In the following excerpt, Johnson relates the troubled ten‐year history of A Week, from the river trip to initial publication.

In the following excerpt, Garber argues that Thoreau inserted the Saddleback Mountain climbing episode in order to show the insufficiency of textual and temporal closures.

In the following essay, Ford offers an analysis of the themes, imagery, and structure of the poems.

In the following excerpt, Buell traces the course of A Week and explains how it displays, through “endless suggestiveness,” the Transcendentalist sensibility.

In the following essay, Rossi demonstrates that much of Thoreau's view of science can be traced to Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology.

In the following essay, Witherell maintains that the group of interrelated poems Thoreau composed in the summer and fall of 1841 provide an important example of the role of poetry in his development as a writer.

In the following essay, Evans maintains that Thoreau's poetry and prose are linked, and so to consider the poems as individual entities diminishes Thoreau's stature as an artist.

In the following essay, Burbick analyzes Thoreau's views concerning the treatment of history, including his disdain for historical approaches that rely on romantic and novelistic techniques.

In the following essay, Wilson explores Thoreau's concept—borrowed from the philosopher Thales—of water as the fundamental principle of the cosmos.

In the following excerpt from his study of Thoreau's works, Bridgman claims Thoreau's early essays, translations, and poems are highly personal.

In the following excerpt, Peck analyzes Thoreau's concern with the nature of time, showing how he responded with literary techniques of temporal disorder and creative remembering.

In the following essay, Lorch examines Thoreau's organic theory of poetry, noting its importance in his poetic credo.

In the following essay, Hutchinson contends that A Week documents Thoreau's belief in historical progress and that he sought inspiration, not eternity, in his river voyage.

In the following essay, Suchoff contends that Thoreau sought to understand the mystery of nature through friendship rather than language.

In the following essay, Dennis contends that Thoreau views nature not as a benevolent force to be succumbed to, but an emblem or type of language that is to be actively scrutinized and interpreted.

In the following essay, Witherell finds that Thoreau's poems are mainly of interest for what they tell us about Thoreau's life and his development as an artist.

In the following essay, Sampson argues that much of Thoreau's poetry has the structure reminiscent of the meditative tradition of seventeenth-century poetry.

In the following essay, Fisher considers Edward Johnson's apocalyptic‐imbued history of the settlement of New England and its influence on Thoreau.

In the following essay, Williams explores the importance in Thoreau's poetry of the idea of inspiration, and argues that he did not find poetry a substantial enough medium to give voice to his idea of spiritual beauty.

In the following essay, Murray offers a Freudian reading of the ascent of Mt. Greylock, claiming that Thoreau was motivated by Oedipal conflicts.

In the following essay, Hansen claims Thoreau's poetic philosophy reveals an artist engaged in the task of writing poetry and metapoetry simultaneously.

In the following essay, Hesford interprets A Week as a call for faith in response to the incessant tragedies of nature and life.

In the following essay, Johnson contends that the quest for self‐liberation is central to A Week, a quest advanced through the cyclical representation of time.

In the following essay, Colquitt suggests that Thoreau's judgments about the poet's experience hampered his success as a writer of verses.

In the following essay, Lane offers a close reading of two 1850 poems, “Tall Ambrosia” and “Among the Worst of Men.”

In the following essay, which was originally delivered as a lecture at a festival honoring Thoreau, the poet Rukeyser asserts that Thoreau's poems are “suburban in relation to the forest of the prose” and compares Thoreau to Sir Walter Raleigh.

In the following essay, Kaiser surveys the celestial imagery of Thoreau's poetry and concludes the inconsistencies in his view stems from “unavoidable conflicts” in Thoreau's world.

In the following essay, Wells contends that Thoreau's verse is that of an independent young man, but also notes his myriad influences and asserts that Thoreau's greatest poetic strength was his breadth of vision.

In the following essay, Srinath claims Thoreau's poetry reveals a “vehement originality” that ignores the existence of his predecessors and contemporaries and comes closer to the English Metaphysicals for its terse quality.

In the following essay, Pitts argues that the “gentle boy” of the poem “Sympathy” is Thoreau himself.

In the following essay, Adams explains the teaching opportunities that arise from exploring the question of A Week's genre.

In the following review of Carl Bode's 1943 edition of Thoreau's Collected Poems, Allen points out minor textual inaccuracies in the volume but in general finds Bode's edition otherwise to be a fine scholarly effort.

In the following essay, Glazier offers a close reading of the poem “Light-winged Smoke,” discussing elements of rebellion evident in its free form, imagery, and central figure of the defiant lcarus of classical mythology.

In the following essay, Silverman maintains that Thoreau's “sluggard knights” in his poems suffer conflicts between their desire for heroic self-assertion and their lazy natures.

In the following essay, Fleck analyzes Thoreau's use of misty, foggy landscapes in his verse.

In the following review of Carl Bode's enlarged 1964 edition of Thoreau's Collected Poems, Gozzi contends that Bode's first volume has done much to elevate the perception of Thoreau as a poet.

In the following essay, Mattfield maintains Thoreau could not have intended many of the spellings that appear in his original “Poem #189,” and suggests a revised version of the poem.

In the following review of Carl Bode's 1943 edition of Thoreau's Collected Poems, Hellman says the volume does not establish Thoreau as a very important poet—despite the poems' “occasional sparks of divine fire.”

In the following response to Francis Allen's review of his 1943 edition of Thoreau's Collected Poems, Bode agrees that the poem “Carpe Diem” is not from Thoreau's hand, but says that many of the textual inaccuracies that Allen suggested be fixed reflect Thoreau's own errors, which Bode sought to preserve as a matter of literary and historical record.

In the following essay, Cameron maintains that the verses written to Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter, Edith, were actually written by Thoreau.

In the following excerpt from his essay on the life of Thoreau, originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862, Emerson says his friend's verses were “often rude and defective.”

In the following essay, White offers a previously unpublished text of an early Thoreau poem and discusses its similarities to works by Thomas Gray and John Milton.

In the following note, Rodabaugh contends the “flame” in the last line of the poem “Smoke” is another indication of Thoreau's paganism.

In the following review of Carl Bode's 1964 edition of Thoreau's Collected Poems, the reviewer notes the poems' literary indebtedness to the seventeenth-century English poets, particularly George Herbert.