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Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

• Born as a second son of Walter Whitman, a

housebuilder, in a family consisted of nine
children, that lived in Brooklyn and Long Island
in the 1820s and 1830s
• At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn
the printer’s trade, and fell in love with the
written word
• At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman
decided to stay and work in the hospital and
treated the wounded
• Along with Emily Dickinson, he is considered one
of America’s most important poets
 Whitman’s poetry
• Democratic in both its subject matter and its language
• Just as America is far different politically and
practically from its European counterparts, so too
must American poetry distinguish itself from previous
models
• He was the first to write poetry in a vernacular
language
• A truly democratic poetry, for Whitman, is one that,
using a common language, is able to cross the gap
between the self and another individual
 Analysis
• The poetic structures he employs are unconventional
but reflect his democratic ideals
• Lists are a way for him to bring together a wide variety
of items without imposing a hierarchy on them
• Perception, rather than analysis, is the basis for this
kind of poetry, which uses few metaphors or other
kinds of symbolic language
• By transmitting a story he has gotten from another
individual, Whitman hopes to give his readers a
sympathetic experience, which will allow them to
incorporate the anecdote into their own history
 Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Themes
 Democracy as a way of life
Whitman tried to be democratic in both life and poetry. He imagined
democracy as a way of interpersonal interaction and as a way for
individuals to integrate their beliefs into their everyday lives.
 The cycle of growth and death
As a way of dealing with both the population growth and the massive
deaths during the Civil War, Whitman focused on the life cycles of
individuals: people are born, they age and reproduce, and they die.
 The beauty of the individual
“Song of Myself” opens in a triumphant praise to the individual: “I
celebrate myself, and sing myself”.
 Motifs
 Lists
Whitman filled his poetry with long lists. Often a sentence will be broken
into many clauses, separated by commas, and each clause will describe
some scene, person, or object. These lists create a sense of expansiveness
in the poem, as they mirror the growth of the United States.
 The human body
Whitman’s poetry revels in its depictions of the human body and the
body’s capacity for physical contact. The speaker of “Song of Myself”
claims that “copulation is no more rank to me than death is” (521) to
demonstrate the body’s physical possibilities.
 Rhythm and incantation
Many of Whitman’s poems rely on rhythm and repetition to create a
captivating quality of incantation. Often, Whitman begins several lines in a
row with the same word or phrase, a literary device called anaphora.
 Symbols
• Plants
Plant life symbolizes both growth and multiplicity. Whitman uses
flowers, bushes, wheat, trees, and other plant life to signify the
possibilities of regeneration and re-growth after death.
 The self
Whitman links the self to the conception of poetry throughout his
work, envisioning the self as the birthplace of poetry. Most of his
poems are spoken from the first person, using the pronoun I.
Whitman can create an elaborate analogy about the ideal
democracy, which would, like the self, be capable of containing
the whole world.
 Song of Myself
Summary and Form
This most famous of Whitman’s works was one of the original twelve
pieces in the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass. Like most of the other
poems, it too was revised extensively, reaching its final permutation in
1881. “Song of Myself” is a sprawling combination of biography, sermon,
and poetic meditation. Whitman uses symbols and sly commentary to get
at important issues. “Song of Myself” is composed more of vignettes than
lists: Whitman uses small, precisely drawn scenes to do his work here.
This poem did not take on the title “Song of Myself” until the 1881
edition. Previous to that it had been titled “Poem of Walt Whitman, an
American” and, in the 1860, 1867, and 1871 editions, simply “Walt
Whitman.” The poem’s shifting title suggests something of what Whitman
was about in this piece. Walt Whitman, the specific individual, melts away
into the abstract “Myself”. Starting from the premise that “what I assume
you shall assume” Whitman tries to prove that he both encompasses and
is indistinguishable from the universe.
 Ezra Pound (1885 –1972)
 A technical genius and pivotal figure in world
poetry
 A restless seeker and experimenter and he
disdained his American roots
 He kept company with expatriates Ernest
Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein
 In addition to producing a formidable canon of
verse, essay, criticism, biography, and translation,
Pound stirred international controversy and led a
re-evaluation of language and meaning in
modern verse
 Pound’s career
• Pound completed a B.A. in philosophy from Hamilton College; he
then taught romance languages at the University of
Pennsylvania, where he earned an M.A. in Spanish. Fleeing
provincialism and artistic sterility, he went to southern Europe
and researched a doctoral thesis on the plays of Lope de Vega.
He earned what he could from reviewing and tutoring and
worked as secretary for poet William Butler Yeats while
championing "imagism" his term for modern poetry.
 Pound’s career
A racist, anti-Semite, and proponent of Hitler's butchery and
Mussolini's Fascism, Pound supported the Italian government in
short-wave broadcasts over Rome Radio that were addressed to
the English-speaking world. In 1942, he declared American
involvement in the war illegal. After the U.S. military arrested
Pound in Genoa in May 1945, he was imprisoned for treason.
After being returned to Washington, for trial, in 1946, Pound
escaped hard prison time by pleading insanity and senility. Critics
accused him of perpetuating the pose of raving paranoic to avoid
retrial and possible execution. He wrote The Pisan Cantos (1948)
and The Cantos of Ezra Pound (1948). In an atmosphere of
jubilance and victory marred by charges of fakery, he accepted
the Bollingen Prize of Poetry in 1949,
 Major works

