Dickinson again #pullingmyhairout

Emily Dickinson's poem "I have not told my garden yet" is one of the saddest poems one could imagine Emily Dickinson writing, but apparently she did not care because she wrote it anyway. It is about a woman who knows she is going to die, but cannot tell the places she goes about it. The places are personified because Dickinson felt such a strong connection with them, and in her solitary life they meant more to her than most people did.

Emily Dickinson really loved nature, especially her garden, and spent a lot of time in it. She never really left the grounds of her house, so she did not exactly have much of a social life. These places that were important to her became like friends to her. Just as one would have trouble telling a friend about something as terrible as that, Dickinson has trouble with the feeling that her favorite places will some how find out about it.

Even in this really depressing poem, it is clear that Dickinson is not really too hurt about death. She was a very free thinker, and instead of describing death as resting or ceasing to exist, she describes it as walking (Dickinson 16). She felt that death was not just sitting around bored, but was an active state with engaging things to do. What Dickinson thought those things were can only be guessed at, but it was clear that even though her death saddened her, she still had hope about what was coming next.

In the first stanza of the poem, Emily Dickinson says “The MURMURING of bees has ceased; but murmuring of some posterior, prophetic, has simultaneous come”(Dickinson). When the sound of the buzzing of bees stops, it is in winter. Winter is when the bees go into their nest and do not come out into the brisk air(Dickinson). And even, many bees die, and leave their larvae to be the next generation when they hatch in the spring. In saying that the bees no longer murmur, Emily Dickinson is saying that the end of spring has come. However, she is also saying that there is now a new murmur that has come at the same time that the murmurs of the bees left. This is referring to the beginning of winter(Dickinson).

The second and final stanza says, “The lower metres of the year, when nature’s laugh is done, the Revelations of the book whose Genesis is June” (Dickinson). It is saying that the last months of the year are present and nature is no longer bright and vibrant like in wonderful summertime. When referring to Revelations, that means ending, and when referring to Genesis, she means beginning. She is saying that the beginning of the summer is June, but it has now come to its end. Winter is here (Dickinson).

This poem uses many symbols and round about ways of stating something that could be simply stated in plain words (Dickinson). But the almost cryptic word choice makes this poem intriguing and neat. Also, Dickinson uses many words that relate to the Bible. She uses words like prophetic, Genesis, and Revelation. This is interesting, for Dickinson faced an inward battle between relying on God and relying on herself (Dickinson).

"111. The Murmuring of Bees Has Ceased. Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." 111. “The Murmuring of Bees Has Ceased.” Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems. Web. 28 Mar. 2012. .

Dickinson, Emily. "I Have Not Told My Garden Yet, by Emily Dickinson." Poetry Archive. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. .

Journal 28

Emily Dickinson's poem "I heard a fly buzz when I died" is a poem about a dying person whose last thoughts are iterupted by a fly flying somewherer near her. The poem does a really good job of conveying Dickinson's spirituality and unique way of looking at death. Despite her religion, she thought very freely about death, and because of that was prone to a little uneasiness at the prospect of dieing, not knowing in the least what it would be like. This uneasiness is conveyed in the poem using a fly as a symbol for it.

As the main character of this poem is lying, aboiut to die, she goes throught an important series of thoughts in her attempt to comfort herself and get used to the idea of dieing. She first thinks about her religion, and the hope it offers to those who die of meeting God and spending eternity in heaven. Once comforted by this thought, she decides what to do with her things on earth and who to give them to. She is trying to deal with death in the most rational possible way, but the fly in the room keeps distracting her and leading her thoughts astray.

The fly in the poem is what keeps the feeling from being peaceful. The fly buzzing around is distraction and confusing to the woman, which gives the poem an eerie sort of stillness instead of the comfortable release the fourth line of the poem would suggest death to be. Because of this, I think the fly is a symbol for the poets fear and uneasiness about death. Even though there are pleanty of comforting thoughts for her to think and her business on earth is taken care of, she still can not help herself from feeling very uneasy about death. The uneasiness is there at the beginning of the poem, and is still there at the end. She describes it as being between her and the light, the light being the comfort and ease in death.

Journal 27

Many of Emily Dickinson's poems were written to the tune of church hyms and other religious songs. This is not at all surprising, considering her deeply puritan childhood and her own religious devotion. Generally speaking, there is a sort of continuum between musicians and poets, and rarely do you ever see a musician with no appreciation for poetry or a poet without a fondness of music. Generally, a poet will almost sing their poem as they are writing it to keep a steady rhythm. All things considered, it really only makes sense that some of her poems would sound like popular church music.

Honestly, I wish I had taken the time to read more of Emily Dickinson's poetry before we started discussing it. I have only read a few of her more popular poems so far, but I can already tell that the way she writes takes a lot of time to become easily understood. The language she uses is different from the type of language I hear every day, and she uses a lot of symbols. She puts her verbs in places that most people would not, like after a predicate adjective. The symbols themselves make the poetry a little bit difficult to understand at first, but they also make it much more interesting.

Dickinson spent her entire life trying to decide how life works. Her philosophy is quite literally her life's work. She believed that every aspect of a person's life was connected to every other aspect. One could not have religion without love, or love without loneliness, or loneliness without some consideration of death. A great deal of her poems start out on one theme but end on another that seems entirely different at first. Through reading the poem, Dickinson can share how the two are really connected despite the original impression of their not being at all related. It really is amazing how well thought out all of her poetry is, and even stranger is that she did not want them to be published.

Yet another Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is another one of the authors that literary critics with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are driven up a freaking wall by because they are unable to put her definitivly into a literary period. She is one of the poets that they just lable as being "between," or simply call a dangerous anarchist because she does not fit into their pretty little groups. The fancy critics like to say that she belongs somewhere in between the Realist and Modernist stlyes, but this is utterly bunk and should really be ignored.

The Realist writers were seeking to recreate the world exactly as it was in their books and poetry (Werlock "Realism"). This means that their works were often depressing and never exactly happy because in life, happiness is the most easily forgotten feeling. In the humble opinion of one certain commentator on literature, they made their stories unrealistic by including so few of the happy things that happen all of the time in a person's life, but that is a rant for another night. Back to the main point, Emily Dickinson does not really fit well into this genre. As much thought as she gave to death, she did not think of it as depressing like the Realists did. She approached it as one does an interesting subject for consideration, not as some horrible fact of life that literature seems incomplete without. With other topics that are generally sad she takes the same approach, sometimes being optomistic. Instead of writing about strife, she writes poetry about hope, and such optimism can be rather hard to find in the Realists' works.

With the Modernists Emily Dickinson fit even worse. Modernists were consumed by the notion that society was some great and terrible beast without reason, and that the best a person could do was try to adjust to it (Werlock "Modernism"). In the eyes of a modernist author, a real, thoughtful person does not really have a place in the mindless society created after the first world war. Dickinson could not agree less, even on a bad hair day in one hundred degree heat around three hours before the ice cream man normally comes. She firmly believed people had a place and a purpose, and wrote her entire body of poetry trying to figure out just what they were and how they fit together (Aiken). She believed that certain events and feelings really had meaning, unlike the Modernists who felt like helpless children drowning alone in some stormy sea.

Like Whitman, Dickinson did not really belong even remotely to either the Realist period or the Modernist period, but instead fit somewhere along side the Transcendentalists. She had her little differences with Transcendentalism, but the great majority of her philosophy agrees with theirs. She believed that life was meaningful and beautiful, and while she might have been a little cryptic at times, at least she had enough faith in people to believe they would be able to decipher it, which is more that the Realists and Modernists could say for themselves.



Aiken, Conrad. "Emily Dickinson." In A Reviewer's ABC. New York: Meridian Books, 1935. Quoted as "Emily Dickinson" in Harold Bloom, ed. Emily Dickinson, Bloom's Major Poets. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 1998. (Updated 2007.) Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.Web. 12 Mar. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BMPED04&SingleRecord=True.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "modernism." The Facts On File Companion to the
American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009.
Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 12 Mar. 2012.
http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=
CASS589&SingleRecord=True.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American
Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's
Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 12 Mar. 2012.
http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=
Gamshrtsty0575&SingleRecord=True.

As much as I love Whitman, this is really a bit much.

Now the fatigued writer of these blogs is to explore the style of Walt Whitman, and give reasons for why he really has his own genre in American literature. While Whitman's work is a wonderful source of things to talk about, it shortly becomes old when the philosophical side of his poetry is ignored. Even so, some people think putting authors in their particular group is important, and that opinion demands respect no matter how foolish it is.

The poetry of Walt Whitman falls somewhere between the Realism and the Modernism period according to some people who think they know something about the literary arts. These people would define Realism as the attempt to portray life as it is in literature (Werlock "Realism"). The good, the bad, and the pratical, so to speak. They would define Modernism, the literary period that followed it, as literature focusing on individuals being lost in the world that they find themselves without a place in due to the changes of society (Werlock "Modernism").

