Charles Whitman

My Captain!” demonstrates Whitman mourning the death of Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated in 1865. The captain is an allusion to Lincoln as a leader which represents the modernist hierarchy of nationality. Therefore, the “bleeding drops of red/ Where on the deck my Captain lies/ Fallen cold and dead,” is a gory representation of his assassination (Whitman). Lincoln’s role as the captain during the Civil War was to unify America. This social…

Allen Ginsberg’s electric “Footnote” to Howl situates itself comfortably within his bigger poem, or just plain Howl, a well-known and admired epic by Allen Ginsberg for his generation of lost and disaffected youths. Ginsberg’s epic entirety closely resembles Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass published in 1855, which marked an era of upheaval in politics, society, and social conventions. Now getting to Ginsberg’s infamous “Footnote,” which stirred up and presented a new literary style approaching…

in history full of poverty and segregation, some extraordinary writers see the brighter side of things. Walt Whitman was a poet that has a happier outlook on his surroundings, on the other hand Langston Hughes is a poet with bitter hatred, but both poets have hope for a better America in their writing. Both poets are very different but also have a lot in common. Even though Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes were very different from one another they used some of the same literary devices. They…

Walt Whitman was an American poet, teacher, and journalist that lived from 1819 to 1892 (PBS). The themes of his work were heavily influenced by social and political events as well as experiences from his own life. Individualism and American idealism were two of the major themes that Whitman used in his poems. Events like the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, and the migration of pioneer families to the newly acquired Western portion of the United States also influenced his work (Poets).…

uan Ramon Jimenez was an inspiring short and intense personal poet. They were a great inspiration to a generation of spanish writers in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Born in Spain, he went to college, but quit to devote himself to the love and joy of writing. His poems began appearing when he was just 17. He was a master of the new generation of poets. In “I Am Not I”, Juan Ramon Jimenez writes about how there is a real self as well as an illusory self. Juan Ramon Jimenez writes about the self who he…

Walt Whitman was a poet who lived throughout most of the nineteenth century and drew a wide following by disregarding “classic” conventions and using imagery that angered many. Whitman promoted himself greatly by writing anonymous reviews of his own work and sending his work to other prominent poets and writers for reviews and support. He worked in many areas of the newspaper business before becoming a nurse during the Civil War. He believed in transcendentalism. The theory that everything and…

“Song of myself” is one of Walt Whitman 's excellent poetry of The Leaves of Grass. He emphasizes an all-powerful "self". Instead of referring to Walt himself, the self is both individual and universal. He wrote this poem to sing about himself, to express his thoughts about democracy, to set free his human passion, to praise great nationality. In this poem, Walt Whitman presents the speaker that he sees a hawk, and his response is to feel immensely humbled as he sees elements of himself in…

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…

Gulliver’s Travels are both contemporary works of literature that each have their own ideas of the self. Whitman loves every aspect of the self as well as the nature and world surrounding it because he finds it just as valuable. Swift, however, displays his contempt for the self numerous times throughout his satire. Both of these authors share their opinions of the self in contrasting ways. When Whitman discusses the self, he is celebrating himself, the reader and the universe in a manner that…

“I Hear America Singing,” by Walt Whitman is mainly about American people working away at their jobs in a joyful manner. I will be paraphrasing this poem, stating the theme, and giving my personal reaction to it. To summarize Walt Whitman’s poem “I Hear America Singing,” people work joyfully and sing the songs of their jobs throughout the day. The speaker of the poem announces that he hears "America singing," and then describes that each worker sings, "what belongs to him or her,” such as the…