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Poetry Analysis

In this paper, the introduction will be made by means of a reflection on poetry itself, as well as the analysis of poetry. Following, three authors from the nineteenth century will be introduced, and a focus will be held on their lives, as well as their creative traits and major themes. A special relevance will be given to Walt Whitman and his "Leaves of Grass" anthology, although ultimately, and effort will be made to compare and contrast the three authors. They will be introduced separately is for the sake of clarity, and only in the latter part of this essay, will their poems be compared directly.


Poetry Analysis

According to William Williams, a poem is a made thing, or a "machine made of words." It is a device, or a construction, and in that sense, poetry analysis is the set of tools that allows the reader to heighten his own appreciation of the text, as well as everyone else's. These set of tools deal with form, content and history, in an informed way, with the objective of disclosing meaning. If a poet was an engine, poetry analysis would be the tool which would allow one to disassemble and comprehend such device. (wiki)

Poetry analysis is a set of tools, which are meant to aid our comprehension of a poem. It consists of several devices such as figurative speech, meter and rhyme schemes.
Regarding the form of the poem, one talks of open and closed-ness. An open form (or free-verse) consists of a loose, undefined structure, while a closed form is characterized by a design which has proved effective for the English language, such as sonnets, sestinas and limericks.

Regarding imagery and symbolism, one needs to be aware of the figures of speech, with are basically techniques for the author communicate with the reader in subtle ways, such as trough allegory (make-believe), connotation (allusion to something else that means the other), and metaphor (indirect comparison). These are interesting because they disguise the essence of the poem well beneath the form.

Regarding meter and rhyme, one talks of scansion, which is the process of analyzing the rhythm in a poem. In the English language, this is done not by counting the syllables, but the stresses. A feet is a basic pattern of rhythm (such as "weak weak STRONG" – anapaest), and one also needs to consider the length of the lines and classify it accordingly. For instance, a line with four feet is called a tetrameter.

Sound, Tone, Diction and Connotation also play an important role in poetry analysis. Some poems only truly "work" when they're read out aloud, for only so is one able to realize their texture and to feel them thoroughly. Further, a good place to start when analyzing a poem, is always to reflect upon its meaning, and try to unveil its purpose by analysing both its setting, characters, and writing style.


Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, this amazing poetess lived a life of relative isolation from her historical context, and thus she became one of the great introspective poets. Her vast body of work consists of 1776 poems, only 10 of which were published during her lifetime. While she lived, not many people were actually aware that she wrote poetry; she choose not to disclose her writing habit because she felt her father would not take it in good remarks, are women weren't considered proper poets at the time.

After a youth of social brilliancy, Dickinson gradually turned to seclusion around 1850, supposedly as the result of a love ache, and began to write compulsively. Only after she died, her sister found her notebooks, and it was so that she was discovered as the great weaver of American poetry of the nineteenth century, second only perhaps to Whitman.
The subjects that are dealt with in her writings are mostly a part of the topography of her own self; Dickinson consistently explored her own feelings, exhaustively and with painstaking detail, but all the while maintaining a keen sense of their universal poetic application; trough her insight, the reader gets a glimpse of the workings of his own self.

Dickinsonian poetry is characterized by four-line stanzas, and ABAC rhyme schemes; there is a recurrence of aphorisms, where the author exhibits an uncanny ability to convey complex meanings in few words. The language is therefore compact and forceful. The patterns troughout are strong, consisting of iambic trimesters, with the occasional tetrameter for emphasis, which translate in long disruptive dashes of text, and angular and imprecise rhymes.

Her language is both musical and whimsical, revealing an enormous ability both to synthesize and articulate her thoughts in complex word machines, many of her poems will resist consecutive readings, only to unveil their thick meaning somewhat explosively, all of a sudden, at the least expectation of the persistent inquisitive mind.


William Worsworth (1770 – 1850)

Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. He grew up in a rustic society, where he spent a lot of his childhood playing in the countries, communing with nature, and contemplating its wonders. It was probably this upbringing that led to his soft, emotional understanding of the world around him.

His goal in poetry was to recover the "naked and native dignity of man". To him, the memory of childhood rekindled the love of nature, and allowed one to rediscover the bewilderment towards reality that one had upon birth. To him, humans move from a perfect and idealized world into an imperfect and gloomy reality, as a result of growing up. Rationalism troubled him to the point of forcing him to formulate his own understanding of the world in more concrete terms. He finally struck the balance that the nurturing of the mind allows for figurative and metaphoric representations of nature, which replace the innocent and magical representations of nature. In a way, much as tough one swapped plain child-like imagination for the mature ability to construct and dream.