It is really apparent that Walt Whitam came no where near fitting in to the Realism catagory, and from reading his poetry one can easily infer that he would not want to. He saw the reality of life as wonderful and beautiful, even the sadder parts of it. There was no such thing as pratical. The things most people would consider pratical, Whitman considered a useless waste of time. Instead of working and making social connections in high places, he wrote about wandering about in nature and drifting from place to place (Whitman). He rejected social rules in every form, and sought only to be his self. The realist crowd would certainly have had a difficult time with him in their midst.

As poorly as he fits into the Realist camp, he fits only a little better into the Modernist group. He shares with them the appreciation of the free will of individualism, and likewise rejects with them the notion of one supreme God. However, the point of the Modernist literature was to represent the horrible decadence they thought people had fallen into (Werlock "Modernism"). Whitman could not have been more different. He saw even the lowest members of American society as some of the highest and best people in the world. With such opinions, what could one possible want to change? Many Modernist writers sought government enforcement of what they thought was right, like the Socialism promoted by writer Upton Sinclare in his novel, The Jungle, for instance. Whitman was a big fan of individual freedom, and government intrusion on it would not have gone over well with him. He wrote entire epic poems about how beautiful the average American was, and about how beautiful the freedom of this country is.

To conclude, Whitman fit into neither group at all, and to say that he fit in between them is equally rediculous. If anything, he was similar to the Transcendentalists, considering his love of nature and rejection of governments. Even then he was certainly his own writer.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "modernism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CASS589&SingleRecord=True.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= Gamshrtsty0575&SingleRecord=True.

Whitman, Walt. "Contents. Whitman, Walt. 1900. Leaves of Grass." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. .

Whitman (again)

Walt Whitman is a very unique poet, and his stlye is completely his own. He does not belong to any literary period because he is absolutely unique. That being said, he does have many things in common with Transcendentalists. In his poem "When last in the Dooryard Lilacs Bloomed" this is particularly easy to see.

In "When Last in the Dooryard Lilacs Bloomed," Whitman writes about death, his understanding of it, and even personifies it multiple ways all in one very long poem. He writes about a certain bird singing in the forrest as one of his teachers about death, and he hears in its song important thoughts about it. This is similar to Transcendentalists in that they thought that observing nature was the best way to learn about life and morality. Emerson specifically wrote about this in "Nature" (Wayne) Even though Whitman was not a Transcendentalist, he still shared this importannt aspect of their philosophy with them. He also uses nature symbolically, like most poets and writers, though I must admit that I think whitman does a much better job than other writers.

Also shared with writers like Emerson and Thoreau is the way Whitman used his own meter in his poetry. Free verse poetry was not taken seriously before Whitman, but he used it anyway because it was how he thought he was best able to express his self. In Emerson's "Self Reliance" he wrote that a good person is one who does what they think is best despite how other people view it. Whitman followed this advice and became the first serious and well known poet to use free verse in his poetry. Before Whitman, poems had a rhyme scheme, but Whitman did not want to use one, and today a rhyme scheme is a sort of optional thing. He was a great pioneer in poetry, and changed the way most people view it because it was what he thought was best.



Emerson, Ralph. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 15 Feb.
2012.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo
Emerson:ALiterary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New
York: ChelseaHouse Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online.
Facts On File, Inc.Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.aspItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Whitman, Walt. "192. When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard BloomÂ’d. Whitman, Walt. 1900. Leaves of Grass. Web. 11 Mar. 2012. .

Emily Dickinson

One of the first things to know about Emily Dickinson is that she did everything in her power to avoid letting other people influence her writing. Around her twenties, she started spending less and less time around people, untile by the end of her life he rarely left her house and garden (McChesney). Her greatest goal in writing poetry was to understand her own soul and the connections between different aspects of life. To do this, she spent time thinking all alone. Even with her wish to escape from influences, she still had a lot in common with Transcendentalists.

One of her most famous poems about hope, she compares it to a little bird that somehow manages to keep singing despite terrible surroundings. In the last stanza, she mentions that even though it weathers such difficult circumstances, it never asks for anything to keep it going. The way she compares hope to an aspect of nature is very similar to some of Emerson's writings. In "Nature" he writes about it as the best teacher of morality, and as support mentions that many stories used to illustrate morals are about events in nature. Emily Dickinson uses nature to illustrate an emotion quality, so in that way the two authors are similar.

