New+American+Poetry

=**A New American Poetry**=


 * Whitman and Dickinson**

The two greatest American poets of the nineteenth century were so different from one another, both as artists and as personalities, that only a nation as varied in character as the United States could possibly contain them. Walt Whitman had bold strokes on a broad canvas; Emily Dickinson worked with the delicacy of a miniaturist. Whitman was sociable and gregarious, a traveler; Dickinson was private and shy, content to remain in one secluded spot all through her lifetime. Many of her works were not even found until after her death.

They have even been the topics of poetry themselves.

Like you, I belong to yesterday, to the bays where day is anchored to wait for its hour.
 * Emily Dickinson**

Like me, you belong to today, the progression of that hour when what is unborn begins to throb.

We are cultivators of the unsayable, weavers of singulars, migrant workers in search of floating gardens as yet unsown, as yet unharvested.

--Lucha Corpi

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman-- I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one root-- Let there be commerce between us.
 * A pact**

--Ezra Pound

Emily Dickenson was born on December 10, 1830 in Enherst, Massachusetts to a successful family with strong community ties.After being schooled at the [|Amherst Academy] for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at [|Mount Holyoke Female Seminary] before retiring to her family's house, [|the Homestead]. Throughout her adult life she rarely traveled outside of Amherst or very far from home. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence. This piece of information was found at [|www.wikipedia.com], by Erin Jacks

When she was eighteen, Dickinson's family befriended a young attorney by the name of Benjamin Franklin Newton. According to a letter written by Dickinson after Newton's death, he had been "with my Father two years, before going to Worcester – in pursuing his studies, and was much in our family."[|[35]] Although their relationship was probably not romantic, Newton was a formative influence and would become the second in a series of older men (after Humphrey) that Dickinson referred to variously as her tutor, preceptor or master Newton likely introduced her to the writings of [|William Wordsworth], and his gift to her of [|Ralph Waldo Emerson]'s first book of collected poems had a liberating effect. She wrote later that he, "whose name my Father's Law Student taught me, has touched the secret Spring".[|[37]] Newton held her in high regard, believing in and recognizing her as a poet. When he was dying of [|tuberculosis], he wrote to her, saying that he would like to live until she achieved the greatness he foresaw. ((All information concerning Emily in these three paragraphs were found at [|www.wikipedia.com] by Erin Jacks

Born on [|Long Island], Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the [|American Civil War] in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, //Franklin Evans// (1842). Whitman's major work, //Leaves of Grass//, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American [|epic]. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892.After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to [|Camden, New Jersey] where his health further declined. He died at 72 yrs old. All info at [|www.wikipedia.com] found by Erin Jacks

At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling.[|[11]] He then sought employment, due to his family's financial situation, originally as an office boy for two lawyers and later as an [|apprentice] and [|printer's devil] for the weekly Long Island newspaper the //Patriot//, edited by Samuel E. Clements.[|[12]] Here, Whitman learned about the printing press and [|typesetting].[|[13]] He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for occasional issues.[|[14]] Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the corpse of [|Elias Hicks] to create a plaster mold of his head.[|[15]] Clements left the //Patriot// shortly after, possibly as a result of the controversy. All of this information was found at [|www.wikipedia.com] by Erin Jacks