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Henry David Thoreau: Sometimes a Poetaster

© Linda Sue Grimes

The self-effacing remark that he was "sometimes a Poetaster" no doubt sheds some light on Thoreau's reputation as a poet-that attitude coupled with the fact that he did write fewer poems than essays. But on the other hand, Thoreau probably considered all of writing "poetry" in the larger sense of the word, that is, "maker." He described himself in a questionnaire from the secretary of his Harvard graduating class this way: "I am a Schoolmaster-a Private Tutor, a Surveyor-a Gardener, a Farmer-a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Glass-paper Maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster."

Born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts, as David Henry Thoreau, he learned to love nature at an early age. He later reversed the order of his first and middle names after the death of his uncle David after whom he had been named. Despite his family's poverty, Thoreau managed to acquire a Harvard education, graduating in 1837. After college, he worked in his family's pencil-making business, but maintained his reputation as a radical individualist.

In 1845 he built his famous cabin on a parcel of land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, at whose home he had been residing since 1841. While residing on the Emerson compound, he began writing essays and poems for the transcendentalist journal called The Dial. He also attended meetings with a small literary group composed of A. Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, and Emerson. That group later became known as the hub of the Transcendentalist movement in literature.

At Walden Pond, Thoreau wrote two of his critically acclaimed books for which he is best known today: of course, his major opus Walden, and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. While he spent only two years in his self-built cabin at Walden Pond, he felt that his "experiment" was successful, because he was able to "live deliberately" "sucking the marrow out of life." His experiment also taught him the virtues of self-sufficiency and simplicity.

In July of 1846 Thoreau was placed in jail for not paying his poll tax. He intentionally left the tax unpaid, complaining that the money was used to support war with Mexico and slavery, two issues against which Thoreau bitterly railed. He was outraged when he learned that someone (either Emerson or his aunt) had paid the tax, and he was released from jail. Out of this experience came his widely-noted political essay, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." This essay has influenced such luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.