LITR 4232 American Renaissance UHCL 2003 sample answers to final question on Whitman and Dickinson

Essay question 3. Here are two poems, one by Whitman and another by Dickinson. Read the poems and identify which author probably wrote which poem and how you can tell. Referring to these poems (and briefly to others if you like), describe, compare, and contrast Whitman's and Dickinson's unique styles and subjects. (Objective 1, “close reading”)

· Comment on what aspects of the poem are characteristic of Whitman and Dickinson, and also comment in what ways these poems may not be characteristic—that is, in what ways may they surprise your expectations about Whitman and Dickinson?

· Identify characteristic (or non-characteristic) subject matter and stylistic devices on the parts of the two poets. Details and definitions are welcome, plus locate examples in the poem.

· Perhaps as your conclusion, compare Dickinson and Whitman in relation to each other--What do you gain, learn, or experience from one that you don't from the other, or vice versa?

I Sit and Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done,

I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women,

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth,

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners,

I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;

All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent.

*********

These are the days when birds come back,

A very few, a bird or two,

To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on

The old, old sophistries of June,--

A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,

Almost thy plausibility

Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,

And softly through the altered air

Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,

Oh, last communion in the haze,

Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,

Thy consecrated bread to break,

Taste thine immortal wine!

**********

[complete answer from email final]

The two selections, Walt Whitman’s “I Sit and Look Out” and Emily Dickinson’s “These are the days when birds come back”, are prime examples of the varied and distinct styles of the two authors. Whitman’s verse and subject matter are expansive; Dickinson’s verse and subject matter are tailored. The styles of these poets are as distinct as their lives.

In Whitman’s “I Sit and Look Out”, the poem is a classic demonstration of Whitman’s free verse. Each line is a separate image with a rhyme scheme. But Whitman binds these elements together with the use of parallelism. The parallel structure, common in Whitman’s verse, repeats the same word or set of words throughout the poem. Whitman repeats the word “I” in the first eight lines of the poems. The speaker of the poem is an observer of a series of difficult situations. Whitman catalogues this series of miseries in explicit detail. The catalogue is another common Whitman device in which he spells out a series of poetic observations in succession.

In the first line, the speaker pronounces that he is viewing all the miseries of the world and proceeds in the following lines to discuss examples of abuse, neglect, adultery, famine, exploitation, prejudice and heartbreak. He looks at the “meanness and agony without end” and is rendered silent. Normally Whitman’s poetry is buoyant and hopeful. Though Whitman experienced some of life’s hardships, his poetry is largely the verse of American optimism. In this piece, Whitman’s tone is much darker. The speaker sees the dark underbelly of Whitman’s world of progress and hope. While the structure of the poem is perfect Whitman, the subject matter is atypical.

In Dickinson’s “These are the days when birds come back”, the poem has many bearings of its author’s noted style. Upon initial reading, Dickinson personifies the forces of nature in this Indian summer day. The speaker that “almost thy plausibility/Induces my belief.” The speaker communicates with nature, beseeching nature to allow the speaker to partake of “thy sacred emblems” and to take “thy consecrated bread”.

Paradoxes in language are present in the poem as well. The speaker comments on the “old sophistries of June”, which juxtaposes specious arguments with the Gregorian calendar. In the following stanza, the speaker talks of failing to “cheat the bee” with the sudden burst of summer weather. The speaker talks of the “communion in the haze” which serves to place religion and nature in stark conjunction.

The imperfect or “opportunistic” rhyme scheme marks the poem as Dickinson’s. The rhyme scheme might appear to be aab ccd. But in the fist stanza, the first line ends with “back” and the second line ends with “two”. In the second line of the first stanza, “few” and “two” do rhyme. The first line ending of “back” suggests a rhyme with the third line ending of “look” as the ending consonants are the same.

There is but one dash in this piece, which is atypical of Dickinson’s style. Normally dashes abound in her work. Also, the stanzas are triplets instead or quatrains. This too is atypical of Dickinson’s work.

The subject matter follows Dickinson’s pattern of using “nature as a symbol of spirit” (White 2003). The speaker through the language sees the passage of time and the loss of the season as something to be mourned and longed for. Nature becomes a revelatory or religious experience. This moment of meteorological evanescence reminds the speaker of better days long left behind. Because of the speaker merges the religious with the ordinary, there is an “intrusion of the infinite into everyday life”(White 2002).

