...“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman immediately reminded me of texts and poems written by modernist authors, poems designed to reject traditional methods of writing and creating a new, cutting-edge style of writing based on emotions and simplicity. While this poem in particular isn’t exactly simple, it is powerful because it creates sharp images and evokes certain emotions for the reader about numerous topics, including religion, nature, and aging; a lot of the images are based on Whitman’s experiences and memories. Whitman’s style of writing includes heavy usage of anaphora (repetition of words at the beginning of lines or clauses), which also contributes to the creation of sharp images to be able to manifest his emotions in the poem; for example, That I could forget the mockers and insults! That I could forget the trickling tears, and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers! That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. (Line 961) Whitman’s poem is also reminiscent of imagist poetry. Imagism was a precursor to modernism and endorses the creation of sharp images in poetry, almost creating a still-life full of detail using words. One verse that struck me as such was I visit the orchards of spheres, and look at the product: And look at quintillions ripen’d, and look at quintillions green. (Line 797) This particular sentence elicited a clear and beautiful picture in my mind of a small path lined with orchards and countless amounts...
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...Margaret Whitman Hewlett Packard is a multinational hardware and software corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard is Margaret “Meg” Cushing Whitman. She assumed this role in September of 2011after serving on the Board of Directors for Hewlett Packard (HP). Meg Whitman was born and raised in Long Island, New York where she graduated from high school in just three years. After graduating, she went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with honors from Princeton in 1977. She then went on to earn a Master of Business Administration degree in 1979 from Harvard University. Her career began as a Brand Manager for Procter and Gamble, and then she went on to rise from a consultant to a senior Vice President at Bain & Company. Next, she became a Vice President at The Walt Disney Company, a Vice President at Stride Rite Corporation and President and CEO of Florists’ Transworld Delivery. Her tenure at Hasbro had her bringing the British group, Teletubbies, to United States television. Meg Whitman’s major accomplishments came when in 1988 she became Chief Executive Officer of eBay where there were 30 employees and annual revenues of $4 million. Whitman was able to grow the company to about 15,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of $8 billion. A brief stint in politics, using her own money, Whitman ran for Governor of California where she lost the election. She then joined the Board of Directors of Hewlett...
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...Essay on Whitman and Cunningham Society, just a word that most people use to describe the people around them and the population, holds the meaning of so much more. Society always appears to be used in negative context, because normally, it is used to describe a stereotype. The world is fully of stereotypes that are created by the opinions of everyday people, members of our society. Society can be portrayed in many ways, but it is how it is shown that counts. Michael Cunningham in his works of “In The Machine” and “Children’s Crusade”, and Walt Whitman in his poem “Song Of Myself” portray society as a murderer and their characters as the victims. Through interpretations and descriptions, their journeys and victimizations are brought to life through the literature. The ways in which society affects each person are shown in “In The Machine” as Lucas falls to industrialization, in “Song of Myself” as the reader discovers society’s true effects, in “Children’s Crusade” as Cat breaks away from society and finds her true happiness, and in “Song of Myself” as stereotypes are formed by society. Throughout the story, In The Machine, by Michael Cunningham, the main character, Lucas falls victim to society and its expectations. Lucas is just an average boy trying to get by during the course of the industrial revolution. Throughout the course of this period, people in society began to realize how technology was going to take over their lives. Lucas, became very involved in machines, he began...
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...alt Whitman Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman 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. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he experienced at first hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city. On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded a "free soil" newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass (self-published), which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to...
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...Circular cycles on Whitman poetry. The American Naissance is considered not as a rebirth but a foundation of a new expression that was showed mainly through literature. This time comes to be the equivalent of Elizabethan Age in terms of the amount of intellectual work created (Ruland 125) but also as a cultural independence in which the concept of being American is portrayed in the literary production. This period starts with the work of Emerson, who captures the essence of transcendentalism in his essay Self Reliance. Among the most renowned names along this period like Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Thoreau and Dickinson; they tackle topics from their own perspective specially Whitman and Dickinson with death. Death for these authors does not seem to be something that frighten them but a needed step for rebirth, transcend and to get to eternity. Therefore, death can be seen as an entrance gate to a cyclical process in which nature, self-experience and also death itself are constantly interchanging. Death Death is a topic developed in the pieces of work of Dickinson as well as Whitman. For Whitman life and death are a continuum in which death is the boundary among current life and another one. This idea of cyclical life comes directly from the cycles of nature as for Whitman nature is one of the means by which mankind is able to know, to discover them and also to get to contact with divinity. A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; ...
