Throughout the 19th century, American poetry was a profoundly populist literary form. It circulated in New England magazines and Southern newspapers; it was read aloud in taverns, homes, and schools across the country. Antebellum reviewers envisioned poetry as the touchstone democratic genre, and their Civil War-era counterparts celebrated its motivating power, singing poems on battlefields. Following the war, however, as criticism grew more professionalized...