Reflection: Fireside Poets

Fireside Poets use a very different writing style than any of the other styles we have encountered so far. We call these poets fireside poets because it is said that many families would sit by the fire and read these poems. I have decided that I already like fireside poets because I like the fact that families could sit all together in one room and just sit and listen to these descriptive poems. In fact, I think that story telling is a lost art. Don't get me wrong, I love movies and seeing really whats happening, but nobody ever tells good stories anymore. I also like these fireside poems because people can imagine things that they hear differently. It is fun hearing the story or poem and picturing it in your head and knowing that people may not be thinking the same as you. Anyway, some of these Fireside Poets include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russel Howell, and of course the oldest writer, William Current Bryant. These poems were mostly narrative poems and were often very descriptive (Wilhelm 210).

I really like this style of writing because it is so much more descriptive than some of the other styles we have looked at. For example, William Cullen Bryant is very descriptive when he says "Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, and colored with the heaven's own blue, that openest with the quiet light, succeeds the keen and frosty night" (Wilhelm 211). I think the way this is written is really pretty and like I said earlier, I love when you can read something and imagine what it actually looks like in your head. When he talks about the bright blossoms covered in dew, I feel like I can actually picture in my head what he was trying to say. I just love it. We know that people must have really liked reading these poems otherwise, these poems or poets would not have been called Fireside Poets. There must have been a reason that people liked these poems maybe more than other things they could have been reading. If I had to guess, I would say that people often liked these poems because they really did not incorporate anything about religion. Unlike Puritan writing styles and such, these poems were just nicer to listen to. I also do not think that there was much logic in them either. People probably liked them pretty much for the same reason I like them. There is no thinking required, you just listen and use your imagination. I think that the people that listened to these poems could relate much better compared to other styles we have seen like Puritan writing or Rationalism. I think that it probably meant more to them because they include values like respect and courage. Many of these poets included nature that they have encountered in there poems and that is where a lot of descriptive writing comes in. I guess that is why we had to write about bonding with nature in our journal and trying to be more descriptive. That is what these Fireside Poets did.

Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., and Douglas Fisher. Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2009. 210-111. Web. 21 Nov. 2011