The Poet's Holy Craft: William Gilmore Simms and Romantic Verse Tradition

A thorough reexamination of Simms as a pioneering voice in American poetry

The Poet's Holy Craft represents the first full-length analysis and interpretation of William Gilmore Simms's poetry. Matthew C. Brennan demonstrates the comprehensiveness of Simms's romanticism by examining Simms's poetics, his experimental sonnets, and his deep affinity to William Wordsworth, which especially shows in Simms's pioneering attitudes toward nature and ecology.

The poetic career of antebellum Charleston w...