In the poem of Beat! Beat! Drums! Whitman is talking about how people react to war when they hear the drums and the bugles sound. Not all the people were happy to hear them because they knew that they were being called to go to war and they had to be ready to give up their lives and they had to commit themselves 100 percent to the war. As he mentioned “Leave not the bridegroom quiet-no happiness must he have now with his bride, Nor the peaceful farmer and peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound you drums-so shrill you bugles blow”. (5-7) In other words everything needed to stop once they heard those drums beat and those bugles blow so hard that you couldn’t even hear a father’s beg to his son not
Walt Whitman composed different versions of “Song to myself”, but 1881 is when the work was titled. Walt Whitman was born in 1819, lived in New York and New York city his whole life before dying in 1892. He was a big celebrator of humanity and believed in physical and spiritual essence. The overall meaning from “Song to Myself” was the poem progressing from life to death in a way that showed death is inevitable and should be embraced as an old friend. In a similar theme, Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was composed in 1922, and talked about death as an escape from responsibilities rather than Whitman’s take as death being an old friend.
Drum-Taps is the personal-historical record of Whitman’s wartime occupation. Drum-Taps’ early poems were written prior to Whitman’s contact with wounded soldiers, and betray a starkly different attitude toward the war than one finds later in the sequence. The chronologically earlier poems celebrate the coming hostilities, expressing Whitman’s "early near-mindless jingoism" (Norton 2130). As one progresses through the work, he finds a less energetic, sorrowful, jaded narrator who seems little like the exuberant youth who began. Understandable so, "[Whitman] estimated that over the course of the war, he had made ‘over 600 visits or tours, and went … among from some 80,000 to 100,000 of the wounded and sick, as sustainer of spirit and body in some degree, in time of need’" (Murray).
Allen Ginsberg’s, “Howl”, was written 100 years later than Walt Whitman’s, “Song of Myself”. These two poems share similarities of speaking on America but in different time eras. Whitman’s poem inspired Ginsberg to write an extension of his poem by remixing it in a more angry and free willed way. By revising the style and the theme of Whitman’s poem, Ginsberg revisits and repurposes it with a strong expression of how much he disagrees with the judgmental American society he’s living in in a very obscene way while also embracing who he really is and not denying it.
Brooks initially seems to argue for the necessity of war in order to create a safe space for artistic creation. She suggests this idea quite forcefully in the paired short sentences that open the poem: "First fight. Then fiddle." One must fight before fiddling for two reasons. First, playing the violin would be a foolish distraction if an enemy were threatening one's safety; it would be, as the phrase goes, "fiddling while Rome burns." Second, fighting the war first would prepare a safe and prosperous place where one could reasonably pursue the pleasures of music. One has to "civilize a space / Wherein to play your violin with grace." It should be noted further that while Brooks writes about securing a "civilized" place to play the violin, she seems clearly to be using this playing as an image for art in general, as her more expansive references to "beauty" or "harmony" suggest.
He writes, “And bugles calling for them from sad shires” (Line 8). A bugle is a small simple brass instrument without valves, similar to a trumpet. Bugles are used for three main purposes: at a funeral, to mark time, and to call a retreat. The “sad shires” are the towns from which the men come. They are “sad” because many of the men are away, most of them dead. We could interpret this line in three ways. First, the sound represents the mourning of the soldiers in the home towns. Since the sound is rather frequent, it shows the massive amount of death and the herd-like killing of the soldiers as referenced in Line 1. Second, the sound could mark the time of the day, reminding the aimless and purposeless soldiers of how slowly time is moving. This slowing of time contrasts with the fast-paced life of the soldiers before the war and shows how war ages men. Third, the sound from the shires could be a calling of retreat, asking the men to return home. This sense of hope appears only here in the poem – the remaining lines all have a sombre mood emphasizing on death. However, this could also be interpreted as the notification of death at home. This imagery of the bugle varies greatly from its value in previous wars. Before World War I, trumpets were played before battle to generate patriotism and to remind the soldiers to fight for glory. Now, in World War I, it only represents the slowing of time, a retreat, or
Walt Whitman’s poem Time to Come explores Whitman’s curiosity of what happens when people die. Rather than taking a pessimistic approach, his writing is more insightful about the experience. The title alone introduces an aspect of his purpose; to point out that dying is inevitable. With Whitman captures the reader’s attention and shares his curiosity with vivid images, sophisticated diction, and his use of metaphor and personification in Time to Come.
Holocaust is an event of mass murder of approximately six million Jews. These two poems convey a message about the horrific effects of holocaust. These are two political, angry and fighting poems which aim to convey a message of abused people. These two poems also show how politics can be immoral, evil and mischievous.
