Poetry for a New World

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Poetry for a New World
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Poetry For a New World

• Walt Whitman
• Emily Dickinson
• Edgar Allan Poe

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Walt Whitman(1819-1892)
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Leaves of Grass
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Brief Introduction to Whitman

• Working as a printer, editor, journalist, and
  publisher during the years of the publishing
  industry's phenomenal growth, Whitman became
  keenly aware that the tools necessary for his
  emergence as the new, democratic poet were at his
  disposal. He believed he could bring poetry to
  the common people, and with the publication of
  his 1855 Leaves of Grass, he assumed for himself
  the role of the American Poet, referring to
  himself as "one of the roughs," a common man.

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• Whitman carefully continued to cultivate his
  literary personality throughout his career.As he
  revised and enlarged Leaves of Grass (8 editions
  and numerous printings would appear between 1855
  and 1891), Whitman's goal as the self-styled
  national poet became more clearly defined. Leaves
  of Grass is essentially a poem in process, with
  each succeeding edition representing a unique
  period in the poet's life as well as the
  nation's.

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The Major Themes of his Poem

• The absolute intransigent individualism
• The combination of a proud individualism with
  perfect equality

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The Rhythm of Whitmans poetry

• Free Verse
• The differences between
• Free verse and Blank verse

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The Difference between Blank verse and Free Verse

• The wonderful thing about free verse, is that it
  has very few distinct rules. It is similar to
  blank verse in that it does not rhyme, but unlike
  blank verse, it is not written in iambic
  pentameter.
• The rhythm or cadence of free verse varies
  throughout the poem. Though the words don't
  rhyme, they flow along their own uneven pattern.

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Free Verse

• Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic
  CADENCE or the recurrence, with variations, of
  phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather
  than the conventional use of METER. RHYME may or
  may not be present in free verse, but when it is,
  it is used with great freedom. In conventional
  VERSE the unit is the FOOT, or the line in free
  verse the units are larger, sometimes being
  paragraphs . If the free verse unit is the line,
  as it is in Whitman, the line is determined by
  qualities of RHYTHM and thought rather than FEET.

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Free Verse

• In the twentieth century free verse has had
  widespread usage by most poets, of whom T. S.
  Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, and William
  Carlos Williams are representative. Such a list
  indicates the great variety of subject matter,
  effect and tone that is possible in free verse,
  and shows that it is much less a rebellion
  against traditional English METRICS than a
  modification and extension of the resources of
  our language.

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Whitmans Poetic Techniques

• Parallelism
• Phonetic Recurrence
• Vignettes

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(No Transcript)
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Song of Myself

• I Celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I
  assume you shall assume, For every atom
  belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe
  and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease
  observing a spear of summer grass.

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• My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from
  this soil, this air, Born here of parents born
  here from parents the same, and their parents the
  same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect
  health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.
  Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back
  a while sufficed at what they are, but never
  forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to
  speak at every hazard, Nature without check with
  original energy.  

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(No Transcript)
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The Symbol of Grass

• The answer to the question is in many ways the
  entire poem (As we have already seen the entire
  poem is formally structured around the grass).
  Whitman sees the grass as the recapitulation of
  the whole cycle of life, death and rebirth it
  the symbol of the individual ("the flag of my
  disposition"), of Deity ("the handkerchief of the
  Lord"), of reproduction ("the produced babe of
  the vegetation"), of the new social order of
  American democracy ("a uniform hieroglyphic"), of
  death ("the beautiful uncut hair of graves").

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When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd

• Background Information
• Of all the many poems written about the
  assassination of Abraham Lincoln, this one by
  Walt Whitman may well be the most well known.
  Although somewhat more abstract than his shorter
  "O, Captain! My Captain!", it nevertheless
  carries an emotional punch that the more
  accessible verses lack.

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(No Transcript)
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Theme

• The poem unites two broad themes that absorbed
  the poet
• 1 America, "my land" (typified by its great
  President)
• 2 Death, "the dark mother" of all of us.

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Symbols

• In the text we find three symbols largely
  developed
• 1 the star (Lincoln)
• 2 the lilac (in Eastern symbolism a connection
  with manly love)
• 3 the hermit thrush (the poet singing of death).
  

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The symbol of Lilacs

• The lilacs symbolize the poet's love and homage.
  As a true romantic symbol, they draw fully on the
  natural characteristics of the flower to create
  meaning that meaning develops with repetition
  throughout the poem, which can be traced by
  following the links from the first reference. The
  flower is extremely aromatic, with a scent that
  carries a distance. Lilac bushes can live for
  hundreds of years,It symbolizes the love for the
  great president will last for ever.

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The Symbol of Star

• Venus, which often appears as the "evening star,"
  brightest at twilight in the Western sky before
  it drops into the west, is earth's planetary
  "twin." April is also the month of Venus. Note
  that when the planet is lowest on the horizon,
  like the rising moon, it appears larger and
  orange because of the earth's atmosphere.
  President Lincoln was assassinated and died on
  April 15, 1865, at a time when Venus appeared as
  the "evening star," and for Whitman, this
  statesman from the west is represented by Venus.

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The Symbol of Thrush

• As you trace this symbol, note that the bird is
  closely paralleled with the poet, "tallying" his
  soul with his song. Its song, is an elegy which
  confronts and accepts death. This is a lyric
  within a lyric and is a structure that resembles
  music as an emotional experience rather than
  music for its own sake.

