Poetry & Whitman
The form that Walt Whitman write in, with few exceptions.
What is Free Verse?
Dr. Blair's favorite line from Whitman's works.
What is "And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier." (Whitman sect. 6)?
The state from which Whitman's birds originate.
What is Alabama?
A nickname given to Dickinson by her neighbors.
What is "The Moth of Amherst"?
The true intoxicant in Dickinson's "I taste a liquor never brewed..."
What is life?
Walt Whitman is famous for creating these organizational structures in his poems.
What are lists?
The place where one should look for Whitman now that he is long gone.
What is "under your boot-soles" (Whitman sect. 52)?
The tool Whitman uses to differentiate his recollection from the bird's song.
What is rhythm?
What is 20 years?
The archetypal symbol that represents eternity and fertility (or the origins of life).
What is the sea?
Our lecture describes Walt Whitman as this kind of poet, in terms of the language (or diction) he uses across his work.
What is a democratic poet?
The character that represents Whitman in Section 11's beach day scene.
What is the woman watching OR the 29th young man on the shore?
Biblical figure used to demonstrate the speaker's "possession" with the bird's song/knowledge of death.
What is a demon?
The place in her room where Dickinson's poems were discovered after death.
What is a dresser drawer?
The symbol "interposed" between Dickinson and the light on her death bed.
What is a fly?
The denomination of Christianity that Whitman's family belonged to in his youth.
What are Quakers?
The entity Whitman addresses as the "Listener up there!" in Section 51 of "Song of Myself"
Who is the reader OR God?
Whitman uses the moon as a motif throughout "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" to reinforce this main idea.
What is death?
Two attributes describe the U.S. poetry movement (beginning after 1865).
What is Lyric and Romantic poetry?
The moment where Dickinson may have accused God of inflicting her mental struggle in "There's a certain slant of light..."
What is an "imperial affliction"?
The assumption that meaning is found in an author/artist's perceived intentions behind a work, rather than the in the viewer's interpretation.
What is the "intentional fallacy"?
The significant feature in this line from Section 2:
"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of/ all poems" (Whitman sect. 2)
What is meter?
The narrative form that describes Whitman's journey to becoming a poet in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking".
What is a Künstlerroman?
A rhythmic pattern that Dickinson employs in a majority of her poems.
What is common meter?
Two possible declarations made in Dickinson's "Wild nights! Wild nights!"
What is a declaration of romantic love OR a declaration of faith?