The Airs of Palestine is a poem by John Pierpont (1785–1866), first published in 1816 (Baltimore: B. Edes; various reprints). It is probably the most famous of his poems, and provided the title for his book Airs of Palestine and Other Poems (Boston: Munroe, 1840).
The poem was a huge success; sale of its copyright funded Pierpont's Harvard Divinity School education and inspired his closest friend and former business partner John Neal to experiment with writing as a means of funding his law education in Baltimore.[1] He nevertheless gave it a bad review in his 1824–25 critical work, American Writers, saying: "It is tame, badly arranged, incomplete, and worse than all, afflicted with plagiarism, imitation, and alliteration." Neal and Pierpont ceased corresponding for a year afterward.[2]
Notes
edit- ^ Lease 1972, p. 15.
- ^ Daggett 1920, pp. 12–13, quoting John Neal.
References
edit- Daggett, Windsor (1920). A Down-East Yankee From the District of Maine. Portland, Maine: A.J. Huston. OCLC 1048477735.
- Lease, Benjamin (1972). That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-46969-7.
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