Another way that Dickinson is similar to Emerson is in her reclusive nature. Dickinson's lifestyle is like Emerson's phliosophy put into practice. Emerson wrote in "Self Reliance" that good people should form and hold their own opinions despite whatever criticisms they may bring about. He also wrote about the detrimental effects of society on an individual as such. Emily Dickinson spent her entire life thinking and forming opinions, and rejected what ever criticism she found unhelpful (McChesney). She also withderw from society almost entirely to work on her soul searching and her poetry. She put Emerson's philosophy in "Self Reliance" into practice and because of it she was able to write thousands of wonderful poems.



Dickinson, Emily. "Hope Is the Thing with Feathers." Web. 11 Mar. 2012. .

McChesney, Sandra. "A View from the Window: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson." In Harold Bloom, ed. Emily Dickinson, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 11 March, 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCED03&SingleRecord=True.

Jack London

Jack London wrote the short story "To Build a Fire" about a man in Alaska who is traveling all by his self in a freezing winter. He does very well for a while, but he accidentally steps on thin ice and from there slowly freezes to death. His story is very interesting, and perhaps may have been influenced by Transcendentalists in some manner. However, he treats nature differently that writers like Emerson did, and there is little that can be inferred about his thoughts concerning individualism from the story.

In "To Build a Fire" nature is the antagonist. The man in the story is trying to overcome the bitter coldness of an Alaska winter and return to is camp, or else freeze to death on the trail. He is in conflict with nature, it is his opponent. The Transcendentalists were all about nature. Emerson wrote that nature is the thing that preserves a persons individuality, and teaches them the moral lessons of life (Wayne). To Emerson, nature is the best friend a person could possibly have. There is clearly a very big difference between the way the two authors saw nature, and it is rather unlikely that Emerson influenced London in that respect. One thing the two do have in common in relation to nature is their respect for it. London saw its power in taking life, and respected it for that. Emerson saw its beauty, and had an equal respect for it. They had different reasons for the feeling, but both had it.

London's philosophy about individualism is a little bit difficult to tell from the story. His main character remarks that he should not have traveled alone, but that is more a reasonable matter of safety than a remark on philosophy. That the main character was all by his self in his fight against nature might be telling, but also telling may be that he ended up freezing to death. Really, it could go either way.



London, Jack. "To Build a Fire, by Jack London." The World of Jack London 2012®. Web. 07 Mar. 2012. .

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson:A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea
House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.aspItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson's writing is very pessimistic and cynical. Instead of writing about what a person can do to make their life better, he writes about what it is that people do wrong. There is very little in his most famous two peoms that really relates to Transcendentalis at all. He writes about the common aflictions people have in their own lives, and how they are the cause of their own misery, while the Transcendentalists were not conscerened with that sort of thing.

In the poem Richard Cory, Robinson writes about a very rich gentleman who seemed to have everything going for him in his life, but for some crazy reason decided to kill himself. The theme of the poem seems to be that it is really rediculous to feel sorry for yourself when other people may have it so much worse than you. Transcendentalists write with great optimism about how great life can be, like in Emerson's "Nature" (Wayne). Robinson seems to view life as some ordeal to get through with as little pain as possible, or at least that is the most that can be gathered from the four stanza poem. There is a really big difference in the way the two writers feel about life in general.

Another big difference between Robinson and Emerson is that Robinson does not seem too concerned with nature in the least. Nature is one of the subjects where, if a poem was picked at random, chances are that it would contain some refrence to nature in it. Robinson's peotry is strange in that there is no refrence to nature in it, which, come to think of it, might have something to do with why his out look on life is so pessimistic. Emerson thought that nature was what kept a person all good and moral inside, and without any connection to it life got all misterable and junk. Thinking about it, the lack of nature might be why Robinson has such depressing poetry.



Robinson, Edwin Arlington. "Richard Cory." Poemhunter.com. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/richard-cory/.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson:A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea
House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.aspItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Anton Chekhov

The Darling by Anton Chekhov is a story about a woman who entirely depends upon other people for her happiness in life. She is totally empty when she has no one to love and no one's opinions to reflect. The story can somewhat be related to Transcendentalism because of the way it treats individualism and how a person should best live their life in relation to it.

