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POetry representation
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Leaves of Grass: Unbridled Spiritual Realization by the Credulous Man
In this excerpt of Leaves of Grass, Whitman seeks to develop an archetype of “the credulous man,” whose purpose is to represent the personal spirit that leads one to unrestricted faith. By connecting specific formal features, which range from a first person narrative voice to specific diction related to spirituality, Whitman develops a persona that calls to all audiences, linking them to this “credulous man” in a moderately religious context.
Whitman employs a first person narrative voice throughout the excerpt to connect himself and all around him to this persona of “credulous man.” By starting the stanza out with “I am the credulous man” rather than “I am a credulous man,” he sets a precedent within the poem, and we can see that the phrase is not intended to simply describe himself but to describe men of all qualities, ages and races. He later emphasizes this range of inclusion by calling out to all with the words, “Omnes! Omnes!” We can note, however, that Whitman never uses the pronoun we; yet the simple repetition of the pronoun I in this inclusive context allows each member of the audience to visualize themselves as the speaker, further solidifying the appeal to all audiences.
In addition, the religious context throughout the poem is underscored by diction with emphasized self-determined faith. The phrases “I advance from the people in their own spirit,” “here is what sings unrestricted faith,” and “I make the poem of evil also” suggest that religion, or more accurately spirituality, is defined by personal actions, both good and evil. By not explicitly discussing religion, Whitman deems faith a personal choice--but spirituality a necessity. Togethe...
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...e state of waste is not perpetual, we can find strength and hope for a better future. The ability to convey these messages with such strength along with the ability to powerfully effect his audience and have a tangible effect on the world is what sets T. S. Eliot and The Wasteland apart, and truly gives his poetry the power to change the world.
The poetry of Brian Turner, Charlotte Mew, and T. S. Eliot all turned poetry from the status of great to world re-making; they transformed the poetry of their era to poetry that could be read decades later yet still have a profound impact on its audience. I believe that world making lies in a poet’s ability to take any situation, any speaker, and any context that is personally important to them, and create a poem that deeply affects its audience--one with the ability to completely transcribe emotion from a text to the heart.
Throughout the span of this semester, much of the literature discussed revolved around the so-called renaissance of American literature and its impact upon both the nation and its people. Of all the authors studied in this time period, Walt Whitman may well be known as the quintessential American author. Famous for breaking every rule known to poetry in the inimitable compilation, Song of Myself, Whitman provided a fresh and insightful commentary upon the dualistic nature of society, love, and life itself. Through defining these essential aspects of humanity, Whitman indeed composed one of the most accurate and enduring definitions of the individual self that literature, American or otherwise, has ever seen. Specifically, this was done through
Eliot, T.S. The wasteland. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1447-1463.
Very few people will contest that Walt Whitman may be one of the most important and influential writers in American literary history and conceivably the single most influential poet. However many have claimed that Whitman’s writing is so free form as evident in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself that it has no style. The poetic structures he employs are unconventional but reflect his very democratic ideals towards America. Although Whitman’s writing does not include a structure that can be easily outlined, masterfully his writing conforms itself to no style, other then its own universal and unrestricted technique. Even though Whitman’s work does not lend itself to the conventional form of poetry in the way his contemporaries such as Longfellow and Whittier do, it holds a deliberate structure, despite its sprawling style of free association.
A technique Whitman used in his poetry was to write in free verse, making his poetry unrestricted and easy to read. Whitman's unique way of writing poetry that was easy to read made it inclusive, this fits in with his themes of democracy as a democracy includes everyone. In conclusion, “Leaves of Grass” embodied the spirit of democracy that Whitman was so fond of. The theme of democracy is evident in Walt Whitman's poetry. Walt Whitman had liberal values for his time as he was a supporter of rights for women and homosexuals. Whitman wanted an equal democratic America which was what the Founding Fathers of America had set out to create.
Walt Whitman’s hard childhood influenced his work greatly, he was an uneducated man but he managed to become one of the most known poets. Whitman changed poetry through his work and is now often called the father of free verse. Especially through Leaves of Grass he expressed his feelings and sexuality to world and was proud of it. He had a different view at life, his hard childhood, and his sexuality that almost no one understood made him introduce a new universal theme to the world. Almost all critics agree that Walt Whitman was one of the most influential and innovative poet. Karl Shapiro says it best, “The movement of his verses is the sweeping movement of great currents of living people with general government and state”.
