Transatlantic Voices: Poetic Exchanges Between Europe and America

Abstract

This paper explores the dynamic literary dialogue between European and American poetic traditions from the nineteenth century to the modern era. Focusing on England, Ireland, and the United States, it examines how poets on both sides of the Atlantic have shaped, challenged, and redefined each other’s aesthetic and ideological frameworks. Beginning with the Romantic influences of Wordsworth and Coleridge on early American verse, the study traces how Walt Whitman’s expansive free verse inspired modernist experimentation in T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, while W.B. Yeats’s Irish mysticism bridged European symbolism and American transcendental thought. Through close reading and comparative analysis, the paper reveals how shared concerns—national identity, modernity, and the search for spiritual or social meaning—transcend geography. Ultimately, it argues that transatlantic poetic exchange is not a linear transmission of influence but an ongoing creative conversation that continues to shape the evolution of modern poetry and cultural identity in the English-speaking world.