Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Whitman's Poetic Peers


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "The Village Blacksmith"
This poem has a similar theme to Whitman.  The line that goes, "The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands" reminds me of something that Whitman would have said.  It would be a way he too would describe someone, especially the "sinewy hands."  This reflection of life and how working gets him through life speaks to Whitman's belief of going out into the world and not being stagnant in your life.  There is a rhyme to this poem as well as a constant beat. It seems to be alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with the trimeter being somewhat of a resolution or reasoning to the line prior to it.

William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Bailey Aldrich both use the outdoors and nature in their poems.  Bryant uses the word "She" to label nature, "She has a voice of gladness, and a smile..."  Whitman, being an outdoorsy man himself, I think would love the way he describes nature.  This means that Bryant is experiencing the outdoors, he is going out there and living it which Whitman is definitely for.  Aldrich on the other hand, his poem isn't as pleasant as Bryant's since his has more to do about death, but the use of imagery having to do with nature is a commonality between the two.

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