SOURCE: "Nine New Poets," in The North American Review, Vol. LXIV, No. 135, April, 1847, pp. 402-34.

In this excerpt, Bowen finds fault with Emerson's meter, rhyme and "obscure" allusions. Bowen's negative response to the poems represents the general reaction of early reviewers to Emerson's first book of poetry.

… [Mr. Emerson's] mystical effusions have been for some years the delight of a large and increasing circle of young people, and the despair of the critics. He is a chartered libertine, who has long exercised his prerogative of writing enigmas both in prose and verse, sometimes with meaning in them, and sometimes without,—more frequently without. Many of his fragments in verse—if verse it can be called, which puts at defiance all the laws of rhythm, metre, grammar, and common sense—were originally published in The Dial, lucus a non lucendo, a strange periodical work, which is now withdrawn from...