John Hodgen's Poem High Summer

The poem High Summer by John Hodgen critiques the affect prominent poets have on the thinking of future generation and examines the validity of these critiques made on the subjects they write about. In this poem, John Hodgen describes, in a plain spoken and blunt way, Walt Whitman helping wounded Civil War veterans in a makeshift military hospital. He uses candid comparisons to prove his points and alliteration to improve the readability of his poem at the end. In order to understand poems, the reader must have a historical and cultural understanding of the subject manner. This allows the reader to fully enjoy and understand the meaning of the poem. This poem is no different. In order to understand High Summer, the reader must understand …show more content…
The middle part of the poem is dreary, it describes the treatment of wounded soldiers. The last four lines of the poem conveys naive happiness and excitement for the future. The reason the last four lines seem to empress naïve happiness is because the lines describe the children of civil war veterans. These children are named after Walt and will look to his writings as a guide to the Civil War. The problem is, he was never on the front lines during the Civil War. He never saw a brutally mangled body. Therefore, his writings cannot be a thorough representation of the …show more content…
In order to fully understand High Summer by John Hodgen the reader must understand the Civil War, the Transcendentalist movement and know the writings and life experiences of Walt Whitman. With this information the reader is then able to translate an interesting, but simple description of Civil War veterans recovering at a military hospital into a poem about the effect of literature on posterity. It reminds the reader to examine the source and understand that individual writers no matter how famous have a certain perspective of the world that does not always tell the whole story. With this poem John Hodgen makes a simple yet wise statement, enjoy great literature but understand even the best writers cannot tell the whole