American poetry, the poetry of the
United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to
English poetry in the 17th century, well before the
constitutional unification of the
thirteen colonies (although before this unification, a strong
oral tradition often likened to poetry existed among
Native American societies). Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists' work relied on contemporary British models of
poetic form,
diction, and
theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American
idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century, when
Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad,
poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefront of the English-language
avant-garde.