Allen Toussaint

“Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul” (Whitman). The brilliant mind behind this quote is Walt Whitman, one of the greatest and most influential poets America has ever produced. Walt was inspired by transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Although, Walt Whitman is considered the most radical out of the three. He had many radical views, but primarily on his views of the individual, religion, and education

Walt Whitman’s poetry embodies the changes taking place in America during and after the Civil War. He experiences them firsthand as a Civil War nurse. In the poems, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and “A Child Said What is the Grass?”. Whitman talks about both population growth, and the many deaths during the Civil War. He sees life and death as a cycle, and examines life after the life of an individual. The basic meanings of Whitman’s poems are very relevant to what he was facing at

and it was because of those individuals who desired creativity and true freedom, and essentially had the means to awake the cultural uprising known as the Beat Generation. An example of this creativity came from one of the Beats founding fathers - Allen Ginsberg. A poet, an activist, and one of the most influential people in terms of spreading the Beat culture.

In order to analyze Woody Allen’s post-9/11 Period, and how the events of September 11, 2011 play a role in it, we first have to take a closer look at the relationship between the filmmaker and the city of New York. Woody Allen, born in Brooklyn as Allen Stewart Konigsberg in 1935, is one of the filmmakers alongside Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee who present a very personal portrayal of the city. Unlike the other filmmakers, Allen’s New York is often criticized for not showing the real, authentic

Walt Whitman was considered one of America’s most influential poets. He was born on May 31, 1819 in New York. He grew up in a family that had so much love for America; therefore his poems reflected his love for America and the nature of the American experience and its democracy. He published about 300 poems in the collection of Leaves of Grass; it became one of the most popular collections in the history of American Literature. Each poem represents Whitman’s honor of his attitude towards life and

Whitman saw everything about the war—even its violence—as patriotic. It was an emotional outburst and then cleansing for the entire country. According to Reynolds, Whitman’s recruiting poems, “avoided partisanship, picturing the war spirit as a unifying rather than divisive force…” (417). Whitman’s works funneled all of the passionate emotions expressed and experienced during the war and directed them towards unity. In contrast, one of Whitman’s recruitment poems “Beat! Beat! Drums!” focuses on

In this week’s readings one element I noticed being shared among the poems read was equality. In Walt Whitman’s “[I celebrate myself, and sing myself]” it’s written around the time of the American Civil War and during this period there were high tensions among many people concerning slavery. When Whitman writes “My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, born here of parents from here from parents the same, and their parents the same…” (p.744), I felt Whitman broke the matter

Walt Whitman once poetically proclaimed, “Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” (Whitman Brainyquote). This is just one of thousands the of thoughts that he and many authors shared during this time period. He played a great role in the transcendentalism literary movement, which was a point in history when authors expressed themselves through the simplicity of nature. They viewed the earth as a canvas that God stroked with his choicest paint brush. Walt Whitman’s difficult childhood and

David Henderson English 1213 Dr. Keith Hale 2 Dec 2016 Walt Whitman Walt Whitman is known as Americas greatest poet; however, this took some time. Whitman is considered the father of free verse poetry (Reynolds). The free verse was not accepted among the people very well, the people had no idea how to accept it for what it was. Whitman’s greatest work is a collection of poems and stories called “Leaves of Grass”, which Whitman published his first copy in 1855. Whitman’s collection of “Leaves of Grass”

In Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, the concept of self is one of the most momentous aspect and theme of the poem. Whitman believes the self is a spiritual entity that is comprised of experiences, ideas, and insights during and beyond the conscious life. He is able to see through not only his own self, but the selves of many others because the self is not only individual but universal as well. This poem is spoken from first person, the narrator even addressing himself as Walt Whitman in order