Fitzgerald the Poet

Year 2016, Issue: 45, 159 - 178, 01.10.2016

Seda Şen Alta

Abstract

In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom argues that poets are under the influence of their predecessors. In order to construct an authentic voice in poetry, the younger poet needs to undergo a process of “misunderstanding, misinterpreting, misalliance” that would require him to both acknowledge and, at the same time, diverge from the influential poet to situate his poems in the history of poetry. Although more famous for his novels, short stories and screenplays, F. Scott Fitzgerald also wrote poems and was vocal about the influence of especially Keats, as well as other English and American poets. His attempts at writing poetry date back to his Newman School and Princeton years; however, he has never been recognized as a prominent figure in poetry. Some critics even call him a “failed poet.” The reason for this failure seems to be that Fitzgerald’s anxiety was not of becoming a great poet influenced by traditional poets but to be just like them. The aim of this paper is to discuss how Keats and other figures in Fitzgerald’s life shaped his understanding of poetry and how his poetic composition influenced his novels

Keywords

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Poetry, Influence, Biography, John Keats

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