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Walt Whitman
Sasha Peterson
1Walt Whitman was one of the most influential poets in American history. Whitman believed that poetry should be written for the common people, not just for scholars. This new attitude toward poetry was shaped by his own experience with education, as well as his involvement in nineteenth-century politics.
2Born on May 31, 1819, Whitman was the second son in a family of nine children. The family lived on Long Island, where Whitman’s father worked as a house builder. An apprenticeship with a printer at age twelve cemented Whitman’s life-long love of literature. As for education, he was mostly self-taught. He spent his teen years reading Shakespeare, Dante, and the Bible. His short career as a printer in New York City ended when a fire destroyed the printing district.
3At age seventeen, Whitman began teaching in one-room schoolhouses to make ends meet. Sometimes he had more than eighty students in one classroom, ranging in age from five to fifteen. His teaching techniques were rather progressive for the time. He refused to use corporal punishment, and he often asked students to say their thoughts aloud. Whitman even invented educational games, used his own poems instead of traditional texts, and encouraged children to ask him anything. This teaching philosophy is explored in his famous poem “Song of Myself.” In the poem, the speaker attempts to answer a child’s question, “What is grass?” The narrator describes how the simple things in life, like grass, are often more complex than we think they are.
4By 1841, Whitman had turned to journalism. He even founded his own newspaper. In 1848, he moved to New Orleans to be the editor of the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that Whitman witnessed the cruelty of slavery for the first time. For years, he had been writing for newspapers that addressed primarily white issues and ignored the plight of the slaves. His experience in New Orleans had a profound effect on his attitude toward race and politics. Though he was not an abolitionist, Whitman did oppose the extension of slavery into territories gained from the Mexican-American War.
5Whitman moved back to New York that same year and founded another newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman. During this time, he formed friendships with other writers and radical thinkers of the same mind. Whitman also continued to develop his literary skills, taking his free verse poetry in new directions. It was during this period that he developed the universal “I” used in his famous collection of poetry Leaves of Grass. Whitman was famous for exploring the interconnectedness of all things. Other themes in Whitman’s poetry include the endurance of love and the role of the poet in society.
6When the Civil War began in 1861, Whitman volunteered as a nurse in the hospitals of New York and Washington, D.C. He also served as a clerk for the Department of the Interior during his eleven years in the nation’s capital. In the 1870s, Whitman moved to New Jersey to be closer to his ailing mother. He published many poems before his death on March 26, 1892
Walt Whitman
Sasha Peterson
1Walt Whitman was one of the most influential poets in American history. Whitman believed that poetry should be written for the common people, not just for scholars. This new attitude toward poetry was shaped by his own experience with education, as well as his involvement in nineteenth-century politics.
2Born on May 31, 1819, Whitman was the second son in a family of nine children. The family lived on Long Island, where Whitman’s father worked as a house builder. An apprenticeship with a printer at age twelve cemented Whitman’s life-long love of literature. As for education, he was mostly self-taught. He spent his teen years reading Shakespeare, Dante, and the Bible. His short career as a printer in New York City ended when a fire destroyed the printing district.
3At age seventeen, Whitman began teaching in one-room schoolhouses to make ends meet. Sometimes he had more than eighty students in one classroom, ranging in age from five to fifteen. His teaching techniques were rather progressive for the time. He refused to use corporal punishment, and he often asked students to say their thoughts aloud. Whitman even invented educational games, used his own poems instead of traditional texts, and encouraged children to ask him anything. This teaching philosophy is explored in his famous poem “Song of Myself.” In the poem, the speaker attempts to answer a child’s question, “What is grass?” The narrator describes how the simple things in life, like grass, are often more complex than we think they are.
4By 1841, Whitman had turned to journalism. He even founded his own newspaper. In 1848, he moved to New Orleans to be the editor of the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that Whitman witnessed the cruelty of slavery for the first time. For years, he had been writing for newspapers that addressed primarily white issues and ignored the plight of the slaves. His experience in New Orleans had a profound effect on his attitude toward race and politics. Though he was not an abolitionist, Whitman did oppose the extension of slavery into territories gained from the Mexican-American War.
5Whitman moved back to New York that same year and founded another newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman. During this time, he formed friendships with other writers and radical thinkers of the same mind. Whitman also continued to develop his literary skills, taking his free verse poetry in new directions. It was during this period that he developed the universal “I” used in his famous collection of poetry Leaves of Grass. Whitman was famous for exploring the interconnectedness of all things. Other themes in Whitman’s poetry include the endurance of love and the role of the poet in society.
6When the Civil War began in 1861, Whitman volunteered as a nurse in the hospitals of New York and Washington, D.C. He also served as a clerk for the Department of the Interior during his eleven years in the nation’s capital. In the 1870s, Whitman moved to New Jersey to be closer to his ailing mother. He published many poems before his death on March 26, 1892
On the Beach at Night
Walt Whitman
1 On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
2 Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
3 From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
4 Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
5Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
6Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
What subject matter and theme do the two poems in the passage share?
Responses
A Both poems fail to find hope and joy in the meditation of nature.Both poems fail to find hope and joy in the meditation of nature.
B Both poems celebrate the beauty of the stars and their inspiration.Both poems celebrate the beauty of the stars and their inspiration.
C The two poems do not share either subject matter or theme in common.The two poems do not share either subject matter or theme in common.
D Both poems lament the inability of man to make meaning out of nature.
Bot GPT 3.5
answered1 month ago