American poetry and poetics

A traditional research area for literary studies, American poetry embraces work from Anne Bradstreet to Billy Collins. Although modernist poetry has frequently enjoyed the greatest attention, recent scholarship has returned to the nineteenth century’s immensely popular poetry, asking such questions as: What aesthetic elements moved earlier readers? What political and cultural developments contributed to nineteenth-century poetry’s diminished visibility? What import does this work have for us today?

A leader in recovering the work of nineteenth-century poets and poetics, Professor Kilcup has established connections between earlier writers and their modernist successors. Apprehending nineteenth-century poetry as deeply democratic and socially engaged, she has promoted an appreciation of the important cultural work that poetry has performed and continues to accomplish among “ordinary” as well as academic readers.

Please click on the Dickinson image for examples of Professor Kilcup’s work in American poetry and poetics.