SOURCE: “Correspondence in Thoreau's Nature Poetry,” in ESQ: Journal of the American Renaissance, No. 58, 1st Quarter 1970, pp. 101-09.

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.

Although Thoreau wrote perhaps only a handful of first-rate poems, he follows Emerson in regarding poetry as one of the noblest activities of man, and in his poetry he often tries to embody attitudes which his prose states only theoretically. This connection between theory and practice applies especially to his conception of nature. His poems are by and large nature poems because in them he tries to explore the theories about mind and nature which lie at the center of works like Walden and A Week. A study of his poetry, therefore, is a good way...