...or the poet Whitman, includes his own opinions and feelings that should be shared for the most part in his mind is a true American poet. Among the myriad feelings expressed by Whitman in his poem his passion for nature, all parts of nature, is the most focused upon. When Emily Dickinson writes of tasting "a liquor never brewed", and being " inebriate of air" (pg. 152) in poem 214 of hers, we truly understand this faith that Whitman preaches about in his epic. A religion is something that you have all of your heart's true love in, for it gave you
*Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 3rd ed. Ed, Paul Lauter. Boston,NewYork: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Whitman asks about to meaning of life to himself between “endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish” (2). The specific diction such as “endless,” “faithless,” and “foolish” in his poem creates a negative connotation, clearly trying to express
Explication Through a multitude of literary devices and techniques, Walt Whitman's poem, "Song of Myself," is one of his most famous contributions to American literature. He uses simile and metaphor, paradox, rhythm, and free verse style, to convey his struggle between the relation of the body and soul, the physical and the spiritual being. He continues to disobey all social restrictions of the romantic time period. From the beginning, Whitman begins by stating, "What I shall assume, you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you," proposing that the reader listen to him, for he possesses all of the answers to life. The setting is somewhat naturalistic, and offers an image of the speaker, relaxing, possibly sprawled out across a blanket, philosophizing about life, while in the middle of a peaceful meadow. As the poem later shifts in tone, and setting, Whitman starts to think about the answers to life he has come up with, based upon the past, and decides that the reader should hear him out, one final time, as his ideas have changed. This brings us to #44 of "Song of Myself." In section #44 of, "Song of Myself," Whitman's first stanza begins: "It's time to explain myself…let us stand up. What is known I strip away…I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown. The clock indicates the moment…but what does eternity indicate? Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs…its buckets are rising forever and ever, they pour and they pour and they exhale away." Whitman is simply stating that he wants to tell the purpose of his madness. The madness that Whitman expresses is that of power and self-confidence. Whitman has written this based upon his experiences in life. Through these experiences, he has grown to know certain things about life and tries to pass them down to the reader. Throughout the beginning of the poem, Whitman takes the reader by the hand and demands that he follows Whitman and his ideas, because based on his own life Whitman holds the answers to the reader's questions. But now, he asks the reader to erase everything that he has previously said - forget the past. Why don't we try something new? We have to focus on the present, not on the past, but also to focus on what we are going to experience in the future, what can we expect?
The Modernist era of poetry, like all reactionary movements, was directed, influenced, and determined by the events preceding it. The gradual shift away from the romanticized writing of the Victorian Era served as a litmus test for the values, and the shape of poetry to come. Adopting this same idea, William Carlos Williams concentrated his poetry in redirecting the course of Modernist writing, continuing a break from the past in more ways than he saw being done, particularly by T.S. Eliot, an American born poet living abroad. Eliot’s monumental poem, The Waste Land, was a historically rooted, worldly conscious work that was brought on by the effects of World War One. The implementation of literary allusions versus imagination was one point that Williams attacked Eliot over, but was Williams completely in stride with his own guidelines? Looking closely at Williams’s reactionary poem to The Waste Land, Spring and All, we can question whether or not he followed the expectations he anticipated of Modernist work; the attempts to construct new art in the midst of a world undergoing sweeping changes.
In his poem "The Waste Land," T.S. Eliot employs a water motif, which represents both death and rebirth. This ties in with the religious motif, as well as the individual themes of the sections and the theme of the poem as a whole, that modern man is in a wasteland, and must be reborn.
T.S. Eliot peppers "The Waste Land," his apocalyptic poem, with images of modern aridity and inarticulacy that contrast with fertile allusions to previous times. Eliot's language details a brittle era, rife with wars physical and sexual, spiritually broken, culturally decaying, dry and dusty. His references to the Fisher King and mythical vegetation rituals imply that the 20th-century world is in need of a Quester to irrigate the land. "The Waste Land" refuses to provide a simple solution; the properties of the language serve to make for an ambiguous narrative and conclusion, one as confusing and fragmented as Eliot's era itself.
Although Whitman uses a great deal of structural ways to stress his ideas, he also uses many other ways of delivering his ideas. First of all, Whitman portrays himself as a public spokesman of the masses. The tone of the poem is a very loud, informative tone that grabs ones attention. The emphasis placed on the word “all” adds to the characterization of Whitman as a powerful speaker. Furthermore, Whitman takes part in his own poem. Participating in his own poem, Whitman moreover illustrates the connection between everything in life. Lastly, Whitman, most of all, celebrates universal brotherhood and democracy.
He crossed the boundaries of the poetry literature and gave a poetry worth of our democracy that contributed to an immense variety of people, nationalities, races. Whitman’s self-published Leaves of Grass was inspired in part by his travels through the American frontier and by his admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson (Poetry Foundation). He always believed in everyone being treated equally and bringing an end to slavery and racism. Through his poetry, Whitman tried to bring every people in America together by showing them what happiness, love, unison, and real knowledge looked. His poetry and its revolution changed the world of American literature
...to subjects relevant to today, such as religion.Eliot argues that without religion we are all lack direction and more importantly we lack substance in our lives. Without religion, we are superficial and it is due to this that we turn to pop culture. Pop culture is a filler for that which is intellectually rewarding. Eliot recognized this and for this reason he wrote “The Wasteland”. Eliot’s poem made bold statements about what was really happening in the modern world. Whether one argue with Eliot’s positions or not, his work joins the canon of the classic and ironically provides an opportunity for readers to plug into something greater.