SOURCE: "Poetry, England, and the War," in Emerson: A Study of the Poet as Seer, Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1928, pp. 192-228.
Gay edited a collection of verse for college students. In the following excerpt, he criticizes Emerson's poetry for its lack of "smoothness" and links this poetic flaw to what he perceives as Emerson's theory of poetry with its emphasis on the poem as a philosophical statement rather than an aesthetically stylized work of art.
This is a free excerpt of 75 words. There are 1,532 words (approx.
5 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
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