Any comparison of Whitman and Dickinson could be driven as much by biography as by literary technique. Whitman’s verse reflects the man of the world. Whitman’s speaker is worldly and world worn. The speaker is engaged in the world of action and finds poetry in experience. Dickinson’s speaker is cloistered for the world of men. But the speaker communes with the natural world. With another human in sight, certain truths about life are still revealed. Both poets teach the reader that poetry exists in every aspect of human experience. The poet ‘s responsibility is to perceive and cull the emotions and the truths from the circumstances in which he finds himself. [DG]

[nearly complete answer from email final]

. . . I “Sit and Look Out” is definitely Whitman’s poem, but it’s a little different than what I’ve become accustomed to expecting from him. For one thing I only see one apostrophe-d, no woe’s, Thee’s, oh’s or Lo’s. These are all the things that make reading Whitman so much fun. The aspects of the poem that are typically Whitman are his use of parallelism. He uses “I” over and over again to start off his lines. This gives the poem a sense of connectedness, even though the subject matter differs. This is what brings together the things that he sees and observes; the sorrows of the world, young men at anguish, low life of the mother, the wife misused, etc. The last line is very Whitman—“See, hear, and am silent” resonates with other last lines he has used such as “I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead,” Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy,” and “then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost” all seem to end in a serialistic manner that I recognize as Whitman’s. The content of a lot of his endings have to do, fittingly, with endings or leave-takings.

I agree with a student (EG) listed in the 2001 Final Essays. The content of Whitman’s poem is markedly without nature. There are no gardens, leaves, battlefields, or mystical moist night-air, none of the nature that Whitman seems to love so much. The poem is brief (for Whitman at least) and maybe the absence of nature and observation of man at his worst accounts for his lack of hope or inspiration in the poem. There is no fleeing into nature to escape “meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon” and in the end Whitman offers no solution only that he “See[s], hear[s], and [is] silent.

Dickinson’s poem is distinguished as hers by the brevity, use of dashes, and her incredible elevation of nature. Dickinson is able to take the bees and snakes and make them center-stage participants in poems that give profound meaning to the mundane. Although her rhyming scheme is not typical, it isn’t the abcb that is relatively common; her use of assonance is. Take a look at her first stanza:

These are the days when birds come back,

A very few, a bird or two,

To take a backward look.

She rhymes few and two in the same line and repeats the word back in backward. Even though she doesn’t follow a typical rhyming pattern, this is Dickinson’s style. As we discussed in class her use of concrete and abstract is detectible here in her use of the line “blue and gold mistake.” Blue and gold are colors that can be seen, but a mistake is something very abstract. Dickinson, like Whitman, uses elevated language that recalls for the reader the bible. Her use of the words thy, sacrament, communion, sacred emblems, consecrated, and immortal gives her poem a not so subtle tinge of religious connotation.

(EG) noted in his or her poem that Dickinson did not use capitalization of words to set off their importance. She chose not to use that device, so Dickinson-like, in this poem either. I think that her message is relatively blatant in this poem and she doesn’t use the capitalization because there is no deeply latent message she is trying to highlight. This poem seems rather straightforward. It is, undoubtedly, easier to digest for some people with religious beliefs, but I think that most people can appreciate the timeless, and sacred, quality Dickinson gives nature and the seasons.

Both of these authors offer a reader the opportunity to take a new look at old things. I have always enjoyed hearing Whitman read by other people, but it is Dickinson and her abrupt lines that have always left me vaguely off balance and questioning. When I read Whitman I agree with him, nod with him, and say, “yep, I know whatcha sayin’ buddy—I hear ya.” Whitman resonates in my mind and provides a sense of hope, but Dickinson resonates in my soul. When Whitman wrote Crossing Brooklyn Ferry I think he knew, or hoped, that people in the future would read his work—and wrote accordingly. He writes, “I too saw the reflection…” and with that I too he speaks to his reader. Dickinson, I doubt she wrote very much at all that was intended to be read, and maybe it’s the voyeur in me, but I feel like her poetry has a little more to offer in the way of helping a person find what is and isn’t—in themselves and reality. She didn’t write to anyone or for anyone but herself. [LE]

[complete answer from email final]

The poem “I Sit and Look Out” was written by Walt Whitman. It contains his characteristic free verse style, which lacks rhymes but includes many details. For example, the mother is not simply misused, but she has been neglected by family, she is physically gaunt and slowly dying.

This poem also contains parallelism, which is the repetition of phrases or words to emphasize ideas or images. While this technique is primarily used in speeches and biblical literature, Whitman often incorporates parallelism into his poems. Here the reader sees the repetition of “I see” and “I observe.” Although the phrases “I hear” and “I mark” do not exactly parallel, they contain the same meaning because Whitman is noting all of the things he is observing.

