The poet writes these poems to express her strong feelings and tells a story of a beautiful garden. She has used many elements in her work to express her emotions and story in a very beautiful and imaginative way. The use of these elements do not bore the reader and emerge them into a story of creation, life and death, rebirth, and the recovering of innocence. These are the reasons why the poem collection is highly successful and why I enjoy reading these poems and highly recommend them to anyone who enjoy reading poems or any sort of
Whitman and Stevens similarly structured "On the Beach at Night" and "Sunday Morning," in that their narrators answer to their characters' concerns by explaining, or at least hinting at, the beauty of the perpetual cycle of mortality. "Something there is more immortal even than the stars,/(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)" (lines 28-29) whispers Whitman's narrator. "Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,/Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams/And our desires," (lines 63-65) echoes Stevens. Through their suggestions of this death-rebirth cycle, Whitman's and Stevens' narrators assuage their characters misgivings. Further, both poets utilize Jove/Jupiter as a metaphor for seeming immortality, and perhaps more famili...
Walt Whitman was born the son of a carpenter and farmer and also born into a family of nine. Holloway describes Whitman as having “even less education than their nine children were destined to have, was something of a free thinker.” During his childhood in Brooklyn, the young Walt Whitman “rode back and forth to New York City” (Folsom, Price). His experiences on the ferry boats and with the people who piloted and operated them would have a profound influence on him as he would later write about them in one of his poems. Whitman’s trips across the river first gave him a sense of the journey of life and gave him ideas he would later use in writing his famous poetic works. Whitman enjoyed spending time at Long Island and would often read poetry during the time he spent there. Holloway describes it as “Throughout childhood, youth, and earlier manhood he returned to spend summers, falls, or even whole years at various parts of the Island, either as a healthy roamer enjoying all he saw, or as a school-teacher, or as the editor of a country paper, or as a poet reading Dante in an old wood and Shakespeare, Æschylus, and Homer within sound of the lonely sea, and mewing his strength for the bold flights of his fancy.” Whitman ...
(A critique of Walt Whitman’s themes and ideas in Song of Myself 6, 46, 47)
Walt Whitman's seventh poem in his work, Leaves of Grass, displays the subtlety with which the poet is able to manipulate the reader's emotions. In this poem there are no particular emotional images, but the overall image painted by word choice and use of sounds is quite profound. This poem, like many others written by Walt Whitman, is somewhat somber in mood, but not morose. It is serious, but not to the point of gloom. Whitman writes concerning the general idea that everything is merged together and is one. One cannot die without being born, just as one cannot be a mother without first having one. The purpose of the poem is to show those things that are real are true and holy, and even more importantly unified. In this poem he is speaking as some sort of omnipotent being, perhaps God or a soul.
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”.
Walt Whitman was an essayist, a journalist, and one of America’s most powerful poets, often being called the father of free verse. His work was, however, sometimes controversial, because some saw it offensive for its sexuality. Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, New York. Whitman’s love of America was due to the way he was raised by his parents and their own love of their country. They gave three of his younger brother’s names such as George Washington Whitman, Thomas Jefferson Whitman, and Andrew Jackson Whitman.
I found that throughout this poem there was much symbolism within it. Identifying that it was written in first person form showed that this poem relates to the author on a personal basis, and that it was probably written to symbolize his life. But when talking about people’s lives, you can conclude that people’s lives are generally and individually very diffe...
There is contrast in Whitman's view, which embraces all society, and that which surrounds him. He views all mankind and nature as intertwined in the past, present and future in one perpetual cycle of life and death. He speaks of the sameness of man and se...
This piece of the poem is full of the images of nature. The image of sun and the moon can be find throughout the whole work, but in this part it probably poses as a symbol of rationality and intellect. Its function differs from the function of the moon and its light shines its rays of light on things to make them clearer, more comprehensible and earthly. T...
Walt Whitman is an American poet, journalist, and essayist whose Versace collection Leaves of Grass is a landmark in the history of American literature.
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
The theme of Time to Come presents the mystery of life after death and calls attention to how vulnerable it’s victims are. Whitman begins his poem with the strong metaphor “ O, Death! a black and pierceless pall” (1). This bold statement allows the reader quickly realize that the work will somehow be connected to death, but in an insightful manner. The alliteration of “pierceless pall” emphasizes death’s ruthless approach. Whitman then describes death as a “mystery of fate” that " No eye may see, no mind may grasp” (3-4). This points out that death lingers in the future, essentially waiting to seize lives and nobody can know when th...
The speakers and audience in poem are crucial elements of the poem and is also the case in these poems. In the poem Untitled, it can be argued that the poem is being written by Peter based on what his father might say to him...
Walt Whitman’s beautiful poem, O Me! O Life!, argues that “life exists” and builds upon the ideas of transcendentalism to emphasize individualism. He structures his poem into two stanzas in order to produce a question and answer style mimicking how an individual would deal through their consciousness with the dilemmas present in life. Throughout the first stanza, he depicts how the individual believes that he is the most “foolish” and “faithless” in a world flooded with those specific characteristics that have come to define society. This part especially touched me as I often am my own worst enemy, lambasting myself for my mistakes and thinking that no one could make as dumb of mistakes as I have. Moreover, I fail to lift up my head and notice