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Walt Whitman
Both Whitman and Dickinson present death not as a final ending point, but as something that can be transcended. To explore this, let us look at two oft-quoted passages from each poet. Here is an...
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Walt Whitman
Whitman's poem relies most on nature imagery. The central and most important image of the poem is the "spear of summer grass" that Whitman introduces in the fifth line. That one blade of grass sums...
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Emily Dickinson
It's difficult to think of any two poems that could be further apart than the self-effacing "I'm Nobody" and the celebration of self in "Song of Myself." One is brief, the other lengthy. The voice...
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Walt Whitman
A useful way to think about poetry is that poems make observations about the human experience. "O Captain! My Captain!" was inspired by the death of Abraham Lincoln, a man Walt Whitman greatly...
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Walt Whitman
I assume this question is asking about which universal themes are present in Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric," or about how Whitman explores the universality of the body in this poem. For some...
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Walt Whitman
Below, you'll find basic explanations for sections 12, 17, and 32 of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." 12: this section describes the movements of both a butcher boy (217-18) and a group of...
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Emily Dickinson
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson both "broke the rules" of poetry, but they defied poetic tradition in different ways. Walt Whitman primarily used a free verse style. He abandoned the rhythm and...
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Walt Whitman
"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is one of Walt Whitman's more complex poems. Its content is not as layered as that in other poems, but its form is. Multiple voices speak; natural objects and...
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Walt Whitman
One the face of it, these would seem to be very different poems. “Astronomer” is a poem about how nature and intuition is superior to academic knowledge; “I Hear America Singing” is a...
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Walt Whitman
This long poem, a piece of Leaves of Grass, is a spontaneous self-portrait in prose form, celebrating Whitman’s individuality while acknowledging how all humanity is alike (like “leaves of...
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Walt Whitman
While Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson came to prominence at the end of the Romantic/Transcendentalist movement, they both share aspects of the Romantic writers. First and foremost, they both share...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman's tone in "O Captain! My Captain!" is largely elegiac, in that it resembles an elegy. The poem was written in honor of President Lincoln following his assassination, and it also has...
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Walt Whitman
There are a lot of ways to understand this line. I guess the question that naturally comes up is, how? How can "every atom" be the same? The line could be suggesting that: 1) We are the same in...
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Walt Whitman
This small bit of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, eight lines, is a perfect encapsulation of Whitman’s view of nature. The “perfect silence” as he walks in the “mystical moist night-air”...
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Walt Whitman
This is a great pairing. Whitman and Tennyson are really different kinds of poets, and, even though their theme here is similar, the poems are quite different. Theme: Both poems are about death,...
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Walt Whitman
In Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself," lines 7-16 introduce several important themes that will reoccur frequently. For instance, when Whitman references the many past generations of family...
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Walt Whitman
The first stanza of section 31 is one of the most lyrical sections of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." It introduces the reader to a variety of images of the natural world, all of which culminate...
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Walt Whitman
Quite simply, he compares a spider, in the midst of weaving its web, with the narrator's soul. "A Noiseless Patient Spider" was included in the 1891-92 Leaves of Grass in a cluster called...
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Walt Whitman
Today in America we would probably say “Blades of Grass,” but the metaphor speaks to the infinitude of things – stars, individual leaves, individual blades of grass, individual grains of...
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Walt Whitman
The entire poem is an autobiography of Whitman, his “Song of Myself.” In the process of his descriptions of where he has been and what he has seen and experienced, he is actually describing...
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Walt Whitman
The scenes you refer to are, I assume, the episodes at the end of the section about heroism. Whitman says, “I understand the large hearts of heroes, / The courage of present times and all...
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Walt Whitman
Walk Whitman was an unconventional American poet whose work had an enormous impact upon new developments and trends in poetry at the end of the 19th century, and widely influenced American poetry...
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Leaves of Grass
"Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd" appears in the "Children of Adam" cluster in Leaves of Grass. It made its first appearance in the 1860 revision of Leaves of Grass. "Children of Adam" is...
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Walt Whitman
Alliteration is a literary device that Walt Whitman used throughout his poetry. In Song of the Open Road, alliteration is used to emphasize expression and meaning in each section. In Section 1,...
