Oh! To be an American Romantic!

I wish that America was still a young nation. A very young nation that was still wrestling with more simple topics, like the American Romantics and their dilemma.

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his essay "The Poet" that "I look in vain for the poet that I describe". The problem is that America hasn't yet formed as an intellectual nation, and yields (till this point) a great American writer/poet. Emerson really wrestles with his problem, and from a 21st century perspective, it is quite ironic.

In my opinion, their fear that an American great would never form is preposterous because if they would only humble themselves and look in a mirror they would find the first true Great Writers of our nation.

Melville, Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whitman (to name a few) were all worried that America lacked a Writer. So what did they all do? They formulated on what it would take to be one: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Melville, Poe's "Prefaces", Hawthorne's "Prefaces", Whitman's "1855 prefaces to Leaves of Grass", and Emerson's "The Poet".

Whitman has answered the call in his preface though, and because of this labeled himself the "Good Gray Poet" and tried his earnestness to attract the attention of Emerson, to let him know that he was the answer to America's cry for a great poet.