Whitman notes
Added since last posting
General notes:
 Civil War = 1861-1865
 Devices throughout (though not always):
o Parenthesis
o “O” (used two ways:)
 Apostrophe
 Ecphonesis O: to cry out with passion (the “O” is a sound of some sort, not the
word “oh”)
o Indenting the remainder of a line of poetry of the poetic line continues to the next
physical line
 “song” / singing / etc.
 ship, sea, voyage, etc.
“In Cabin’d Ships at Sea”
 In “Inscriptions”: important because this was the opening section of his whole text
 “O book” references – outlining his desire for the whole poem, Leaves of Grass
o “liquid-flowing syllables”
o “leaf”
 Extended metaphor of ship/sea to book/purpose or world
 Alliteration
o “s” and “w” – sea and wave sounds
o “b” – bobbing
o “v,” “f,” “c” – ?
 PoV=1st
 Diction
o adjectives
 Personification
 Change in appearance of stanza 2
“We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d”
 Anaphora of “we”; break with line 2
 From “Children of Adam”
o Comparison to Nature?
o Sexual love / romantic relationships?
o Adam and Eve?
 Personification of Nature
 repeated metaphors to natural and cosmic
 positive and negative comparisons – both are worthy of mentioning; method of recording, not
emphasizing one over the other
“These I Singing in Spring”
 homosexual love? (“lovers” and “him that tenderly loves me”)
 love of comrades? (“token of comrades,” “a troop,” “spirits of dear firiends”)
 Imagery of nature
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Parenthesis
Tokens of love from natural world
Metaphor for pieces of self or memories?
Calamus-root (connotative) reserved for only “them that love as I myself am capable of loving”
“France, the 18th year of These States”
 Written the year before the Civil War began
 “18th year” = presidential terms (poem was written in the 18th presidential term since the
founding of the US)
 “natal scream” = democracy?
 Series of questions
 Comparisons between France (during Revolution) and US (at time of writing)
 Speaker = 1st PoV
 War/violent imagery
 French words
“Year of Meteors (1859-1860)”
 Repetition
 Parenthesis
 Not a single year
 Extended comparison/metaphor: these events are also “meteors”
o 19th Presidentiad
o John Brown’s hanging
o 1860 census
o Arriving ships (with immigrants and gold)
o Visit from prince of England
o Great Eastern steamship arrived
o Comet (literally)
o Huge meteor-procession (literally)
o “I myself”
 “Meteors” are:
o Gleams of light in dark?
o Things that pass/end?
o Permanent marks?
 “brooding” – negative word?
 Again, emphasis on “evil and good” – recording both as important
“Song for All Seas, All Ships”
 Tone—respectful of ocean and fallen people
 Not a polished poem (published 3 days after 2nd shipwreck): “rude brief” and “chant…fitful, like a
surge”
 Sea as breastfeeding nurse
 Repetition of “all” emphasizes line 17
 Strange parenthesis—seems to refer to those who survived and were saved by drifting to shore
or other ships; the “few, very choice”
 “O sea”
 2 distinct sections, intentionally separate/numbered
“Gods”
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Different speaker in each stanza? (at very least, different idea as “God” in each stanza)
Repetition
Positively connoted words
Acceptance of all “Gods”
Personification
Approximate rhyme (stanza 4)
Content shift at stanza 5 (from single to multiple “Gods”)
Similar to “Miracles”?
“Beat! Beat! Drums!”
 Audience: Union
 No asides/parenthesis
 Hyphens – break up into rhythm
 Auditory imagery
 Onomatopoeia
 Diction: “fierce,” “shrill,” “heavier,” “terrible” etc.
 Regular stanzas with repetition of 1st line of each
 War takes precedent over everyday lives
 Mood enhanced by punctuation
“Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night”
 Words of adoration from speaker (presumably father or father type) to boy soldier
 Apostrophe
 Somber or regretful tone, expressed through diction and syntax
 One whole sentence
 “vigil” repeated throughout
 Burial imagery (lines 19-21)
 Line 20—like tucking a child in to sleep
“A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown”
 Death/blood/bleeding
 Negative words/images
 1st PoV
 Sensory imagery
 “the road unknown” = time left in war; death/afterlife; uncertainty of future
 “church”—neutral territory
 Emphasis on young age of “lad” (lines 11, 12, 22)
 “lily” contrasts violent images
 Repetition of “darkness”
 Unchanged throughout all editions
“O Captain! My Captain!”
 Juxtaposition: victory and death
 Change in PoV
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Apostrophe
Metaphor
Rhyme scheme
Regular structure
“my father” not literal
“fallen cold and dead”
Looks like a ship? Looks like falling? [probably unintentional if this is actually the case]
“Unnamed Lands”
 Themes
o History always shapes present.
o History’s impacts current world.
 Paradox: lines 9 and 12
 “unnamed”: previous names no longer exist
 Repetition
 Listing
 Series of questions
 Equality of gender
 Native Americans?
“Warble for Lilac-Time”
 Warble = bird song
 Lilac-time = spring
 Wants to be as free as nature (18-19)
 Concepts similar to relief from seasonal depression
 “returning in reminiscence”: thinking about his “spring” (youth)?
 Appreciation for nature
 Nature imagery
“Vocalism”
 Themes
o Powerful voices inspire following (to good or bad ends)
o People follow charisma
o Speech has power to shape history
 Stanzas don’t necessarily fit together neatly because originally two different poems
 Line 11 – consider these words separately
 Positive and negative effects of persuasion
 Gender equality again
 Repetition
 Anaphora
 Simile/analogy
 Descriptions of “voice”
“Miracles”
 Appreciate America, the world, observable things, little things
 Miracles are interpretations
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Anaphora (and repetition within lines)
Change from “or [verb]”: lines 11-14
Paradox: “yet each distinct and in its place”
Structure: very long stanza, shorter stanza, shortest stanza (emphasis on shortest or longest?)
“An Old Man’s Thought of School”
“Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling”
 Wanting significance?
 Metaphor for prime of life
 “powerful words” [no explanation here]
 Respectful and admiring tone [created how?]
 Last two lines
“To a Locomotive in Winter”
 Locomotive = train
 Apostrophe
 Music/song/verse
 Imagery: visual and aural
 Repetition = sound of train?
 Figurative language
 Allusion: Muse
 Praising modernism, motion, “pulse of everything,” importance, power (poem’s purpose?)
“O Magnet-South”
 Speaker: Southerner (not Whitman)
 Names from Native American peoples
 Listing of natural aspects
 an “ode”
 1860-right before Civil War (flattering poem about South—geography, not people or ideology)
 Images of places with adjectives
“Years of the Modern”
 Repetition
 law Freedom peace (“A stupendous trio”)
 repetition
 “unperform’d”=what will be is not the same as what came before