American poetry from 1910 to 1935

It is a strange anomaly, and yet it is a fact of great importance, that at a time when poetry is being least read, (or if read, least understood and appreciated), America has come into its most poetic period. It seems to be adequate refutation of Whitman's dictum that "to have great poets, we must have great audiences." The fact that there has been a tremendous amount of poetry written in the past twenty-five years, and that poets ply their art in every state in the Union, does not of course prove that America has come into its most poetic era. One of the purposes of this thesis is to show to what extent that poetic output is of genuine worth