Emerson

August 1, 1994
Even those not well acquainted with the work of Emerson, New England essayist and procreative spark of the Transcendentalist movement, will find much to savor in this exhaustive, sensitive compilation. The poems chart the growth of a uniquely American sensibility, from the impressionable boy who toyed romantically with verse to the eloquent man who witnessed with ``joyful eye'' the ``genius of the whole.'' In his autobiographical laments, particularly ``Threnody,'' one sees how painfully the deaths of Emerson's first wife and first-born son affected him. Of great interest also are his gentlemanly versions of Dante. But the crowning moment of the collection comes when Emerson steeps himself in the poetry of Persian mystics. (His translations illustrate more the intense resonance he felt with the rapturous manner of the poet Hafiz, and less his mastery of poetic form.) While the voices of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tennyson and others are periodically visible, the profound influence of the exotic saturates his every word. This welcome collection offers up poetic reiterations of Emerson's more popular essays, lyricizes Transcendentalism's celebration of the sublime in the human, and serves to re-open the case for Emerson as a poet. An introduction would have served readers well.