American Masters: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

HOW HISTORY INFLUENCES TEXTS

WALT WHITMAN (1819 – 1892)

One of the most influential poets in the American canon

Called “the father of free verse,” but he did not invent it

Concerned with politics, opposed to slavery

FREE VERSE TWPS (THINK WRITE PAIR SHARE)

On your own, describe what you think “free verse” might mean…

FREE VERSE

Verse composed of variable, usually unrhymed lines having no fixed metrical pattern.

Follows the natural pattern of speaking.

PHILOSOPHICAL / POLITICAL ASSUMPTIONS

Whitman’s Poetry . . .

Presents all humans as brothers and sisters (an egalitarian view of the races)

Celebrates America’s democratic spirit and the heroism within common Americans

Has a distinctly American voice (he is called America’s first “poet of democracy”)

WHAT IS EGALITARIAN?

Adjective: Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

STYLE

Breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally prose-like

Includes unusual images and symbols, such as rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris

“Taboo” subjects such as death and sexuality are discussed openly

HOW IS THE SYMBOLISM SIMILAR AND DIFFERENT TO THE

ROMANTICS? TPWS

Similar Different

WHITMAN’S POETIC ELEMENTS

Cadence – the natural, rhythmic rise and fall of language as it is normally spoken

Catalog poem – a list of things, people, events or ideas

Free verse – poetry without rhyme or meter

Repetition – repeating words, sounds, syllables, or other elements

CATEGORY POEM: USE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING

WORDS TO WRITE A CATEGORY POEM OF 7-10

LINES:

School

Obama

Facebook

Nature

EMILY DICKINSON (1830 – 1886)

Published only seven poems during her lifetime, and even these were significantly altered by publishers to bring them in line with conventional poetic rules of the time

Most of her remaining poems (nearly 1800 of them) discovered in attic after her death

Editors and critics were skeptical of her talent during her lifetime and into the early 20th century

Now considered to be a major American poet

PHILOSOPHICAL / POLITICAL ASSUMPTIONS

Left no formal statement of her aesthetic intentions

Her work does not conveniently fit into any one genre

Her poetry often deals with themes of death and immortality

STYLE

No titles

Short lines

Slant rhymes

Unconventional capitalization & punctuation

Extensive use of dashes

Idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery

TYPES OF POEMS

Flower / Garden: in these poems, flowers are often symbols of emotions or actions

Master (or Signor): many poems address an unnamed “Master,” “Sir,” or “Signor,” who she calls her “lover for all eternity”

Morbidity: numerous poems reveal fascination with illness, dying, and death

Gospel: poems addressed to Christ or concerned with his teachings

Landscape of the Spirit: poems describe conversations with her own soul or visits to an imaginary landscape where her soul or spirit reside

DICKINSON’S POETIC ELEMENTS

Analogy – A comparison made between two things to show how they are alike

Irony – A discrepancy between appearances and reality

Slant rhyme – A rhyming sound that is not exact

COMMON POETIC ELEMENTS

Imagery – the use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, thing, place, or experience

Symbol – A person, place, thing or event that has meaning in itself and also stands for something more than itself

Metaphor – A figure of speech that compares two unlike things without using like, as, than or resembles

Simile – A figure of speech that compares two unlike things using like, as, than, or resembles

Personification – A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes

QUICK WRITE

Of American Masters, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, which one are you most looking forward to reading ? Explain why.