This poem contains a catalog of images. A catalog is a list of items that are linked somehow and arranged methodically. It is mainly used in epic poetry, but Whitman includes an excellent example in this poem. This catalog is a list of “all the sorrows of the world.” It begins with single people such as a remorseful man and a misused mother. It moves on to groups of people like the starving sailors. Finally it moves on to societal groups such as laborers, those living in poverty, and negroes. This methodical listing explicates one of Whitman’s major themes, the one and the many. The poem moves from individual men and women, to community groups such as the poor. Whitman believed in representing everyone, but he showed how the individual could be consumed by the society at large. In this poem, consummation is achieved through slights, degradations, and meanness.

This poem also shows how Whitman paints a picture through details. The reader can actually see the starving sailors far out at sea as they cast lots with fearful expressions knowing that one of them is about to be sacrificed. There is also a variety settings from home life to city life, and the battlefield to the ship at sea. Nevertheless, the only unity in these various situations is sorrow and agony.

This poem is uncharacteristic of Whitman because it is so short. Most of his poems are long and include analytical divisions. The poem also lacks detailed descriptions of urban or industrial life. There are not a lot of symbols such as the bird, the star, and the song, found in “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” The poem also lacks Whitman’s optimism. There seems to be no hope for the people trapped in the poem as well as their own circumstances. Finally, Whitman does not offer a clear conclusion. Whitman generally sends the message that he has all of the answers and he wants society to change for the better. However, this poem offers no answer and Whitman uncharacteristically closes by declaring his silence.

The next poem, “These are the days when birds come back,” was written by Emily Dickinson. The lines are short and lyrical. They express the thoughts of a single speaker in a personal fashion. While the reader cannot be certain that the speaker is actually Dickinson, the reader does feel as if the words are spoken directly to him or her. Other lyrical characteristics include the imaginative element of a child joining the summer day, and the emotional experience that affects the child in the poem as well as the reader.

This poem includes a traditional Dickinson setting, a garden. It also allows nature to become a symbol of spirit, although the meaning of the symbol can be interpreted in different ways, another characteristic of Dickinson poetry. For example, if Dickinson’s topic in this poem is love, the birds and bees could symbolize a child moving into adulthood by partaking of the sacrament of a sexual relationship. Another interpretation could be how nature reflects God and the sacrament of communion can be experienced in a garden as easily as it can in a church. If this interpretation were used then the poem would be an example of Dickinson’s mystical vision of God as Nature. This speaks to the ephemeral quality of Dickinson’s work. While the message of the poem seems obvious, a child enjoying a summer day, upon closer reflection, the meaning is harder to determine.

The poem includes many typical stylistic elements found in Dickinson’s work. There is the paradoxical combination of the abstract ideas and concrete figures, such as the “timid leaf” and the “immortal wine.” There is synesthesia or the interpretation of a term using different senses in the same image, for example, the “blue and gold mistake.” The poem also includes personification as the birds consciously look backwards into the past and leaves show timidity. In fact, the summer itself seems to come to life as the child longs to join with it.

The poem contains Dickinson’s eclectic mix of rhymes. There are exact rhymes like days and haze, slant rhymes like join and wine. There are also places where the rhymes should be but do not exist like back and two in the first lines of the poem. Normally, a Dickinson poem would begin with rhymes and move away from them, but this poem begins without rhymes and develops them toward the end.

This poem also lacks Dickinson normal form of quatrains or four line stanzas. This poem is written in three line stanzas and it links two stanzas together. This can be seen in the rhyme pattern that forms as the poem progresses and in the sentence structure. The poem is made up of four sentences. The first two sentences, also stanzas, are linked by the parallel phrases “These are the days” and creates the summer setting. The next sentence, made up of two stanzas, is linked by a psychological theme as Dickinson personifies the summer. The last sentence, made up of two stanzas, creates the religious elements. Most of Dickinson poetry is not formatted this concretely.

Another stylistic element that is missing is the use of dashes to force the reader to slow down and consider the ideas presented in the poem. The poem is also missing the unusual capitalization that forces the reader to consider the importance or symbolism of individual words.

Both Whitman and Dickinson created unique observations of the world around them. However, while Whitman joined and commented on the large elements of society, Dickinson remained outside of society and left the decision to the reader. While Whitman’s poetry is unrestrained, lengthy, and full of details, Dickinson’s poetry is intimate, compressed, and open ended. Nevertheless, both poets moved away from the traditional poetic forms and created works that were distinctive, innovative, and praiseworthy. [SB]