Poetry Wars

Colin Wells's book stands in a long historiographical tradition on the early American Republic that argues that waging war using pens and printing presses was no less important to the founding of a new American nation than warfare fought with bullets, bayonets, and cannonballs. Wells's great—and much-needed—contribution to this literature is his focus on the role of poetry in forming, framing, and fracturing the politics and identity of a young United States. His is a treatment of how the poetic literary form stood in vibrant dialogue with the rich political print culture of the era, forging political poetry (something known at the time as “versification”) into a major, yet hitherto largely ignored, “cultural form within the broader formation of American national identity” (p. 3). Wells divides his book into seven chapters and an epilogue in which he traces the emergence and critical influence of political poetry from the time of the Stamp Act of 1765 until just after the War of 1812. Wells begins his study by examining how different forms of versification constituted a war of words that helped build various audiences that, in turn, fostered attitudes that led to a more literal war. He then moves to in-depth poetic studies surrounding debates of the nature and identity of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention and their creation of such key documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. His study includes close, historically contextualized readings of a wide range of poets ranging from the anonymous newsboy versifiers of the eighteenth century to such well-known names as Philip Freneau, Timothy Dwight, Joel Barlow, and Phillis Wheatley

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Constitution · Framing (construction · Historiography · Identity (music · Literature · Media studies · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law