Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: A New American Poetry If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. - Whitman This is my letter to the world That never wrote to me-- - Dickinson

Walt Whitman Grew up in Brooklyn The Civil War Leaves of Grass Whitman’s image: heroic, epic

Major themes Celebration of Self Attention to Detail of the Natural World Observation and Experience=Education Willingness to Face the Seemingly Ugly Commonality of Human Experience Celebration of “the Procreant Urge of the World” Celebration of the Given Moment

Guiding Questions How can we situate Whitman’s poetry in the context of Transcendentalism? How does it express themes or philosophies similar to those of Emerson and Thoreau? How does it differ?

“Song of Myself,” section 1 What kinds of repetition do we find in this section? How do they help create the rhythms and music in Whitman’s free verse? Who is “you” in lines 2 and 3? What is the connection between the “soul” and the “spear of summer grass”?* Why do you think the speaker is holding “creeds” and “schools” in abeyance? We can read this opening section as a kind of declaration of intent for the “song” that will follow. Who is the speaker? What does he propose to do? What do you think his “song” is going to be about? *(One thing to keep in mind: the grass is used as a formal structuring device throughout the poem. Note the different ways in which Whitman uses grass throughout “Song of Myself.”)

“O Me, O Life! O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;  Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)  Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;  Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;          Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;  The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?     Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity;  That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Whitman and Dead Poets Society In the first scene we watched, Mr. Keating quotes the above poem during a lecture to his students about poetry. What is his point in this lecture? To which of the themes of Whitman’s poetry does Mr. Keating’s point relate? 2. In the second scene, Mr. Keating refers to Whitman’s famous declaration regarding his “barbaric yawp.” What does the yawp stand for in this scene? How is it similar to or different from what the yawp stands for in section 52 of “Song of Myself”?

“Song of Myself,” section 2 What lines in this section support Whitman’s credo that observation and experience=education? The last stanza: Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. Analyze the sounds of the above stanza—note the Bibilical echoes, the repetition, the prophetic quality of the poet’s promise.

“Song of Myself,” section 6 The answer to the child’s question (What is the grass?) is in many ways the entire poem. What sorts of things does the poet identify the grass as in this section?

“Song of Myself,” section 10 In each of the stanzas in this section, the speaker observes a different American scene. Where does each scene take place? What’s going on in the scene? What is the tone of each of the five stanzas in this poem? When does the tone of the poem change? Why might this be? What do you think Whitman’s point might have been in writing about these five very different scenes in the same poem? What theme or themes from Whitman does this poem address?

Photograph by Phillips & Taylor, Philadelphia. 1873.

“Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos…” Section 26 The 29th bather??? [also look back at section 5 and forward to 21] Section 17 “This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This is the common air that bathes the globe.” Section 21 “I am the poet of the body, and I am the poet of the soul” Section 24 “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos…” Section 26 “I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen…”

Section 33 Section 51 Section 52 Repetition of “I am” “I understand the large hearts of heroes…” “Mind not me…mind…the entrenchments.” (Remember that Whitman worked as a nurse in the military hospitals in Washington during the Civil War…) Section 51 “Do I contradict myself?” Section 52 the barbaric yawp the last line (and the first line)

Form of Whitman Free verse (irregular line length; prose quality with lyric style) Parallel structure / repetitive rhythms Sweeping catalogues Cadence (rhythmic rise and fall of language as naturally spoken) Colloquial, everyday diction Use of sound devices: assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia Consider the above formal aspects of Whitman’s poetry—analyze them. What do they say about Whitman as a poet? How does his form relate to his content?

Original Title “Song of Myself” was originally titled "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American“—what light does this shed on Whitman’s intentions in the poem?

Whitman’s Notebooks The notebook fragment we looked at yesterday—“Small in theme, yet has it the sweep of the universe”—could be interpreted to represent one idea Whitman had about his poetry: the desire to explore universal themes using specific, sensory details from his own experience. You will be divided up into 4 groups. Each group will be given a set of primary sources—a poem, copies of relevant pages from Whitman’s notebooks, and a Civil War-era photograph.

