Roy Harvey Pearce's The Continuity of American Poetry, a narrative of American verse from the seventeenth century through T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, is a valuable book for the scholar of American literature. Pearce frames thoughtful literary criticism in an inviting story which the reader can enjoy. As an account of major canonical poets, and, en route, the culture out of which they have written, Pearce's work provides an solid foundation on which to build an understanding of American poetry. Locally, he offers some thorough, stimulating discussions of individual poets. For the most part, he effectively situates these poets in his narrative through comparing them often, and periodically putting them in larger contexts; only a few sections of the narrative temporarily disorient the reader. Further, Pearce creatively incorporates external writings such as sermons, speeches, letters, and contemporary commentaries which establish dialogue with his voice and the literature, and support his cultural story. Despite such successes, however, Pearce's comprehensive story is reductive in some ways: he chooses only a few general labels by which to define a vast poetry; also, that poetry would perhaps be more complete with representative poets after Stevens and Eliot, or a few more female poets or poets of different racial and ethnic groups. Additionally, at times he seems to analyze his subjects too aggressively or harshly, or with a somewhat harsh tone.

Pearce sustains this argument: that American poets, especially forward from Whitman, have continuously written poems with a basic egocentric "Adamic" style. These poems seek to define the self, argue for its necessity, and see, name, and transform the world through the individual poet's eye. Around the turn of the century, Pearce argues, a "counter-current" of poetry develops with another basic style: the anti-Adamic "mythic" style. Poets of this strain, such as Eliot, see themselves as made by the world, no longer believing that it suffices simply to put the self and his view of the world into verse; in such a disillusionment, these figures seek large structures of belief. Yet this mythic current, Pearce writes, only spurs another wave of Adamic poems against it, such as those by Wallace Stevens. Thus the continuity of the egocentric poem. Within these major narrative outlines, Pearce also discusses groups like the Fireside Poets, and poets like Robinson and Frost, whom he sees as falling somewhere between the two basic styles he defines.

Pearce sets up this narrative with a chapter on Puritan poetry, which he argues evolves away from expressing "God's way with man;" this dissolution of one kind of poetry, Pearce argues, provides the origin for the Adamic poetry of the "American Renaissance," which would express "man's way with himself and with the God which his sense of himself reveals" (19). The sections on major poets of this period are among Pearce's best; the section introducing them particularly exemplifies some of his strengths in the book. For instance, he incorporates the external source of De Toqueville's writings to bolster his cultural narrative. Through famous quotations about the "anti-poetic" culture preceding the Renaissance poets, Pearce suggests that this environment was a stimulus for them to construct their new views of man and his world. Also, Pearce's procedure of setting the cultural stage, then analyzing its poetry, is a clear and effective formula which he later repeats. Within the Renaissance section, Pearce concisely argues for the important aspects of Emerson's, Whitman's, Poe's, and Dickinson's work, and how these poets are individualists. His section on Dickinson is notably strong. With well-selected illustrative quotes, he supports his argument that she is "the most direct expression" of the nineteenth-century egocentric style because she is "simply and starkly concerned with being herself and accommodating her view of the world to that concern" (174).

In his chapters on the modern age, also Pearce writes useful general introductions about mythic and later Adamic poetries that ground them culturally, and situate them by comparisons to other verse. For instance, his section on the new mythic verse includes a great introduction about Pound, including elements of his literary history and his poetic passages about the role of the "new poet." Specifically, the sections on Eliot and Stevens are well-crafted and convincing, using a sparingly selected body of quotations which support points in the prose well. Pearce persuasively and creatively juxtaposes some of Whitman's and Eliot's verse to argue for their differences. Within the mythic section, Pearce also incorporates Ransom and Tate, and within the modern individualist section, Aiken, Cummings, and Marianne Moore.

In the spaces among these well-done sections about nineteenth-century and modern poets, however, Pearce's narrative occasionally leaves the reader confused. Before even the first chapter about the Adamic poets, Pearce inserts a chapter about poets attempting the American epic: Barlow, Whitman, Pound, Crane, and Williams. This is disorienting because it occurs before Pearce has developed a major section of his overall argument. Upon reading general introductions to Whitman, Pound, or Williams later in the book, the reader can absorb the epic chapter more easily, and understand these poets in Pearce's larger narrative. A discussion of each author's epic attempt might be better relegated to any section that treats him individually; or, an entire chapter on epic would be better placed toward the end of the book. Additionally, the Fireside Poets chapter feels less integrated into Pearce's larger argument than other sections. In general, he strikes a valuable contrast between poetic voices like Longfellow's and Lowell's with those of Whitman and other nineteenth-century individualists. However, he only does this well at local moments, not consistently; the very last section of the chapter most clearly contrasts the radical, separate work of Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, and Poe, and the milder, more popularly aimed work of the Fireside Poets.

Aside from these occasional incoherencies, the reader tends to ask whether Pearce's narrative reduces American poetry into overly simple and tidy categories. Someone who is wary of labels and prefers a blurrier, more complicated narrative of American literature would validly answer "yes." For instance, Pearce's section on modern individualist poets leaves the reader questioning the effectiveness of that label. The term "individualist" seems too general for, say, Cummings, as if Pearce is straining to incorporate him into the book's terms. His discussion of Cummings is less grounded in his overall argument, tending toward an isolated essay of its own. We, critically, should consider the possibility that there is a more specific way of characterizing Cummings' work which builds on or revises what Pearce says. Another instance of tidy generalizing is Pearce's regular use of the collective, "and his kind" (e.g., "Emerson and his kind"). Although Pearce argues for his "kinds" of poet generally well, this statement is too convenient, and oversimplifies what Pearce himself has said about the poets.

A related concern is whether Pearce limits his choice of poets too much, perhaps to those whose work he can easily fit into "Adamic" or "mythic " rubrics. Pearce acknowledges his omissions, only treating those "whose work (most often through intrinsic merit) . . . illustrates [and] constitutes [the major phases and achievements of American poetry" (15). He also notes that he has chosen to consider in detail the work of fewer poets as opposed to "outlining" many. Some of us question the authors we should study or anthologize more openly than scholars in 1954-61, when Pearce wrote this book. Nevertheless, Dickinson and Marianne Moore are the only female poets he treats, and he omits an important African-American poet like Langston Hughes. Pearce could not have included many more poets without significantly lengthening his book. Yet questions about how other poets interact with Pearce's narrative allow us to build on it and define "intrinsic merit" for ourselves.

A final criticism is that Pearce sometimes too aggressively or harshly evaluates "intrinsic merit," making some statements that do not seem supportable. For instance, he writes that Lanier was "insufficiently sure of himself as a person to move as far as Emerson, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson" (244), or that Crane and Santayana should not "count for much" as poets (255). This tendency to judge poets into stark hierarchies could perhaps stand a dash of humility.

Given these weaknesses, however, Pearce's book is worth reading because it gives the reader the satisfaction of having a toehold in a wealth of American poetry, and invites him to build on, revise, or incorporate further authors into the narrative. In other words, this book does what I think all valuable critical works should do: establish important ideas, yet leave room for later scholars to rethink and improve them.