"A Virginal," composed in 1912, is named for the diminutive

keyboard instrument preferred by maidens during the late
Renaissance. The poem reflects the early period of Pound's
development and his skillful use of the fourteen-line Petrarchan
sonnet. He rhymes the first eight lines abbaabba, closing with
the rhyme scheme cdeecd. Opening with a burst of emotion, he
introduces his rejection with two strong beats, "No, no!" His
rejection of classicism turns on an amusing overstatement of
departure from the arms that "have bound me straitly," a pun
suggesting a straightjacket.
 Major works
"A Pact," Pound's forthright confrontation with Walt
Whitman, allows the poet to come to terms with a debt
to his American forebear, the father of free verse
expressionism. Pound depicts himself as the petulant
child of an obstinate father. By reining himself in the
fifth line, he refuses to acknowledge the development
of modernism from its foundations. From this "new
wood" that Whitman exposed, Pound intends to carve
the future of poetry, thus achieving a "commerce"
between himself and his predecessor.
 Major works
Pound's lifetime of carving resulted in a
masterwork of 116 stanzas that spanned the four
decades of his mature and declining years. In his
utmost work named Cantos he imitates the style
and diction of Homer, whose Odyssey follows the
fate-hounded Greek sailor all over the
Mediterranean.
 Major works
"Portrait d'une Femme" (1912)
This poem paints an obscure image of a woman, beginning with several
metaphors describing her and her interactions with other people. She has
been living in London for at least twenty years. On line three, "bright
ships" is likely a metaphor for the people that surround her, leaving her
abstract "fees" like ideas and gossip. "Great minds," probably
philosophers or writers tend to seek her out. Even though she is always
"second choice," she prefers this life to being stuck in a dull marriage.
In return, she gives these people "facts that lead nowhere; and a tale or
two," which aren't particularly useful. The poem characterizes the
woman's "riches" as very decorative. Despite this ongoing exchange,
there is nothing that truly belongs to the woman. The poem finishes with
the line "Yet this is you," which suggests that she would not be who she is
if she had things to call her own.
 Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
He was the son of a prominent industrialist who
came from a well- connected Boston family. Eliot
always felt the loss of his family’s New England
roots and seemed to be somewhat ashamed of
his father’s business success; throughout his life
he continually sought to return to the epicenter
of Anglo- Saxon culture, first by attending
Harvard and then by emigrating to England,
where he lived from 1914 until his death.
 Eliot’s career
Eliot met Ezra Pound in 1914, as well, and it was
Pound who was his main mentor and editor and
who got his poems published and noticed. During
a 1921 break from his job as a bank clerk, Eliot
finished the work that was to secure him fame,
The Waste Land. This poem, heavily edited by
Pound and perhaps also by Eliot’s wife, Vivien,
addressed the fragmentation and alienation of
modern culture, making use of these fragments
to create a new kind of poetry.
 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1915/17

“Prufrock” displays the two most important characteristics of Eliot’s

early poetry. First, it is strongly influenced by the French Symbolists,
like Mallarmé and Baudelaire, whom Eliot had been reading almost
constantly while writing the poem. The second defining characteristic
of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. From the
Symbolists, Eliot takes his sensuous language and eye for detail that
nevertheless contributes to the overall beauty of the poem (the yellow
smoke and the hair-covered arms of the women are two good
examples of this).
The Symbolists, too, privileged the same kind of individual Eliot creates
with Prufrock: the moody, urban, isolated thinker. However, whereas
the Symbolists would have been more likely to make their speaker
himself a poet or artist, Eliot chooses to make Prufrock an
unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for the common man.
 The Hollow Men - 1925
• Influenced by The Heart of Darkness, which was written
and said to be referenced to several pieces of works in
literature, but the first two lines in the poem directly allude
to Kurtz from Heart of Darkness and to Guy Fawkes, an
attempted arsonist of the English house of Parliament,
"Mistah Kurtz - he dead" and "A penny for the Old Guy"
respectively. The entire poem resembles that exactly of
Kurtz, Marlow, and the other characters portrayed in the
novella. It states much of the same themes and messages
of the book, and the question of moral seems to be the
common theme among the film, book, and the poem. The
poem is timeless and is still referenced to today's society of
men working in the corporate industry. 
 The Waste Land 1921/22

• Section I: “The Burial of the Dead”

• Section II: “A Game of Chess”
• Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
• Section IV: “Death by Water”
• Section V: “What the Thunder Said”

• Four Quartets 1934-43

• “Burnt Norton”
• “East Coker”
• “The Dry Salvages”
• “Little Gidding”