Whitman’s Notebooks You will then write a short paragraph which does two things: Analyzes the poem itself in comparison to “Song of Myself.” What themes do you see repeated? How is the form similar or different? Analyzes the relationships among the primary sources. What light do they shed on each other? For example, what echoes of the notes and fragments jotted down by Whitman in his notebook pages do you find in the poem? How does the photograph help to contextualize the poem and notebook pages? You will present your findings to the class tomorrow.

Poem 465 What is the dramatic situation of this poem? Briefly paraphrase the statement made in the poem. According to stanza 2, what are the dying person and those around her expecting to find in the room? What appears instead? Why is “Heaves” an appropriate word to use in line 4, in regard to what is happening in the poem? What poetic techniques (think form here) does Dickinson use in lines 12 and 13? What do you think is the overall message or purpose of the poem?

Poem 712 How is death personified? Why, in line 14, does the narrator feel “quivering and chill”? What is she wearing? What is the “house” in line 17? What has the speaker surmised, or guessed, in the last stanza? How would you describe the tone of the first stanza? What word signals this tone? Of all the things Dickinson might have had the carriage pass, why do you think she chooses the children and the grain in stanza 3? What is one message this poem might be sending about life and death? Some readers think the concluding stanza introduces a tone of terror, because the speaker has suddenly realized that she will ride on forever, conscious of being dead. Some think that the whole poem is an expression of trust and even triumph. With which interpretation do you agree, and why? The critic Alfred Kazin has said of the last stanza: “What that famous Eternity is, we cannot say.” Explain what you think Dickinson meant by the Eternity the horses were going toward.

Poem 449 (“I died for beauty”) What’s the dramatic situation of the poem, as described in the first stanza? There are two instances of slant rhyme in this poem. What are they? Look back at your answer to #2. What is the effect of slant rhyme on the poem? Why do you think Dickinson might have employed slant rhyme here? Take a stab at what you believe to be the larger message that Dickinson seems to be trying to get across here (hint: you’ll need to address the relationship between truth and beauty as expressed in stanza 2).

Poem 1129 (“Tell all the Truth”) The second stanza of the poem might be confusing because it employs inverted word order and omits some words. Rephrase the lines in your own words in the space below—be sure not to change the meaning of the lines. Some people think these 8 lines express the essence of Dickinson’s own poetry. How can we interpret this poem as an ars poetica[1] for her poetry as a whole? [1] Ars poetica: Literally, “Art of poetry”: a summary description, written in verse by a poet, of how poems are, and ought to be, constructed—and implicitly, what a poem is. An example of an ars poetica would be Archibald MacLeish’s “A poem must not mean / But be.”

Poem 303 (The soul selects her own society) Recap of poem Dickinson’s original editors changed the word valves in line 11 to lids. How does this change the metaphor? How does it change your image of what is happening? Look carefully at the meter of lines 10 and 12. How does the rhythmical pattern of these lines differ from the corresponding lines in the first and second stanzas? What is the effect of this difference? Slant rhyme…

Slant Rhyme: I’ve known her—from an ample nation— Choose One— Then—close the Valves of her attention— Like Stone— Exact Rhyme: I’ve known her—from an ample nation— Choose One— Then—close the Valves of her attention— And be done— What difference is made with the exact rhyme? What is lost, in terms of meaning, tone, feeling?

Slant Rhyme Remember, slant rhyme is a kind of off-rhyme or half-rhyme. Why use slant rhyme? Shock value Unpredictability Emphasis done

Terms Caesura Dramatic situation Assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, alliteration Synecdoche (also metonymy) Synesthesia Slant rhyme persona Run-on and end-stopped lines Ars poetica cadence

Review for Test Poetry terms Author bios and background info consult the handout and your notes remember that we added some terms to that handout in class Author bios and background info Quotations You just have to know the author, not the title or poem number Interpreting a poem Short Answer (very brief paragraph)