The Early Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wore a lot of hats during his long career. Physician, professor at Harvard Medical School, essayist, and one of the most popular American poets of the nineteenth century. He was part of the loose Boston circle that included Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, and Hawthorne, and his poems were widely memorized and recited in schools well into the early twentieth century.

The Early Poems collects work from the first part of his writing life, before his prose essays and the Breakfast Table series made him a household name. Old Ironsides is the standout, a short, urgent piece written when Holmes was only twenty one to protest the planned scrapping of the USS Constitution. The poem helped save the ship and is still recited at naval ceremonies today. Other early pieces show Holmes working out the conversational, witty voice that would become his signature, blending classical learning with a New England plainness.

Readers coming to Holmes for the first time may be surprised by how readable these poems are compared to some of his contemporaries. He had a real ear for meter and a sense of humor that kept his work from drifting into the heavy moralizing that weighs down a lot of nineteenth century verse. The downside is that the references can feel dated, and some of the satirical pieces about Boston society lose their bite without the context.

For students of American literature or anyone interested in the cultural moment that produced the Fireside Poets, this collection is a useful introduction. Holmes was not a Whitman or a Dickinson, but he was a craftsman who took his work seriously, and the early poems show a writer figuring out who he wanted to be.