Modern American Poetry

Moore’s America 457

modernism and her own originality, rather than a shift in Emerson, that accounts for her
differences from “Nature.” Furthermore, as Sharon Cameron has pointed out, even
“Experience” retains much of the old imperial Emerson; his “impersonal” is easily
identified with the transcendental, empowered self. Moore’s impersonal functions very
differently, toward the effect of humility, not transcendence.

2. For a thoughtful reconciliation of the aesthetic of the sublime with environmental
   values, see Christopher Hitt’s “Toward an Ecological Sublime” in Ecocriticism,a special
   issue of New Literary History.