Olenka is a woman who can do absolutely nothing all on her own. She needs other people to give her something to think and something to do. She has no interests on her own. She is not complete in herself, and Chekhov presents this characteristic in a rather unfavorable light. In his short story she spends long stretches of time empty and unhappy, and smothers the people she attaches herself to. Emerson wrote in his essay Self Reliance about how a person should be able not only to form their own opinions, but also be able to hold them even when other people consider them wrong. The two writers are in agreement on the manner of people's associations with each other. Relationships with people are great, but a person should have at least a sense of themselves as an individual, if nothing else.

"The Darling" is a story about individualism (or the lack there of), and there is little else to comment upon in it. Chekhov writes in the Realist style, so his story is very straight forward and the theme is very apparent. He does not mention nature at all because it does not influence the theme he is trying to relate. Though Transcendentalists like Emerson would argue that nature plays a great role in how a person does or does not have a self, it did not seem necessary to Chekhov (Wayne). The story gets its point across without anything added or to make the reader feel artistic and sophisticated. How bland.



Chekhov, Anton. "The Darling by Anton Chekhov." The Darling by Anton Chekhov @ Classic Reader. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. .

Emerson, Ralph. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson:
A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.aspItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph's speech at his surrender to the United States government is a relatively hard thing to compare to Transcendentalism. As was mentioned in a previous blog, it is a very difficult thing to compare a philosophy to a speech because the speech gives the person doing the comparing so little to work with in comparison to everything crammed into an entire philosophy. Even with such difficulties present, it is clear that Chief Joseph shared an appreciation for freedom with the Transcendentalist authors Emerson and Thoreau.

Chief Joseph led his group of followers all the way from Oregon to Montana, a journey of over one thousand miles, in attempt to escape from the United States government. He did not think that the government would take good care of his people, and on top of that he wanted to be free from a government that had no reason to respect. He wanted freedom. This is very similar to Thoreau's thoughts about how government should work. He believed that a person shouuld be able to choose not to be governed by other people if they should want to or think it was the right thing to do. Thoreau even went to jail once because he would not pay a tax to the American government.

The way Chief Joseph writes about his people shows that he really cares about them a great deal, and that he was willing to try escaping to Canada to ensure they had their freedom really is a good example of that. A person can not help but to feel a great deal of sympathy for him because he tried so hard to give his people the freedom they deserve, but still had to give up in the end. Half of his tribe died on the attempted journey to Canada, and Chief Joseph's speech is terribly sad because of it. He made a great sacrifice in trying to gain freedom, but he was still unable to accomplish his goal.




Chief Joseph. "Chief Joseph." Welcome to Georgia State University. Web. 01 Mar. 2012. .

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25
Jan. 2012. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html.

Edgar Lee Masters

Spoon River Anthology is a collection of poems written by Edgar Lee Masters. The poems were written by dead members of a fictional town, and were about their lives and their deaths. Some were happy, some sad, some religious, and some written by the wicked. When comparing them to transcendentalism, it becomes clear that Masters received some influence from their writings, though perhaps in an indirect manner.

In addition to describing the relationships people had with other members of his town, Masters also writes with a specific individualism in certain poems. According to Temple Cone, the Spoon River Anthology is sort of about finding a good balance between individuality and the relationships with other people that exist in Spoon River. Transcendentalists like Emerson really thought that the individual should not be influenced by other people at all, and wrote about such things very often (Emerson). The way Masters mixes individuality with community shows that he was probably influenced by the Transcendentalists, though it was either not very strongly or he was influenced by a person who was influenced by Emerson and Thoreau (second hand transcendentalism).

Along with his inclusion of individualism in his writing, Masters also uses a fairly unique writing style in his poems. The short little stories are written in free verse poetry. The style of writing without a set meter or any rhyming was first made popular by Walt Whitman, but was still quite new when masters chose to use it. The Transcendentalists often did controversial things, like spending a night in jail as Thoreau did. Free verse poetry was still very new and likely not well accepted when Masters chose to use it, but like the great and powerful Thoreau, he did what he thought would be best without much thought of whether it would be accepted.

Masters was also influenced by Walt Whitman, who was somewhat influenced by the Transcendentalists. In Master's poem about a poet, he writes about how small the writer's poetry seems in comparison to Whitman's poems. He writes with a portion of the same feeling Whitman does, and if it was possible to describe it well enough to make it understood then people would stop writing stories and spend all of their time writing about it. However, as it has not been found to be possible yet, people use stories as a vessel for the emotion they just can not describe.



Cone, Temple. "Spoon River Anthology." In Kimmelman, Burt, and Temple Cone, eds. The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 2. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 1 March, 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CTAP0520&SingleRecord=True.

Emerson, Ralph. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html.