Today: Be One With your New Seat

Intro to Walt WhitmanHomework: This Compost

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.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Walt_Whitman_edit_2.jpg

Walt Whitman 1819-1892

Inspired by Thoreau and Emerson

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

Poetic Form

Free Verse (Like the expanding nation)Unstructured, no limits on lines/stanzas

FREE VERSE

A form of poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern20th Century poets were pioneers of this which allowed them to break from formula/ rigidity of traditional poetry

Poetic devices to look for:Repetition: (Anaphora)Alliteration: Repeating sounds at the beginning of wordsAssonance: Repeated vowel soundsConsonance: Repeated consonant soundsParallel structure: phrases/lines whose pattern is similarCadence: rising and fallingJuxtaposition: two contrasting images, side by side

Devices continued…Metaphors and similes: descriptive comparisonsSibilance: consonants making a hissing sound “s” or “sh”Montage: several brief images, pictures placed side by side for effectPersonificationImageryLists1st person “I” = “eye”?

Themes/SubjectsRomantic view of nature

Body and Soul are oneNature is God

Rebirth and RegenerationDeath is a part of lifeSymbols of regeneration (grass on graves)

Value of the EverydayDignity of the common person/labor

Power of Poetry to transcend timeSpeaks to future generations

Homework

Complete annotations of: “I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing”Annotate “This Compost”