Wordsworth wrote many poems during his time, from short lyrics to vast semi-biographical expanses, such as "The prelude", upon which he rapports of his own life experience. His poems are filler with natural scenery and religious symbolism, and a romanticized view of nature. He wrote plainly and emphasized simplicity, and sought plain beauty over rhetoric and ornament. He felt that poetry should stimulate the emotions in memory.

William Wordsworth helped define the Romantic age in English literature and was poet laureate of England from 1843 to 1950, the year he died.


Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

Whitman was born in Long Island. He had little formal education, and started to work early as a printer, journalist, editor and teacher. He had not much success in these tasks because of his radical views. Around 1848, he started to write poetry, and experimenting with new styles, which led to the first edition of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855.
At the onset of the civil war, he volunteered to work as a nurse in war hospitals. Many of his poems were about war, and he published a collection of these in "Drum Taps", and "Sequel to Drum Taps"; the former includes famous eulogies to President Lincoln, who had been assassinated: "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Oh! Captain! My Captain!". Here, the poet transmits a somewhat gloomy perspective, but this was more due to Whitman's fear on the crumbling of Democracy, rather that his spite of death. To him, Death and Life were just ask good, and with that he didn't mean to make little of neither, but rather to embrace both in their cyclic inter-changeability.

Whitman always stood for democracy, actively and energetically. His poetry was democratic both in subject matter and language, as he wrote poems about anyone and anything. His favoured themes were the singing of himself, and trough him, the cataloguing of the new America which was at the time going trough a convulsed and violent pubescent crisis.
Walt favoured Woodsworth's aim to speak the language of the ordinary man, although he does not romanticize, himself; in fact, he consistently recurred to slang, colloquialisms, regional dialects, foreign and invented words. This quirky and creative use of language, along with his unconventional poetic structure, clearly defined his writing style, formally. He avoided rhyme schemes and traditional poetic devices; on the other hand, he used meter in masterful and innovative ways, mimicking the rhythm of natural speech. He favoured anedoctes over metaphors, and used his own stories with the purpose of making the reader adapting them to his own subjectivity. Some of his most popular poems are very long, such as "Song of Myself", which consists of 52 parts.

Democracy was for him the chance to cross the gap between the self and the individual. He set out the singing of himself, the writing down of his personality so other men could understand him and trough his humanity, come to terms with their own; and this was his ultimate goal in poetry. It was thus that in a way, he became the very voice of Democracy, and the symbol of America's own struggle for identity.

Although, Civil war diminished his faith on Democracy; Reconstruction disappointed him even further. What he believed in was a new kind of Man, the Man of the Future, who would be compassionate and brotherly, spiritually communing with the world by physical contact. In Whitman’s poetry, the body is the ultimate tool for one to become one with the universe, because it is trough the body that one is able to gather impressions from reality.
In his late years, just as his health deteriorated, he began to lyrically prepare his demise. In one of his last poems, "Good-Bye, My Fancy", he literally says goodbye to his own imagination, and thanks it for the good moments it has given him in his life, trough his ability to dream and create.


Leaves of Grass

In his preface to the "deathbed" edition, Whitman talks about how sometimes the memory of things is sweeter than the things themselves. It is trough that setting that he establishes "leaves of grass" as his legacy to the world, and is present to the Man of Tomorrow. He readily admits it was financially unsuccessful, and claims that if the book had any worth, it would take one hundred years to surface. And in fact, turns out it did.
He proudly refers to his compendium as the definite "carte visite" for the future generations of the New World. For me personally, the Leaves of Grass embody both the Everyman which Whitman sought to be, and the progressive-constructive nature of the tome, as well as the idea that like humans, every leaf is similar yet distinct from the others.
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars" (Song of Myself, 31). This compendium, which was truly the work of a lifetime, with 8 revisions, starting with 12 poems and ending a massive tome of around 400 poems, is nowadays the most emblematic single piece of American poetry.

The tome was originated in an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom Whitman greatly admired. In this essay, "The Poet", Emerson called out for a new and unique poet who could write about the virtues and vices of pubescent America. Whitman consciously and enthusiastically answered the call, and in fact, when he sent the first edition of the book to Emerson, he provided great praise, which help to assure the book's influence among certain circles. I simply did not attain commercial success at the time because it was too far ahead; it dealt with themes no one had done before, in ways no one had ever dared to. And the gross of the American People, the same Everyman that Whitman sought to glorify, and who could not have fathomed, at the time, the importance of those true and honest writings.



Whitman, Dickinson, WordsWorth: Illustrative analysis.