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Walt Whitman
The relative youth of America and its status as a nation of immigrants relates well to the qualities mentioned. The challenges faced by immigrants to this country certainly embody boldness,...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was a groundbreaking poet whose influence upon American literature has been considerable. His strong sense of individualism and appraisal of his own-self-worth helped him develop a...
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Walt Whitman
Though Walt Whitman himself never participated in combat, he was a nurse in Washington D.C. during the Civil War. There, he treated many soldiers who had been wounded in combat. The soldiers shared...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman expresses war’s destructive nature with an underlying religious connotation in his poem “A Sight In Camp In the Daybreak Gray and Dim.” As the poem’s narrator walks into a dim,...
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Walt Whitman
The poem "O Captain! My Captain" is a requiem to the late President Lincoln, referring to the recently restored unity of the United States as a ship that has "weather’d every rack" (2)--survived...
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Walt Whitman
This poem by Walt Whitman was written upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated on April 14, 1865, a scant five days after the official end of the Civil War on April 9, 1865. Lincoln...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are considered to be the two greatest poets that America has ever produced. That said, they could not have been more different in style, though not entirely in...
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Walt Whitman
What I'll do is I'll go stanza by stanza, identifying the main message within each, and then look at how each ties together at the end. Lover divine and perfect Comrade, / Waiting content,...
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Walt Whitman
In the poem Whitman conjures up many stark images on a fierce gale blowing across the ocean. His intense use of language and comparison to other powerful emotions lends itself to the...
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Walt Whitman
Thoreau once remarked that ....The actual object which one man will see from a particular hill top is just as different from those another will see as the beholders are different; we can not see...
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Walt Whitman
Dark shades in the tone of his verse permeate Whitman’s Civil War lyrics. For, his experiences as a wound dresser in which he saw first hand the destruction of young men's bodies and minds left a...
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Walt Whitman
Whitman's view on death is not as morose as that of many; instead, he perceives death as natural and not something frightful: Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely...
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Walt Whitman
Whitman's main literary device in Leaves of Grass (1855-87), which appears in nearly every section of the poem, is metaphor or simile, a characteristic of Whitman's poetic style. In addition,...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman reveals different types of love in his Leaves of Grass collection. I Dream'd in a Dream is from the Calamus poems and discusses man's love for man as opposed to his love for woman....
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Walt Whitman
This poem treats of the feelings of a soldier for his fallen “son,” a very human, compassionate connection with the other men “of flesh and bone” in the battle. The narrator returns to...
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Walt Whitman
Reuven Tsur is most often credited for making the distinction between a literal and a cognitive approach to poetry. According to Tsur there are two ways of reading poetry: for the literal meanings...
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Walt Whitman
Scholars agree that Walt Whitman felt inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's stated need for America to have its own American poet. Emerson saw all of America as one great poem that was left "unsung"...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a prominent and controversial journalist, writer and poet of 19th Century America. In a country still heavily influenced by Puritan sensibilities and values, and...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman's "Passage to India," Poem 183 in Leaves of Grass, certainly promotes globalization but not, perhaps, in the sense of modern's society's definition of the term. In Lines 34-36, for...
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Song of Myself
The opening of Whitman’s lifework, “Leaves of Grass,” this poem has enjoyed popularity since the mid-nineteenth century, and holds a place in American literature equal to Moby Dick and Tom...
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Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain! My Captain!" is an elegy poem because it is in memory of someone. It could also be considered a lyrical poem.
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Walt Whitman
There are several considerations in answering this question. First, we need to keep in mind that the sexuality of Walt Whitman is still debated. Some scholars believe that he was homosexual or...
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A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman concluded that his own "contradictory instincts" came from his mother's down to earth, material and practical concept of learning which she combined with the “transcendental and...
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Walt Whitman
One suggestion based upon the theme in "A Noiseless Patient Spider"--which you will need to correlate to the other poems you are using to see if the ideas replicate or are applicable only to...
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Walt Whitman
I believe the poem is titled, "The Voice of The Rain." In the poem, the rain is personified and the speaker of the poem asks it directly to explain itself. The rain responds by talking of how it is...
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Walt Whitman
It is my understanding that Walt Whitman had a great influence. In some anthologies of modern poetry Whitman's poems appear on the first pages. Poetry did not change overnight because of him. In...
