority should be disregarded in favor of one's own experience. From the embattled farmers who "fired the shot heard round the world" in the stirring "Concord Hymn," to the flower in "The Rhodora," whose existence demonstrates "that if eyes were made for seeing, / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being," Emerson celebrates the existence of the sublime in the human and in nature. Combining intensity of feeling with his famous idealism, Emerson's poems reveal a moving, more intimate side of the man revered as the Sage of Concord.

About this title

Book Description:

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the best-loved figures in nineteenth-century American literature. Though he earned his central place in our culture as an essayist and philosopher, since his death his reputation as a poet has grown as well.

Synopsis:

Known in his time primarily as an essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) has since become more celebrated as a poet. One of the leading literary figures in nineteenth-century America, Emerson was for a while a pastor in the Unitarian Church before becoming a full-time writer and lecturer, settling in Concord where he was a friend of Thoreau, Hawthorne and Alcott (father of Louisa May). Together they were known as the Transcendentalists because of their high moral tone and philosophical preoccupations. Emerson himself has been described as the mystic of common sense. Emerson published his first volume of verse in 1846. With an intellectual breadth rare in any age, his poems combine intensity of spiritual feeling with close observation of the New England landscape. Among the most famous are 'The Problem', 'The Snowstorm', 'The Rhodora', the 'Concord Hymn', 'Brahma' and 'Days'. This volume includes work from the collections published in Emerson's lifetime and from the many unpublished poems and translations he left at his death.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1841597627
• ISBN 13: 9781841597621
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256