American Literature Week Fourteen－Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

A. Previous on Poem 112 [67]
a. The "purple host" refers to those successor or kings.

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B. Book Discussion

Walt Whitman
a. He was born in New York. In his works, he tried to find out the meaning of life from those tiny details in nature. -- on PDF P.171
* Romanticism-- individualism, humanism, emotionalism, and transcendentalism.
** Yankee mysticism can respond to transcendentalism.
b. He always always made free verse poems such as "For You O Democracy". -- on PDF P.172

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,

I will make divine magnetic lands,

                   With the love of comrades,

                      With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,

I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,

                   By the love of comrades,

                      By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!

For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

* He was the "poet of democracy".
** In his poem, he expressed his put importance on manly personality.
*** "Splendid" is a common word which always shows in Romanticism literary works.
>> "Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, we will grieve not; rather find strength in what remains behind"
* William Wordsworth's poem
** Movie, Splendour in the Grass-- This is a movie which expresses the sexual repression.

* Free verse-- It is the internal pattern of sounds, the choice of exact words, and the effect of associations give free verse its beauty. With the Imagists free verse became a discipline and acquired status as a legitimate poetic form. 

> Imagism is really close to the modernism. 

>> Blank verse-- In a blank verse poem, authors uses "iambic pentameter" and the ending rhyme scheme.

c. His famous "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "O Captain! My Captain!" are the mourn and elegies to President Lincoln.

* Elegy is a kind of "Funeral Blue Poem".

** Lincoln is the dark horse in civil war. 

d. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (poem) -- on textbook P.1088

Passing the visions, passing the night,

Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,

Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,

Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,

As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,

Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,

Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,

As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,

Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,

I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.

I cease from my song for thee,

From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,

O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.

* He uses the alliteration in this poem such as P, A, and I.
e. "O Captain! My Captain!" (poem) 

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

                         But O heart! heart! heart!

                            O the bleeding drops of red,

                               Where on the deck my Captain lies,

                                  Fallen cold and dead.

* "Fallen cold and dead"-- Lincoln died in April and April is the cruelest month. 

>> 蘇東坡 《江城子》「相顧無言，惟有淚千行。料得年年腸斷處，明月夜，短松岡。」

 

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C. Book Discussion

Emily Dickinson
a. The authors of Realism and Revolt-- Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Henry James.
b. 1096 [986] "A Narrow Follow in the Grass" -- on textbook P.1212

A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him—did you not

His notice sudden is,

The grass divides as with a comb,

A spotted shaft is seen,

And then it closes at your feet,

And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,  

A floor too cool for corn,

But when a boy and barefoot,

I more than once at noon

Have passed, I thought, a whip lash,

Unbraiding in the sun,

When stooping to secure it,

It wrinkled and was gone.

Several of nature’s people

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality.

But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

* There is a little bit suspicious and scary hidden in "Occasionally rides".

* She uses natural changing to describe an untrimmed boy with bare foot. >> Dionysus

* "Wrinkled" is a sort of phallic symbol such as the tower in Rapunzel 

c. 479 [712] "Because I could not Stop for Death" (poem) -- on textbook P.1206

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

* "Gazing Grain" is a kind of natural changing as well.