Reading is part of everyday life, but understanding what you have read is something less common. There are a lot of different types of literate that you can read. One of the most popular types of reading that people do would be to read poetry, but almost everyone that reads poetry reads the most common type; the ones that rhyme and are easy to read. These are very good poems, but when you begin to read different types of poetry you start to figure out that a lot of it seems to be nonsense and this is not the case. “Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.” (Auden) This is a very good point because poetry is something that seems to be very clear, until you get to feelings and everyone has different feelings. Poetry is something that can be written in a lot of different ways, in fact there is even poetry about how to write poetry. Archibald MacLeish and Marianne Moore all manage to tie in how poetry is supposed to work in their own poetry. They both do have conflict in some of their ideas in how to write poetry and some ideas are the same. Marianne Moore, and Archibald MacLeish share the same love and passion for poetry but have different opinions on how they should be different.
The simple definition of war is a state of armed competition, conflict, or hostility between different nations or groups; however war differs drastically in the eyes of naive children or experienced soldiers. Whether one is a young boy or a soldier, war is never as easy to understand as the definition. comprehend. There will inevitably be an event or circumstance where one is befuddled by the horror of war. For a young boy, it may occur when war first breaks out in his country, such as in “Song of Becoming.” Yet, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” it took a man dying in front of a soldier's face for the soldier to realize how awful war truly is. Both “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” are poems about people experiencing the monstrosity of war for the first time. One is told from the perspective of young boys who were stripped of their joyful innocence and forced to experience war first hand. The other is from the perspective of a soldier, reflecting on the death of one of his fellow soldiers and realizing that there is nothing he can do to save him. While “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” both focus on the theme of the loss of innocence, “Song of Becoming” illustrates how war affects the lives of young boys, whereas “Dulce et Decorum Est” depicts the affect on an experienced soldier.
Many poems have been written during times of War, from the Civil War to World War II, many were pro-war and still just as many, if not more, were anti-war. When you look back in time, you may notice and recognize a few authors for their contributions to our colorful country's history from your studies, but two names are almost always recognized, even by the unstudied, to have offhandedly advanced our culture, changed politics, and even confronted the impact of war on communities and families in two different countries. Walt Whitman is often recognized as the founding father of American poetry, his powerful poem “Beat! Beat! Drums!” written during the start of the Civil War in 1861, is a commanding and rugged
Walt Whitman was arguable one of the most influential poets during the Civil War era. Though never directly involved in war, Whitman was able to talk about the war in a more insightful way than many poets at the time could. Whitman was most active in writing during the times before and after the war, choosing to dedicate himself to helping wounded soldiers during the war instead. Walt Whitman’s poetry reflects the progression of his philosophy of America: his initial view of America was uplifting, represented in his Pre-Civil war poems and while the Civil War poetry presents the degradation of American society, Whitman’s final poetry returns to a realistic, optimistic view for America.
There are an assorted of various characteristics included in poetry including Rhyme, Rhythm, and Mood. Some poems use rhyming words to create a certain effect but not all poems rhyme, poetry that doesn’t rhyme is called “free verse poetry”. Sometimes poets use repetition of sounds or patterns to create a musical effect in their poems, rhythm can be created by using the same number of words or syllables in each line of a poem. Rhythm can be described as the beat of the poem. The mood of a poem is the feeling that it has. A poem can be sad, gloomy, humorous, happy, etc. There are many more various characteristics in poetry including shape, figurative language, descriptive imagery, punctuation and format, sound and tone, and choice of
In Walt Whitman’s, “One Song, America, Before I Go”, the soldier who is speaking acknowledges the danger in the war he is to fight. The soldier is content with facing the dangers though, bearing the characteristics of a patriot, and believing that his sacrifice will ensure a better America for future generations. With the soldiers
This is an autobiographical type of poem in which the author, Walt Whitman, is also that persona, who in developing this type of poetic work, and surpasses the traditional limits of the “self.” The captivating and attention-grabbing aspect of the poem is the free verse technique or style, which significantly makes the development of the “self” a calming task while celebrating a personal life. The persona is described as a lover of nature, and incorporates three sections of the self-personality that include “I,” “me,” and the “soul”. Whitman’s use of sexual or bodily imagery and his use of grass as a central image and metaphor create a poem that is bold and uncommon for his era. A unique element of the poem is that the poet declines the basic conventions and rules of poetry. Whitman’s poem doesn’t follow any specific rhyme scheme, nor does it have a particular beat count or structure. Whitman still manages to successfully represent and replicate smooth flowing thoughts and ideas from the mind to the paperwork, making it a revolutionary form of poetry.
We often take life for granted. In the process of fulfilling our desires, we gradually destroy the essence of nature and our morals. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “A Musical Instrument”, the parallel between nature and humanity reflects the blindness and greed of humanity through the natural process of destruction and creation. Conveyed significantly with literary elements such as imagery, tone, alliteration and repetition, Browning brings to attention the reality of humanity’s actions and drives mankind to grasp the idea that we are inherently born sinful.