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...Walt Whitman was one of America’s most inspiring poets. Born a poetic genius in the nineteenth century, Whitman influenced the twentieth century with his idealistic poetry. He envisioned democracy as a way of life and looked to America for inspiration. Walt Whitman’s background influenced his writing in many ways and produced a new poetic style which changed the face of American Literature. Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, New York, to Walter Whitman, a carpenter, and Louisa Van Velsor. He was the second oldest of nine children (Price and Folsom online). At age four, Whitman and his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he spent a difficult childhood because of his family’s poor financial circumstances. At age eleven, Whitman ended his formal education and sought employment to supplement his family’s income. He got a job as an apprentice on a liberal, working-class newspaper called the “Long Islander Patriot.” There he “learned the printing trade and was first exposed to the excitement of putting words into print and observing how thought and event could be quickly transformed into language and immediately communicated to thousands of readers” (Price and Folsom online). Whitman began promoting his ideas to the newspaper. By age twelve, he had his first words published (Price and Folsom online). He was fascinated with seeing his own words and thoughts in print. Two years later, Whitman’s family moved back to West Hills leaving fourteen year old Whitman...
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...Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two of America’s greatest poets. They both wrote about death, life, and God. They also both had a love for nature and included it in their works. They led drastically different lifestyles and their writing styles were very different but the messages they presented through their writing were actually fairly similar. Their Life Dickinson and Whitman had very different upbringings. Dickinson came from a very wealthy family, attended an elite school, and also attended college. She lived a very introverted and reclusive life. She made few attempts to publish her work, choosing instead to share them privately with family and friends. During her lifetime only 7 of her poems were published only because she wrote them to others who had them published. Dickinson's youthful years were not without turmoil. Deaths of friends and relatives, including her young cousin Sophia Holland, prompted questions about death and immortality. Since her house was located near the town cemetery, Dickinson could not have ignored the frequent burials that later provided powerful imagery for her poems. Not having conventional religious views may have also contributed to her isolation. She did have a belief in God but it was different than the views held by her peers. Although Dickinson's friends, sister, father, and eventually brother all joined the church, Emily never did. In her later years, Dickinson increasingly withdrew from public...
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...Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay Inc. is by far one of the most compelling and intelligent leaders I have read or heard about. She faced many challenges, not only to create a marketing image for her company, but also to create a community between her customers and eBay as a whole. In my opinion, her overarching challenge can be characterized by a long-term versus short-term ethical dilemma. Her short-term solution was to hire many new employees because the company was growing so rapidly. However, there was a conflict of interest because there would be no way to ensure that all of those new employees hold values that she wanted the company to stand for in the present as well as future. As for her trade-off values, Whitman also faced the task of choosing whether or not to turn the company image into strictly a business to make the most money possible, or to continue focusing time and attention on fostering a community of people with shared interest and goals. As well as morals, communication was another barrier that Whitman faced. Not understanding the technological problems...
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...Essay This essay will examine two poems by Walt Whitman, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” and “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”. These two poems are similar in several ways yet differ in many as well. Each poem can be broken down and analyzed to relate to the human experience. Walt Whitman “A Noiseless Patient Spider” is about a spider as well as one’s soul. Whitman does a great job making two different things similar. A spider’s legs are always moving searching for a good place to make its connections to create its web. The speaker of the poem describes the spider as “a little promontory it stood isolated” (L.2) A promontory is a land mass protruding out surrounded by water. The spider is standing on a ledge protruding out surrounded by a vast emptiness. Whitman says “marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding” (L.3) meaning the spider is working vigorously to find the correct place for its web. This relates to the second stanza which is about a person’s soul which is alone in the world constantly searching for a companion to quote, “ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, and seeking the spheres to connect them.” (L.8). this poem really leaves you to wonder how exactly a person really connects Hammer 2 To another person. It is not known exactly known what draws you to a person you just are. Whitman uses a lot of words that are euphony as well as cacophony...
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... Walt Whitman Poems critique I found it difficult to understand most of Walt Whitman’s poems as I found some of them to be a little unorthodox. As I do to most poems in general. So I narrowed them down to two of the poems that I liked. In the first poem I read, Song of myself, Whitman jumps from topic to topic in almost every other line. The poem gave me a problem understanding where he was going with his poems as a speaker. I do have an understanding though, that Whitman himself is the speaker (as we call all poets)in this poem. Whitman pretty much declares it is “Walt Whitman day,” it’s the celebration of his life. He embraces the outdoors with this simple line, “The atmosphere is not perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my forever, I am in love with it” (21). This explains how much he loves the world and nature, and how everything blends together for him. There is some rhythm in this poem, but really no rhyme. Whitman uses some metaphors, and personifications. Whitman describes the “I,” that represents things that go on in everyday life. The “Me myself” is the observer of the “I”, as it observes everything in his life, and the “Soul” represents one of the essences of life which is nature. The other short poem, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, was an easier read for me, because I didn’t have to read it ten times like I did for the other ones. In this poem it seemed that Whitman is the character...
