LOCAL-COLOR POETRY

Is there a local-color poetry, corresponding to the prose that emerged in the decades following the Civil War? The genre of poetry in itself moves representation away from the realism strongly associated with regionalism. What finds expression in prose as concrete, detailed description and psychologized portraiture, is pushed in poetry towards stylization of character and setting, and a balladic treatment of narrative – with or without dialogue, represented speech, and dialect. This generic difference allows impulses and issues to become visible, which are perhaps obscured in features specific to fiction and discussions of them. The very definition of the “local” and its meanings within post-bellum American culture takes on a distinctive color when approached through its poetic representations.

“Regionalism” seems increasingly partial as a term for the literature(s) of diversity which emerged towards the nineteenth century's end. Yet characterizing this literary diversity is in some sense as challenging as characterizing the diversity of America generally. The term “region” was itself undergoing dynamic change of meaning in the post-Civil War era, within a newly reconceived nationality. But geography stands as only one of a number of differentiations becoming newly evident, or evident in new ways, within American cultural development. These include not only emerging senses of diverse locations, but also of languages, especially dialects, of religious, racial, and ethnic affiliations – both in terms of new immigrations and the newly emerging status of the black freedmen – as well as a new self-consciousness regarding gender definitions.