Romanticism
What time period is associated with Romanticism?
Civil War; American Industrialism; the mid- to late-1800's
What did Dr. Blair say his favorite line of the poem was?
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves...
The "rocking cradle" is a reference to...?
The sea
Dickinson's poems can be sung to the tune of hymns because they're in _____ meter.
common
In what period did Frost write?
1890's - early 1920's
The principal form of Romantic poetry is... (no form? metered verse?)
free verse
Who is Whitman writing for?
The common man
What events take place in this poem?
Whitman, as a boy, witnesses the grief of a mockingbird who loses its mate.
(This event changes him, and causes him to grow up. He feels everything deeper than before, because he understands that things, relationships, etc. can be lost.)
What feelings does Dickinson evoke in "I taste a liquor never brewed?"
Drunk on life, more so than the bees and the butterflies.
In "Birches," Frost compares the way the bent birch trees look to...
girls drying their hair
For a poem to be "lyric," it must have...
ONE speaker, or a single narrative voice ("I"), like Whitman's "Song of Myself."
What institutions does Whitman mean when he writes "Creeds and schools in abeyance...retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten?"
Churches, schools, all the institutions which teach people how to live. Whitman believes we should keep them, but pay less attention to them than we pay to our internal compass.
What kind of poem is this? (e.g. elegie, ballad) (remember that it memorializes the lost bird)
bildungsroman OR elegie
"Because I could not stop for Death" personifies death in what way?
A horse-drawn carriage.
What do the birch trees represent for the poet in "Birches"?
Transcendence and return
Emotions or logic?
Emotions; the "felt sense" of the world
"And to die is different from what anyone assumed, and...?"
luckier
What do shadows and evening represent in the poem?
death
Emily Dickinson's "There's a certain Slant of light," set in winter, is probably about...
mental anguish, spiritual death, feeling oppressed.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep
but I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep
and miles to go before I sleep."
What does Frost mean?
Life marches on; we might like to spend all our time contemplating the woods, but we have to take care of the tasks and promises of life.
"Sleep" may also mean death.
Romanticism DIVERGES from (must get one of the three)
didactic, traditional, classical poetry
What's a hieroglyphic, in Romantic terms?
A symbol, usually a natural fact or substance, which shows a deeper spiritual truth.
Emerson: "Natural facts are signs of spiritual facts."
Example: grass
Paumanok is the Native name for what place?
Long Island
What does the fly represent in "I heard a fly buzz-- when I died?"
Doubt about God's existence, a distraction from the holiness of death, which comes between her and the sky/window.