Abstract
One may find a great variety of themes in American poetry, irrespective of the period one is interested in. There are numerous poems about love, war, the self, nature, reality and dreams. However the point common to all of them, is that they convey a sense of "Americanism?; that is, they can all explain differently what it is to be American. For instance, Francis Scott Key in his poem entitled "Defence of Fort M'Henry"(1814), (that subsequently became the American national anthem under the title "The Star-Spangled Banner") argued that to be an American was primarily to be a patriot. Another viewpoint, is that of Langston Hughes, expressed in "Theme for English B", written in 1951. He suggested that to be American was to be part and parcel of a multicultural society in which inequalities exist, and where the minorities had to fight their way into this society. The difference between these two conceptions of Americanism can be explained by studying the periods the poets lived in and the backgrounds they came from.
