UNIVERSIDADE ESTCIO DE S

POEMS ANALYSES WALT WHITMAN EMILY DICKINSON

Ricardo Fernandes Marques Task assigned, by Professor Cludia, as AV2 for American Literature I

Niteri 2012.2

We hereby intend to present some piece of information about two important American Writers, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson is considered one of the most original 19th Century American poets. She is noted for her unconventional broken rhyming meter and use of dashes and random capitalisation as well as her creative use of metaphor and overall innovative style. She was a deeply sensitive woman who questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality, often in poignant, deeply personal poetry. Emily Dickinson talks about the conditionals in life, maybe hers. She raises possibilities. We through the poems chosen will comment this idea. Her poems are characterized by the use of dashes and random capitalization, the first poem we chose does not show these features, though. So, we also decided to present another of her poems, to show the use of dash and reinforce the idea of possibility; the uncertainty of a defined being. Due to her last years in seclusion and questioning, we chose to analyze the poem known as ALMOST and IM NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU? , also, due to the raising of possibility structures presented in it and the uncertainty of being something defined. We will also confront with the poem ME IMPERTURBE and AMONG THE MULTITUDE of Walt Whitman which, for us, show the certainty of being something defined and not the possibilities raised by Emily. Analyzing the two chosen poems of Walt Whitman, we can see clearly the definitions he provides. He works on the ideas of the opposites when he says: Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary _ all these subordinate, (I am eternally equal with the best _ I am not subordinate ;) He defines and works on his certainties rather than among multiple possibilities as Emily does.

Emily uses the conditional perfect meaning remote possibility and weak possibility when she says: Within my reach! I could have touched! I might have chanced that way! Maybe she wanted to complete her past hypothesis saying: If I had been courageous One common point we could notice is the use of dash as seen below: Then there's a pair of us _don't tell! Emily Dickinson Some are baffled, but that one is not_that one knows me. Walt Whitman Both use of dash characterize side comments and both search for the definition of a being.

Poetry, Series One Edited by two of her friends: MABEL LOOMIS TODD & T.W. HIGGINSON by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) I. LIFE VII. ALMOST by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Within my reach! I could have touched! I might have chanced that way! Soft sauntered through the village, Sauntered as soft away! So unsuspected violets Within the fields lie low, Too late for striving fingers That passed, an hour ago.

IM NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU? by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us _don't tell! They'd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

Walt Whitman, Born on May 31, 1819, was the second son of Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The family, which consisted of nine children, 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. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. Analyzing Whitmans poems, at least the two chosen by us, we could see he is firm; definite in his verses for he uses nouns and adjectives most of the time, not allowing the reader to think but making the reader feel and maybe after, think of the sensations provoked. As we can see, down below, we have the example of the use of nouns and adjectives in the two poems selected by us:

ME IMPERTURBE by Walt Whitman Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, AMONG THE MULTITUDE by Walt Whitman I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am,

ME IMPERTURBE by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland, A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada, Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

AMONG THE MULTITUDE by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Among the men and women the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am, Some are baffled, but that one is not_that one knows me. Ah lover and perfect equal, I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections, And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you. What we could understand by analyzing these writers is that even expressing themselves through poetry, they did it quite differently, mainly because of their backgrounds and their own ways to face the world. However, both provoked strangeness and promoted a new perspective of the society they lived.

References Sites: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/edickinson/bl-ed-1-7-almost.htm http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/wwhitman/bl-ww-meimper.htm http://www.online-literature.com/dickinson/ http://www.online-literature.com/dickinson/448/ http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/wwhitman/bl-ww-multitude.htm