Both Whitman and Dickinson set out to understand themselves trough their poetry. While their goal is the same, it should appear immediate and obvious that their approaches are quite different. While Whitman starts off his "Song of Myself" with the declaration:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

In a poem by Dickinson, like "The Soul selects her own society", we should expect to find remarks more in this vein:
The soul selects her own society
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
…
I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

So, while the starkest contrast between the two poems is likely to be found in the tone (each poem very well conveys the personality of his creator), we should also notice the differences in style: Whitman seems to be addressing his reader directly, as tough he was speaking to him; Dickinson constructs, on the other hand, a clear, but self-contained image of her feelings; that one does not choose whom one loves and that the soul (or at least her soul) shuts off unwelcome visitors, and is sovereign of its own realm. Dickinson sounds denser, and the abrupt short lines towards the end dictate a steady rhythm which is somewhat tense. Conversely, Whitman speaks freely, and joyously, to whoever cares to listen, as tough he was carrying a casually passionate conversation.
The major difference between the two is that while Whitman looked for his realization objectively, outwardly, on the real world and amongst real people, Dickinson was somewhat severed from reality, and instead made introspection and psychography her means of coming to terms with her existence.

Let's now examine a similar poem by Wordsworth. It's called "A character":

I MARVEL how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
There's thought and no thought, and there's paleness and bloom
And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom (…)

In this poem, it's plain to notice that, while using the same enchanted tone as Whitman, this poet uses a more formal approach, akin to Dickinson. The rhymes form AABB pattern throughout, and there's a regularity of rhythm. Also, trough strong adjectivation, the poet constructs a depiction of his wonder at the human face. Had Whitman done something in this manner, he would be likely to use more concrete and illustrative terms; such as this passage from part 26 of "Starting from Paumanok":

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Whitman and Wordsworth are similar in the sense they derive their inspiration from nature, from the outwardly world. The difference being that Whitman tends to be a lot more blatant, more straightforward. Wordsworth, being the classical Romantic he was, tends to somewhat embellish his poems more, even tough he still favours a simple, down-to-earth kind of voice:

STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.

In this poem, although the theme recalls Whitman for the open and passionate expression of feelings, we should notice a certain redundancy, as the author weaves a visual tale of his love, more implicitly than explicitly, more trough allegory than rapport. In these terms, Wordsworth passes his legacy down to Dickinson, who seldom writes directly about what she means:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Dickinson is truly the master of aphorism, or rather of conveying a complex meaning in very few words. In these four lines, she makes an insightful remark on the nature of success, by comparing it to a nectar more desired by those who never tasted it than by those who savor it constantly. This thought alone lays the ground for an extensive reflection on the matter. Again, we should notice just how tight the composition is, and how every word seems to be carefully picked and woven into the whole. Also, there's a musicality to this poetry that addresses us once more to Whitman, who despite his lack of structural concerns, was a very ingenious craftsmen of meter and rhythm, as a likely result of his own professed enjoyment of music. For instance, when he sings the body electric (pt.2):

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

It is as tough he is ranting, but at the same time (and this is something that is more noticeable when we read the poem aloud), there's a keen sense of musicality to the verses that's overwhelming, with plenty alliterations and few rhymes, a trait that definitely characterizes his writing style.

To conclude, we should notice that the three authors go trough great lengths in order to try to understand and transmit their human condition, something which is proper of great poetry, and arguably the One great transversal theme. Nonetheless, there are some differences and similarities in their methods that should be remarked.

For instance, both Whitman and Wordsworth come across as outwardly, earth-bound poets, while Dickinson is rather introspective and consistently abstract and dense. Wordsworth and Dickinson share, however, a similarity in form, with great attention to the construction of rhyme patterns and regular meters, whereas Whitman is more reckless and easygoing, where it concerns structure.

Wordsworth preceded Dickinson and Whitman by a few decades, an in this sense he was an inspiration to both creators, who admired his work. The latter should be held in great remarks for their bold defiance of the poetic standards of the time, and the subsequent establishing of a new mold, which granted them the status of alma mater of the American Poetry of the nineteenth century.

Whitman stands proudly to this day as what he set out to do back then, over 150 years ago. He has indeed impersonated the Everyman, the ordinary people, and we should look up to his exemplary demonstrations of compassion, humility and simplicity, even more so than his vast literary legacy: for I suspect that is what he had in mind. Perhaps it is as the adage says:
"Look not at my finger, but rather at the moon it points at."






Works Cited:

Martin, Melissa. SparkNote on Whitman’s Poetry. 26 Jun. 2006 <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/whitman>.
Phillips, Brian. SparkNote on Wordsworth’s Poetry. 26 Jun. 2006 <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/wordsworth>.
Poetry Analysis. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 25 Jun. 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_analysis>
Shelby, Ashley Ward. SparkNote on Emily Dickinson. 26 Jun. 2006 <http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/dickinson>.
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Posted by: Kate L. Rizal

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