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Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)

• Dickinson's poetic accomplishment was recognized
  from the moment her first volume appeared in
  1890, but never has she enjoyed more acclaim than
  she does today. Once Thomas H. Johnson made her
  complete body of 1,775 poems available in his
  1955 variorum edition, The Poems of Emily
  Dickinson, interest from all quarters soared.
  Readers immediately discovered a poet of immense
  depth and stylistic complexity whose work eludes
  categorization.

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Emily Dickinson
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(No Transcript)
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Dickinsons bedroom
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The Theme in Dickinsons poetry

• Poetry of Nature
• Poetry of Ecstasy and Despair
• Poetry of Death and immortality
• Poetry of Art and Word
• Poetry of love

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Poetry of Nature

• A Bird came down the Walk
• He did not know I saw
• He bit an Angleworm in halves
• And ate the fellow, raw,
• And then he drank a Dew
• From a convenient Grass
• And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a
  Beetle pass
• He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all
  around
• They looked like frightened Beads, I thought
• He stirred his Velvet Head
• Like one in danger, Cautious,
• I offered him a Crumb
• And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer
  home -- Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver
  for a seam
• Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
• Leap, plashless as they swim.

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(No Transcript)
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The Theme of A Bird

• The relationship between man and
  nature---alienation exists between man and nature.

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Rhyme and Meter

• "A Bird Came Down the Walk." is an excellent
  example of how poets use varying styles of rhyme
  and meter to bring a poem to life. Dickinson
  expertly uses meter to show how the bird acts on
  the ground and in the air. The poem is five
  quatrains long. In each stanza, except for the
  fourth, uses iambic trimeter in every line but
  the fourth line which uses iambic tetrameter. The
  fourth stanza uses iambic trimeter in all four
  lines.

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Poetry of Ecstasy and Despair

• The Soul selects her own Society -- Then -- shuts
  the Door
• To her divine Majority
• Present no more
• Unmoved -- she notes the Chariots -- pausing
• At her low Gate
• Unmoved -- an Emperor be kneeling
• Upon her Mat
• I've known her
• from an ample nation
• Choose One
• Then -- close the Valves of her attention -- Like
  Stone --

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Analysis

• Soul- a woman of high rank
• Society-companion ,either her lover ,Wadsworth or
  her poetry

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Poetry of Death and immortality

• I died for Beauty -- but was scarce
• Adjusted in the Tomb
• When One who died for Truth, was lain
• In an adjoining room
• He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
• "For Beauty", I replied
• "And I -- for Truth -- Themself are One
• We Brethren, are", He said
• And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night
• We talked between the Rooms
• Until the Moss had reached our lips
• And covered up -- our names --

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• I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died
• The Stillness in the Room
• Was like the Stillness in the Air
• Between the Heaves of Storm
• The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry -- And
  Breaths were gathering firm
• For that last Onset
• when the King Be witnessed
• in the Room -- I willed my Keepsakes -- Signed
  away What portion of me be Assignable
• and then it was There interposed a Fly
• With Blue -- uncertain stumbling Buzz -- Between
  the light
• and me -- And then the Windows failed
• and then I could not see to see --

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Analysis

• The image of fly is used successfully
• By combining the color and voicethe poet
  creates the state of mind in chaos when one is
  dying.
• The poem describes the process of dying.
• The poem shows the poets suspicion towards
  immortality.

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Because I Could Not Stop for Death
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Ring
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Gazing Grain
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Setting Sun
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Because I Could Not Stop for Death

• The poem is a dramatic representation of the
  passage from this world of the living to
  afterlife. The school,the fields of gazing
  grains, setting sun summarize the process and
  passage of a lifetime.
• Death courtly suitor
• fraudulent seducer
• The poem reflects a basic ambiguity about death
  and immortality.

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Poetry of Art and Word

• I taste a liquor never brewed
• From Tankards scooped in Pearl
• Not all the Vats upon the Rhine Yield such an
  Alcohol! Inebriate of Air -- am I
• And Debauchee of Dew -- Reeling
• thro endless summer days
• From inns of Molten Blue
• When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee Out of the
  Foxglove's door
• When Butterflies -- renounce their "drams"
• I shall but drink the more!
• Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats
• And Saints -- to windows run
• To see the little Tippler Leaning
• against the -- Sun --

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Analysis

• Dickinson believes that the inspiration comes
  from nature, and only if a poet had inspiration
  can he write a perfect poem.

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Rhine River
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Debauchee of Dew
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Foxglove
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Seraphs
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Poetry of Love

• Wile Nights-Wild Nights!
• Were I with thee
• Wild Nights should be
• Our luxury!
• Futile-the Wilds-
• To a Heart in port-
• Done with the Compass-
• Done with the Chart!
• Rowing in Eden-
• Ah, the Sea!
• Might I but moor- Tonight-
• in Thee!

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Eden
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Analysis

• The speaker reveals all her innermost feeling to
  her lover.
• Love is expressed in an unabashed manner.
• The boat and sea are used as symbols of the
  lovers.

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Features of her Style

• Full of images- the precursor of Imagist
  Movement.
• Deviation-
• Graphological Deviation-dash and
  capitalization were frequently used.
• Syntactic Deviation-departure from normal
  grammar.
• Economy of expression

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Differences between Whitman andDickinson

• Whitman world at largeDickinson-inner life
• Whitman- nationalDickinson-regional
• Whitman-endless and all-inclusiveDickinson-concis
  e ,direct and simple