Poetry

1. Poetry

2. The Victorian Age • The Victorian Period literally describes the events in the age of Queen Victoria’s reign of 1837-1901. The term Victorian has connotations of repression and social conformity, however in the realm of poetry these labels are somewhat misplaced. The Victorian age provided a significant development of poetic ideals such as the increased use of the Sonnet as a poetic form, which was to influence later modern poets. • Victorian Poetry was an important period in the history of poetry, providing the link between the Romantic movement and the modernist movement of the 20th Century.

3. British Victorian Poetry and Poets Matthew Arnold: • was the son of Thomas Arnold, who was a noted and innovative headmaster of Rugby school. Matthew Arnold studied and graduated at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford. • His early poetic works included Empedocles on Etna(1852) and Poems(1853) these established his reputation as a poet. In 1857 he was appointed to be professor of poetry at Oxford University a post he held for ten years • One important theme which runs through the poetry of Matthew Arnold is the issue of faith and the sense of isolation that man can feel without faith. This theme is evident in poems such as “Dover Beach”: "The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world."

4. This poem presents us the universe of faith,itressembles the human being as once being faithfull but as time passed things have changed and faith almost dissapeared,the poet can “only hear/It’s melancholy,long,withdrawing roar”. Alfred Tennyson: • English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen Victoria and served 42 years. Tennyson's works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and intellectual values of his time, which made them especially vulnerable for later critic. • Among Tennyson's major poetic achievements is the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, In Memoriam (1850). "O life as futile, then, as frail! O for thy voice to soothe and bless! What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil." • This poem shows the readers what was the poet was going through, is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister.

5. Robert Browning: • Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, a suburb of London .Young Robert spent much of his time in his father's private library of 6000 volumes in several languages. • Browning became an admiror of Elizabeth's Barretts poetry in 1844. He began corresponding with her by letter. This was the start of one of the world's most famous romances. Their courtship lasted until 1846 when they were married. The couple moved to Italy that same year and had a son, Pen, later in 1849. Robert did not become recognized as a poet, until after Elizabeth's death in 1861. After which, he was honored for the rest of his life as a literary figure. • One of his best poems is “The last ride together”. This poem shows us a lover that doesn’t want anything else from his love ,only a ride, not a long-life ride, but a ride in which he is living his whole live, the ride of his life: ” What if we still ride on, we two With life for ever old yet new, Changed not in kind but in degree, The instant made eternity,— And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, for ever ride?“

6. American poetry and poets Emily Elizabeth Dickinson: • was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. • “I like a look of Agony,” is yet another Dickinson poem that finds something to admire in those things that are usually feared or vilified. Throughout Dickinson’s poetry, truth is a very slippery thing, and very hard to get at directly, but it is usually valued above all else. This poem is no exception, turning the agony of death into a positive, because it is one of the few things that an observer can see and trust—it is a rare moment of undoubted truth • This poem is rather unusual, however, because while it finds an admirable quality in the usually not so admirable agony, it is not in the speaker’s own agony, but in that of others. Other Dickinson poems that enact a similar process show, for example, the speaker extolling her own isolation because it means she is not part of the foolis

7. This poem can also be read as a reflection on Dickinson’s own poetry. She certainly cannot be accused of focusing on the beautiful, the easy, the mundane, and this poem seems to say that that is because pain is required for real truth. The agonized emotions and events she presents in her poetry are to her the most direct route to the truth, even though they still require the imagery, metaphors, and symbols of poetry that stand between the reader and truth, just as she relies on the symbols of pain to know that the subject is in agony. I LIKE a look of agony, Because I know it ’s true; Men do not sham convulsion, Nor simulate a throe. The eyes glaze once, and that is death. Impossible to feign The beads upon the forehead By homely anguish strung.

8. Walter "Walt" Whitman : • was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. • Whitman's sexuality is generally assumed to be homosexual or bisexual based on his poetry, though that has been at times disputed. His poetry depicts love and sexuality in a more earthy, individualistic way common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality in the late 19th century. Though Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on its author's presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians".Whitman had intense friendships with many men and boys throughout his life.

9. One of his earliest long fiction works, the novel Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate, first published November 23, 1842, is a temperance novel. Whitman wrote the novel at the height of popularity of the Washingtonian movement though the movement itself was plagued with contradictions, as was Franklin Evans.Years later Whitman claimed he was embarrassed by the book and called it a "damned rot“. He dismissed it by saying he wrote the novel in three days solely for money while he was under the influence of alcohol himself. • The most famous of Whitman’s works was one of the original twelve pieces in the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass. Like most of the other poems, it too was revised extensively, reaching its final permutation in 1881. “Song of Myself” is a sprawling combination of biography, sermon, and poetic meditation. It is not nearly as heavy-handed in its pronouncements as “Starting at Paumanok”; rather, Whitman uses symbols and sly commentary to get at important issues. “Song of Myself” is composed more of vignettes than lists: Whitman uses small, precisely drawn scenes to do his work here. • As Walt Whitman, the specific individual, melts away into the abstract “Myself,” the poem explores the possibilities for communion between individuals. Starting from the premise that “what I assume you shall assume” Whitman tries to prove that he both encompasses and is indistinguishable from the universe.

10. ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONEby: Walt Whitman N the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilization