2015-08-21
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(1830-1886)
ü Is regarded as one of American's greatest poets;
ü Is ranked as a major new voice for her literary innovations;
ü Wrote nearly 2000 poems;
ü Only a dozen were published anonymously during her life time.
The main works:
"The Poems of Emily Dickinson" (3 volumes) 1955;
"The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson"
Style:
-worked out her own distinctive style;
ü experimented with grammar, capitalization, punctuation;
ü experimented with rhyme and meter:
a) rhyme and rhyme are irregular
b) poems are short
ü the materials and subject matters are quite conventional but her treatment of them is innovative (nature, love, immortality, death, faith, doubt, pain);
ü poems are based on a signal image or symbol;
ü imagery is whimsical;
ü view of the world is wry;
ü difficult and violent imagery describes emotional struggles;
ü poetic credo: "... Tell all the truth but tell it slant... "
"... "Sweetness of life" is our awareness that it will never come again... "
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
ü was determined to be the poet of democracy;
ü tried to reach the people no other poet had reached;
ü his poetry was for the lowest and the highest;
ü he failed to reach the common man who was put off by Whitman’s new poetic form.
Main Works:
Book of poems “Leaves of Grass”:
ü “I Hear America Singing”
ü “Come up From the Field Father”
ü “Song of Myself”
Style:
ü developed a kind of free verse;
ü without rhyme or a fixed rhythm;
ü distinguished by Biblical cadences and impressive repetitions;
ü Whitman had faith in the goodness of human nature, in the power and might of man, in his ability to create a better world;
ü the notion “leaves of grass” suggests unity in multiplicity. “Leaf” symbolizes creative life energy, the sign of God, the child of nature, it bears many meanings;
ü Whitman created catalogues of things to make a combination of many possible substances, names, images, objects.