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...David Deaton Mr. Huitt American Lit and Comp 24 January 2014 Dickinson versus Whitman Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson's works have numerous differences. Compared to Dickinson's short and seemingly simple poems, Whitman's are long and often complex. Yet both twentieth century writers share several similarities when scrutinized thoroughly. Though their approaches differ, they often deal with the same themes, and both pioneered their own unique style of writing. Using death as a theme is probably the strongest connection that Whitman and Dickinson share. Whitman's view on death is reflective of his belief in Transcendentalism. In "Song of Myself", Whitman uses the scientific principle of the conservation of energy to assert that there is life after death, because energy cannot be destroyed; only transformed. In stanza six, he writes "And what do you think has become of the women and children?/ They are alive and well somewhere,/ The smallest sprouts shows there is really no death" (Whitman 124-126). Whitman contends that life remains long after death, Dickinson's writings on death are more complex and contradictory. She personifies death, generally seeing as a lord or as a compelling lover. In one of her more popular poems, "Because I could not stop for Death", death is like a kindly courter. He picks her up in a "Carriage held but just for Ourselves-/ And Immortality" (Dickinson 3-4). Many of her other poems are about the moment of death, and what happens when the living...
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...through heart gives us a better understanding of life’s contents. He shows us this through mind and teachings with explanations, through personal experience, and the difference between both learning in a classroom and learning about what's personal to you. Whitman received little public acclaim for his poems during his lifetime for several reasons. His openness regarding sex, his self-presentation as a rough working man, and his stylistic innovations.” A poet who “abandoned the regular meter and rhyme patterns” Through diction, the poem reveals the sense of patronizing, structured learning. The speaker illustrates harshness to book learning through compatiblity. In line two he gives a stern sound to it, creating the feeling of stress. This happens again in line five, with “Lecture-room.” This represents a tense setting, a place the speaker does not want to be. The speaker imparts a sense of confinement, using the “Lecture – room,” while adding even more emphasis to it by its capitalization and indentation of its own line. In the second stanza, the diction changes dramatically, from structured to a whimsical air feeling. The rising and gliding portray a sensual outlook, as the speaker is now more open and free. Whitman wrote this poem in free verse, like most of his other...
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...Walt Whitman Through the history of the United States there have been a countless numbers of poets. With them came an equal number of writing styles. Certainly one of the most unique poets to write life’s story through his own view of the world and with the ambition to do it was Walter Whitman. Greatly criticized by many readers of his work, Whitman was not a man to be deterred. Soon he would show the world that he had a voice, and that it spoke with a poet’s words. Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Thus Whitman began his “Song of the Open Road”. This paper will attempt to describe his life and poetry in a way that does justice to the path he chose. He was a man who grew up impoverished, who wrote from his experiences, and who tried to lift his fellow men above life’s trivialities. These are the points to be discussed on these pages. To know the essence of Walter Whitman, you would have to understand the heart of his writing. For he is in his pen. Walter Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819 . He did not have much opportunity for education in his early life. His parents were mostly poor and illiterate- his father a laborer, while his mother was a devout Quaker. Whitman was one of nine children and little is known about his youth except that two of his siblings were imbeciles. No wonder he demonstrated such an insight for life in his poems...
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...Dillon Meldrim Mrs. Summers 3rd period American Lit 5/1/12 Whitman and Dickenson compare and contrast It seems like a lot of people think that Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson are some of the best poets of all time. Emily Dickenson was born in 1830 , and Walt Whitman was On 1819. These were the two greatest poets of the civil war time period. I will be Comparing two of there best known and greatest poems. Both of them are very short, that is one of the biggest things I like about them Is that you don’t get so bored reading them and there not a “book” long. A lot of People don’t like reading a poem for a long time. That is also just my opinion The poem “I hear America sing” is only 16 lines , that is very short . Whitman Uses great personification in this poem. “If you were coming in the fall” is only 20 lines, That is a little big longer but sill pretty short. Dickenson uses great growing suspense in This poem. “If only centuries delayed, id count them on my own hand” shows great uses of building suspense because of how long she has been waiting. But most importantly Both poems uses a great calm flow of words. Whitman shows he’s proud of America He says in the poem “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear” in a calm tone It is good because he is not yelling about his love of America. Emily Dickenson is very Calm as she is waiting for something, “but now, all ignorant of the length , of time ...
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...Myself” by Walt Whitman also depicts a man’s journey of personal discovery. Whitman begins his poem exclaiming to an unknown listener that is “large and contains multitudes” (Whitman 8). With these words, the poet is saying he is a complex person who is interested about the world. The poet sees the world as exciting and multifaceted. Similar to his vision of the world, the poet’s soul is convoluted and contradictory. Like Whiteman, Siddhartha has a restless soul. For example, “his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still” (Hesse 5). Moreover,...
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