New American Poetry

This week we embark on our journey to discover Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. These poets, often called the New American Poets, ushered in a new era in American poetry. They wrote poems that didn't fit anyone's ideals and lived lives that were even more challenging to the norm than their poetry. Dickinson lived her life an essential hermit and Whitman caused controversy nearly everywhere he went. Still, Dickinson's 1,700+ poems, published after her death, cement her in the American literary canon as one of our nation's most influential writers and Whitman's Leaves of Grass would forever alter the idea of what poetry had to be.

Strangely, these two don't fit securely into any literary movement. They were neither Romantics (hopeful about the idea of an American hero), Transcendentalists (optimists who found deep meaning and spirituality in nature), or Realists (disillusioned with the true grit of the world and the darkness of human nature). They fall somewhere in between all of those. Sure, Dickinson loved Botany (the study of plants, which was her favorite in school) and Whitman wrote about the heroic nature of soldiers on the front lines of the Civil War, but neither of them can truly be categorized. They were distinct individuals and distinctly different from one another. Dickinson was an essential hermit while Whitman enjoyed attention. Whitman garnered huge amounts of recognition for his work during his life (though much of the attention was negative), while Dickinson published less than a dozen poems during her life and asked her family to burn the rest upon her death.

Their poems are metaphorical and full of imagery. To understand them, you need to understand those literary devices they used, so here is extra credit #2: Create flashcards for each of the following literary devices. Put the word on one side of the index card and the definition on the other. You may either use 3x5 index cards or cut pieces of paper into "flashcards". You must do all of the terms for extra credit and they are due on Thursday. The terms are: allusion, irony,mood, tone, motif, oxymoron, personification, rhyme, slant rhyme, meter, theme, alliteration, assonance,onomatopoeia, and synecdoche