SOURCE: "Rhetoric and Poetry in Bryant," in American Literature, Vol. 7, No. 2, May, 1935, pp. 188-94.

In the essay below, Herrick analyzes Bryant's attitude toward the relationship of poetry to rhetoric and vice versa, demonstrating its influence on the poet's theory and works.

Recent attempts to resurrect Bryant the editor have given students of American literature a better understanding of the man. Parrington and others have convinced us that Bryant, the liberal editor of the Evening Post, was quite as important a person as Bryant, the first American poet who won international fame. This new emphasis upon Bryant's journalistic achievements, while tending to push the poems into the background, has actually brought into sharper focus a fundamental problem in his poetry, a problem that the poet himself was aware of but never satisfactorily solved. I refer to the problem of the distinction between "pure" poetry and poetry that is rhetorical...