Today:

Current Events Presentations

Intro to Walt Whitman

Current EVENTS: 4-5 minutes (15 points)

Present article

Provide specific examples from the article

Relate to specific quotes directly from the essay

Answer the question: What would a transcendentalist say about this article?

Emerson:

“The poet has a new thought: he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For, the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.”

Walt Whitman 1819-1892

Inspired by Thoreau and Emerson

Believed he was the poet Emerson called for in “The poet.”

Said: “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”

Poetic Form

Free Verse

Unstructured, no limits on lines/stanzas

Poetic devices to look for:Repetition: (Anaphora)

Alliteration: Repeating sounds at the beginning of words

Assonance: Repeated vowel sounds

Consonance: Repeated consonant sounds

Parallel structure: phrases/lines whose pattern is similar

Cadence: rising and falling

Juxtoposition: two contrasting images, side by side

Devices continued…

Metaphors and similes: descriptive comparisons

Montage: several brief images, pictures placed side by side for effect

Personification

Imagery

Lists

FREE VERSE

A form of Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern

20th Century poets were pioneers of this which allowed them to break from formula and rigidity of traditional poetry

Walt Whitman

Themes/SubjectsRomantic view of nature

Body and Soul are one

Nature is God

Rebirth and RegenerationDeath is a part of life

Symbols of regeneration (grass on graves)

Value of the EverydayDignity of the common person/labor

Power of Poetry to transcend timeSpeaks to future generations

Homework

Italie essay on Whitman; annotate key ideas (bottom of article)

Read and annotate: “I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing”