<h1 style="color:#FFFF00">A Walk Through Poetry</h1>
<p style="text-align:right;">[[Introduction]]</b></p>
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<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;"> American Transcendentalism- Movenment was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s love of Hinduism, Swedenbourg’s mystical Christianity, and Immanuel Kant’s Transcendental philosophy. The writers created a society that advocated utopian values, spiritual exploration, and development of the arts. They questioned American culture, which they thought was becoming too puritanical, and an educational system that was overly intellectual. Like the Romantics, heart-centered, personal expression was their aim – and so was the development of socialized community. Most lived within a commune called Brook Farm. Unlike the Romantics, who often disagreed, the Transcendentalists sought commonalities influenced by Emerson’s following of Hinduism.
[[Ralph Waldo Emerson->Emerson]] or [[Henry David Thoreau ->Thoreau]] take your pick...
Or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
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<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) friend and contemporary of [[Henry David Thoreau ->AT]], considered the head of American Transedentialist movement. Preacher, essayist, lecturer, poet, and philosopher— one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century. Emerson was also the first major American literary and intellectual figure to explore and write about Asian and Middle Eastern literature. He not only gave readers their first exposure to non-Western modes of thinking, metaphysical concepts, and sacred mythologies; he also shaped the way many generations of American writers and thinkers approached the vast cultural resources of Asia.
Click here for the poem called [[Water->Snowstorm]]
Or to go back[[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;"><b>ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)Transcends between traditional forms of poety, somewhat [[Romantic->Poe]] and [[Transcendental->AT]] in nature and [[Modernism->Modernism]]. His works spans both the 18th and 19th centuries. Like Emerson in the who you clicked on before this, this work is about the contemplation of life and death. As we all do arrive at one point in our lives. This poem is about man who contemplates not going on so tired, exhasted from his responisbilty. Thinks about going off and not returning but notice the sigh as continues one.
[[The Road not Taken->Realism]]May this poem has the end of the game.
Or you can chosse to go back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Water
The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.
Click to go on at your own risk...you may end up with something that does not talk about [[nature...->Whitman]]
Or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]
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<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Welcome to Modernist poetry, sometimes called Imagist. And it's it major Cheerleader...
Ezra Pound (1875-1972) is often noted as a the master of imagist poetry. Pound is the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. Early in the 20th Century he opened a dialogue between British and American writers, and was noted for his generosity which he advanced the work of some major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T. S. Eliot.
Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry—stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.” His later work focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos, which he worked on for 50 years.
Here is in [[The Metro]] that took Ezra Pound years to write. He wanted the imagery just so.</b></p>
<b><p><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Tall Ambrosia
Among the signs of autumn I perceive
The Roman wormwood (called by learned men
Ambrosia elatior, food for gods,—
For to impartial science the humblest weed
Is as immortal once as the proudest flower—)
Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes
As I cross the now neglected garden.
—We trample under foot the food of gods
And spill their nectar in each drop of dew—
My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray
Far from my couch, thus powdered, countryfied,
Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure,
At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss
Of those well dressed ones who no morning dew
Nor Roman wormwood ever have been through,
Who never walk but are transported rather—
For what old crime of theirs I do not gather.
Or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</p></b>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Along with [[Emerson->Emerson]], [[Thoreau->Thoreau]], and [[Whitman->Whitman]], [[Emily Dickinson->poem]] is one of the finest American poets of her time and she challenged the defintions of poetry. She was a prolific writer and she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints, and cleverly questions identity, religion, and society. In thism poem [[Wild Nights, Wild Nights ->poem]] , she talks of sex in a purely nautical manner, but read carefully, she and how she makes use of metaphor for the piece. This is ahead of its time. I would aruge that she is an [[early Feminist->Feminist 2]].
Or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">You have arrived at Romanticism in American literature.
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) and the first 3 verses of [[The Raven->The Raven Passage]]. An American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure of American Romanticism in and literature as a whole, he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Welcome to the Civil Rights Movement, and although in itself is not a poetic movement, many great poets developed during this time period that cannot be ignored. Out of the Civil Rights movement developed the [[Harlem Renaissance->Harlem Renaissance]], and Langston Hughes comes to mind in relationship with this period.
But First let's start with. . .
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University.
At the beginning of the next poem Du Bois Writes this as a call to all to sing. Relates back to the call and response of slaves working in the fields.Click here for the poem [[My Country]]
Have not found the end yet? I guess you go back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Feminist poetry has not set date of dvelope but most agree it came to life during the 1960s, a decade when many writers (of both genders) challenged traditional notions of form and content. Women wrote about their experiences and entered into a dialogue and questioned thier roles within society. Although it started way before the 1960's. Feminist poetry was influenced by social change, but also by earlier poets such as Emily Dickinson, who we havve already discussed and read her work.
"During the 1960s, many poets in the United States explored increased social awareness and self-realization. This included feminists, who claimed their place in society, poetry, and political reality. As a movement, feminist poetry is usually thought of as becoming even more successful during the 1970s: feminist poets were prolific, and they began to achieve major critical acclaim, including several Pulitzer Prizes" (Linda Napikoski).
So let's look at [[Adrienne Rich]]</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Dreamwood
In the old, scratched, cheap wood of the typing stand
there is a landscape, veined, which only a child can see
or the child’s older self, a poet,
a woman dreaming when she should be typing
the last report of the day. If this were a map,
she thinks, a map laid down to memorize
because she might be walking it, it shows
ridge upon ridge fading into hazed desert
here and there a sign of aquifers
and one possible watering-hole. If this were a map
it would be the map of the last age of her life,
not a map of choices but a map of variations
on the one great choice. It would be the map by which
she could see the [[end]] of touristic choices,
of distances blued and purpled by romance,
by which she would recognize that poetry
isn’t revolution but a way of knowing
why it must come. If this cheap, mass-produced
wooden stand from the Brooklyn Union Gas Co.,
mass-produced yet durable, being here now,
is what it is yet a dream-map
so obdurate, so plain,
she thinks, the material and the dream can join
and that is the poem and that is the late report. Back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
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<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">
Introduction
Let's experience the works of various American poets that challenged and changed the views of society. This is a basic introduction to some of the various poetry movements. It will give some historical background and illustrates how each are interconnected. I will only be focusing on a few movements and their key poets.
The key to this event is to move through the various movements and find the last passage with the hidden the link that will take you to the end. I have used one specific work to end this Walk through Poetry.
Let's begin
Click on a movement to start...
[[Transcendentialism->AT]]
[[Civil Rights->Civil Rights]]
[[Realism->Robert Frost]]
[[Romantic->Poe]]
[[Feminist->Emily Dickinson]]
[[Modernism->Modernism]]
[[Beat->Beats]]
[[Harlem Renaissance->Harlem Renaissance]]</p></b>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more."
Here is the hyperlink to the rest, if you want to read the rest.
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178713">The Raven></a></b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00">Of course you have faced the dilemma: it is announced, they all smirk and rise. If they are ultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you. What shall you do? Noblesse oblige; you cannot be boorish, or ungracious; and too, after all it is your country and you do love its ideals if not all of its realities. Now, then, I have thought of a way out: Arise, gracefully remove your hat, and tilt your head. Then sing as follows, powerfully and with deep unction. They’ll hardly note the little changes and their feelings and your conscience will thus be saved:
My country tis of thee,
Late land of slavery,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my father’s pride
Slept where my mother died,
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring!
My native country thee
Land of the slave set free,
Thy fame I love.
I love thy rocks and rills
And o’er thy hate which chills,
My heart with purpose thrills,
To rise above.
Let laments swell the breeze
And wring from all the trees
Sweet freedom’s song.
Let laggard tongues awake,
Let all who hear partake,
Let Southern silence quake,
The sound prolong.
Our fathers’ God to thee
Author of Liberty,
To thee we sing
Soon may our land be bright,
With Freedom’s happy light
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King.
Or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]or to Harlem Renaissance->
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<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">The Beats
A national group of poets who emerged from San Francisco’s literary counterculture of the 1950s. The Beats were linked by a common thread: a desire to live life as they defined it. The mixture of academia, be-bop jazz, the liberating free verse of William Carlos Williams, and the influence author Jack Kerouac (who coined the term "Beat Generation" in 1948 at a meeting with Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, and William S. Burroughs) inspired a young Ginsberg to change everything he’d learned about poetry. The group only lasted 15 years but influnced many generations and the form of poetry to come. Let's take a look at [[Allen Gingsberg]]
IF you are not brave you can always go back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]] and check out another movement</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00">A period of musical, literary, and cultural proliferation that began in New York’s African-American community during the 1920s and early 1930s. Its writing luminaries include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and Arna Bontemps.
Langston Hughes(1902-1967) [[The Negro Speaks of Rivers->Negro Speaks]], which became Hughes's signature poem, collected in his first book of poetry The Weary Blues (1926). Hughes's first and last published poems appeared in The Crisis. Hughes's life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas. Except for McKay, they worked together also to create the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.
Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals and aspirations than the black middle class. They criticized the men known as the midwives of the Harlem Renaissance: W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Alain LeRoy Locke, as being overly accommodating and assimilating eurocentric values and culture to achieve social equality.
Or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862). He was a naturalist, philiospher, and champion of the idea of self-reliance. The poem talks about about a simple plant we call rag weed; however, it also speaks about those who do not stop to live their lives and only work. Speaks to those who live in cities and go from dawn to dusk without being in nature and seeing the marvels there. For interest, one should read Thoreau's essay Walking.
<a href="http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html">Here is the link.
[[Tall Ambrosia]] or [[Emerson->AT]]
Or try another movement and click back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</a></b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00"> Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Conisdered another Transcendentialist with a twist. He was a humanist, and he is considered the transition between transcendentalism and [[realism->Intro Realism]], incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon,(along with [[Emily Dickinson->Emily Dickinson]], [[Ralph Waldo Emerson->AT]])often called the father of free verse. His works were very controversial and particularly his poetry collection <i>Leaves of Grass</i>, which was inspire by Emerson and his travels through the American Countryside. Whitman is also know for his undertones of homosexuality in his works.
Leaves of Grass - looking sepecifcally at <i>Song of Myself</i>. THE works are long, but worth the read. I have only included a few verses here to wet your whistle.
Here is the hyperlink to the rest:<p><a
[[Song of Myself]]Or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]
href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182373/">Song of Myself</a></p>
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<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Song of Myself Verse 2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">Homework
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean.
This has lead to a dead end.
SO back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]] you go</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00">
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
This is a historical commentary of where Black American has come from, as old as the earth itself. Although short in lenght, this poem conveys much meaning. Think about what it conveys.
Or you can go back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00"> Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!
Not your typical love poem, if you read between the lines, and the beginning of [[feminism ->Feminist 2]].
Or you could go back to the [[Introduction]]...and keep looking for the end</b></p>
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00;">
So you have read your way through various American Poets, and have seen some the history and the interconnection between the periods and the authors.
Maybe now you will look at poem in a new light, not skim, maybe read more than once and consider the words.
I hope I have challenged you to read some more of these authors works.
<b><p style="color:#FFFF00"> Irwin Allen Ginsberg,(1926-1997) was an American poet and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture followed. He opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem <i>"Howl"</i>, in which he denounced the destructive forces of capitalism and the ideology of conformity in the United States.
Howl is too long for this event, so check it out below
<a href="url">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381</a>
However; considering I am teaching poetry I think a little [[Homework->@]] is in order.
Or you could skip you homework and keep looking for the end via the Introduction. </b></p>
<b><p> <p style="color:#FFFF00;">This is a paragraph.Adreinne Rich (1929-2012)
One of most influental female poets of the second half of the 20th century. Rich's early poetic influence stemmed from her father who encouraged her to read but also to write her own poetry. Her interest in literature was sparked in her father's library where she read the work of writers such as Ibsen, Arnold, Blake, Keats, Rossetti, and Tennyson.
So let's see if you can find a [[Dreamwood]]or back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]]</b></p>
<b><p><p style="color:#FFFF00;">The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .
Not a lot of words, but means many things when you think about them.
So back to the [[Introduction<-Introduction]] it seems you did not find the "end" here. </b></p>
<b><p>style="background-color:#FFFF00"> Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism. According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence" (A Handbook to Literature 428).
Let's look at [[Mark Twain]]</b></p>
<b><p>style="background-color:#FFFF00">Mark Twain (1835-1910)began his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into story-teller of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of human-kind. Huckleberry Finn, combines rich humor, strong narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American cultural themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been restricted at times for various reasons. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools for its use of the word "nigger", which was in common usage in the pre-Civil War period and where the novel was set.
Here is some verse by [[Twain]]
<b><p>style="background-color:#FFFF00"> Warm Summer Sun
Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.
Compare this to Robert Frost's [[The Road Not Taken->Realism]]
Both talk shows elements of realism.
So no end link here, might as well go back to the [[Introduction]] </b></p>