On Reading Emerson
My thoughts on reading Emerson: his lectures and essays are more poetic than his poems. In prose he flows, but in his poems, he hews to a formal standard that makes his writing stiff, even self-conscious, while he’s relaxed and exuberantly expressive in the essays. Too bad free verse didn’t come along earlier so Emerson could use that expressive vehicle. And no wonder he admired the daring breakout of Whitman’s poetry! “Commodity” is the essay…