Who was the first great English-speaking American poet?

JIM MORRISSON DUDE!

Ha!

All I can think about when I read this title is the poor old guy in Night of The Iguana who quick-sketch artist Deborah Kerr describes to Ava Gardner thusly: "Grandpapa is England's oldest living practising poet."

Hopefully Aimless and Chris and others will arrive with some serious answers.

longfellow? wait, who was the first great non-english-speaking american poet?

gertrude stein?

(kidding)

"English-speaking"?

Phyllis Wheatley wasn't born in America, of course, but I suppose that shouldn't disqualify her. Do you find her that great? As a poet, I mean?

Do you really enjoy poems written to commemorate dead people?

walt whitman was the first american poet i'd say was actually really great. or wait, did emily dickinson come first?

Actually Deborah Kerr calls her grandfather Nono, and I'm not sure if he is not just England's but in fact the world's oldest living practising poet.

J.D., you might disagree with my taste, but Poe was a great poet pre-dating Whitman and Dickinson.

Casuistry, she didn't write exclusively about dead people. And while I wouldn't rank her in the upper tier of literary greats or anything I'm impressed by her introduction of signification to American letters via her sly references to the injustices of slavery that even slipped a mind as supple as Thomas Jefferson's (who so didn't get it he referred to her poetry as "evidence" Africans lacked invention). Also her exhortations to her fellow African American artists to develop a courageous aesthetic (especially 1773's "To S.M., A Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works") are quite compelling.

I was expecting someone to mention Ann Bradstreet, given Ashberry's obsession with her.

maybe i should provide an example

"On Being Brought from Africa to America" (1773)

'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, and there's a savior too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their color is a diabolic dye."
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refined, and join the angelic train.

Her syntax in the last four lines is artfully ambiguous: no true Christian would view any stranger with "scornful eyes," and she could just as well be reminding her fellow Africans that "Christians, black as Cain, may be refined, and join the angelic train" as vice versa. She was so good she had to get affidavits signed about the authenticity of her authorship--bigots assumed white abolitionists ghost wrote her poetry. Not bad for a teenager with no formal schooling.

Yes but those are arguments why she's an interesting person, or an interesting historical figure. Why is she an interesting (or "great") poet?

xpost. OK, that ambiguity is pretty well done (reading "Negroes, black as Cain" as the audience she's addressing seems like a somewhat forced reading, but it's there, sure). Otherwise her work seems like a typical if assured example of the "$20 Adjective" school of poetry that was popular at the time, where most of the effects came out of using punchy adjectives such as "diabolic" or "sable".

She's certainly a good poet, but I don't know if I'd say "great."

All right--what's the consensus about Whitman, then? Is he the first great poet in the US? Dickinson is about a decade younger than him, and wasn't published until 1890. So what about Poe? Longfellow? Emerson? I expect most would find the latter two too didactic, and Poe, despite how much the Symbolists loved him, still consigned to poetaster status (relatively speaking), thanks to, among others, Eliot's, James's, and Wilbur's distaste for his "adolescent" aesthetic and the lingering bite of their judgments.

I'm all for talking about early American poetry, but doesn't this question seem kind of ridiculous to you?

"English-speaking"?
Presumably this is meant to exclude people like Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Casuistry: no. It might be slightly less exotic, say, than wondering who the first great Canadian poet might have been (I have no idea (and maybe it was a Frenchie in Quebec?)), but obviously it seems to me worth kicking around enough to have initiated discussion. On the other hand, you're right, it's a rather limited subject, so if you go ahead and steer away from this topic toward other aspects of early American poetry more interesting to you, wonderful.

k/l: yes. The vast heritages of the various Native language and Spanish poetry in the Americas is a whole other set of issues.

I was about to mention Anne Bradstreet, but--

some serious 19th century american sonnet action going on over here, party people:

http://www.sonnets.org/am19th.htm