Subject Areas |
Art and Culture
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Visual Arts |
History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - Civil War and Reconstruction |
Literature and Language Arts
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American |
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Biography |
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Poetry |
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Time Required |
| Three or four classroom periods |
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Skills |
| Poetry writing
Poetry interpretation
Analysis of primary documents
Collaboration
Comparison and contrast
Media analysis |
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Additional Data |
| Date Created: 09/17/02 |
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Date Posted |
| 9/17/2002 |
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Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy
"I will… go with drivers and boatmen and men that catch fish or
work in fields. I know they are sublime." —From Walt
Whitman's Notebook Page 65, LOC #80, available on the EDSITEment resource American
Memory
"Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience
and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his
people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering
and their love of music, laughter, and language itself." —From the
Biography of Langston
Hughes, available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Academy of American Poets IntroductionWalt
Whitman sought to create a new and distinctly American form of poetry. As he declared
in Democratic Vistas,
available on the EDSITEment resource American
Studies at the University of Virginia: "America has yet morally and artistically
originated nothing. She seems singularly unaware that the models of persons, books,
manners, etc., appropriate for former conditions and for European lands, are but
exiles and exotics here…." In the same document, he attacks the poets of his day
as "genteel little creatures" who do not speak for the great democratic mass of
Americans--the drivers, boatmen, and field-workers whom Whitman, in the first
quotation above, calls "sublime." It is from this great democratic mass, he suggests,
that new forms of art and poetry--a new conception of the sublime--will arise.
Did Whitman in his own poetry succeed in creating
a revolutionary, original, and truly American form of verse? However we answer
the question, it is certain that the example of the "Good Grey Poet" has had a
profound influence on subsequent generations of American poets. In this lesson,
students will explore the idea of "democratic poetry" by reading Whitman's words
in a variety of media, examining daguerreotypes taken circa 1850, and comparing
the poetic concepts and techniques behind Whitman's I
Hear America Singing and Langston Hughes' Let
America Be America Again. Finally, using similar poetic concepts and techniques,
students will have an opportunity create a poem from material in their own experience.
Note: This lesson may be taught either
as a stand-alone lesson or as a companion to the complementary EDSITEment lesson
Walt Whitman's
Notebooks and Poetry: the Sweep of the Universe. To make this lesson plan more compelling and fascinating for students, teachers should screen the brilliant Whitman episode from the NEH-funded series Visions and Voices (scroll down to "12. Walt Whitman") at the EDSITEment-reviewed site Learner.org. There is a log-in process required to access the actual movie, but the registration is free and provides entree to a wealth of educator resources.
Guiding Question:How
does Whitman's poetry and the poems of others influenced by him reflect Whitman's
notion of a democratic poem? Learning ObjectivesAfter
completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to: Preparing
to Teach this Lesson- Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested
materials and other useful websites. Download and print out documents you will
use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
- Download the
worksheet, Comparing Two American
Poems, available here as a PDF file. Print out and make an appropriate number
of copies of any handouts you plan to use in class.
- For background information
on the life and poetry of Walt Whitman, consult the following EDSITEment resources:
- The EDSITEment-reviewed
website American Memory provides information
About Whitman's Notebooks,
including the following excerpts:
In these typical writer's notebooks,
Whitman jotted down thoughts in prose and expressions in poetry. The earliest
examples include journalistic entries with ideas for articles he might write.
His first trial lines for what would soon become part of the 1855 edition of Leaves
of Grass appear in an early notebook (LC #80) which bears an internal date
of 1847; it was his habit, however, to use these notebooks over a number of years,
filling in blank pages at will, and the remarkable trial flights of verse for
"Song of Myself" in it are likely to date closer to 1854.
In the Civil
War years, he was more apt to carry tiny notebooks in his shirt pocket in which
he took notes about the needs and wants of wounded soldiers whom he visited and
comforted in the hospitals in and near Washington, D.C. In these he noted what
treats a soldier might like on the next visit--raspberry syrup, rice-pudding,
notepaper and pencil--or notes and addresses of family to whom Whitman would then
write in place of the gravely wounded or dead young man. Occasionally he would
also describe scenes on the battlefield, probably from reports from others in
the camps. American Memory also
provides information about Daguerreotypes,
including the following excerpts: [Daguerreotypes] occasionally document
American laborers in the mid-nineteenth century. The subjects of occupational
daguerreotypes pose with the tools of their trade or goods that they have made.
Most occupational daguerreotypes depict tradesmen, such as cobblers, carpenters,
and blacksmiths…
Nineteenth-century paintings, prints, and illustrations
of the American working class often presented idealized and heroicized images.
In contrast, this daguerreotype of a locksmith with his scrawny arms, grave demeanor,
and stained apron provides a different perspective on the nineteenth-century American
tradesman. American Memory
provides information about Civil War photography as well in Taking
Photographs at the Time of the Civil War. Suggested
Activities 1. Democratic Vistas 2.
Drivers and Boatmen and Farmers… Oh My! 3.
From Whitman to Hughes 1.
Democratic Vistas What
has filled, and fills today our intellect, our fancy, furnishing the standards
therein, is yet foreign. The great poems, Shakespeare included, are poisonous
to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of democracy.
The models of our literature, as we get it from other lands, ultra-marine, have
had their birth in courts, and basked and grown in a castle sunshine; all smells
of princes' favors.—Walt Whitman, from Democratic
Vistas, available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American
Studies at the University of Virginia
As
an anticipatory exercise, discuss with your students the different values that
we give to paintings versus photographs. Ask students how many of them have a
painted portrait of themselves at home. Ask students how many of them have a photograph
of themselves at home. Why do so many more people have photographs? How many people
have photographs of themselves doing something (playing a sport for example)?
Why is it so rare to see a portrait of someone doing something such as playing
a sport? How many people have photographs of themselves at different ages? Why
is it so rare to see a series of portraits of someone at different ages? Share
with the class the following commentary about Whitman and the democratizing art
of photography from the Walt
Whitman Archive, a link from the EDSITEment resource American
Studies at the University of Virginia: He
would often comment about how photography was part of an emerging democratic art,
how its commonness, cheapness, and ease was displacing the refined image of art
implicit in portrait painting: "I think the painter has much to do to go ahead
of the best photographs." … Painted portraits were for the privileged classes,
and even the wealthy did not have their portraits painted regularly; the one or
two they had done over a lifetime had to distill their character in an approximation
that transcended time. But photographs were the property of all classes.
…The camera, like Whitman's poetry, democratized imagery, suggesting that anything
was worth a photograph.
—Ed Folsom, Introduction
to the Whitman Image Gallery from the Walt
Whitman Archive, a link from the EDSITEment resource American
Studies at the University of Virginia Working in small groups,
students should use the Photo
Analysis Worksheet available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website Digital
Classroom to study one of the following images from the EDSITEment resource
American Memory (NOTE: The links provided
will take you to a bibliography page with a thumbnail photo. Click on the photo
for access to larger images.): In
all of these photos, the subject faces the camera directly; we do not, for example,
see the seamstress working at her sewing. Some of the subjects seem as if they
are about to speak. Have each group imagine
what the subjects might be saying, in the form of a monologue or a dialogue with
the photographer. If desired, create a multimedia presentation for live performance
or a computer slide show, using the images accompanied by readings of the students'
work. 2. Drivers and
Boatmen and Farmers… Oh My! Whitman
anticipated the significance of photography for the development of American democracy;
his poetry moved with the invention, and he learned valuable lessons from the
photographers he knew.
—Ed Folsom, Introduction
to the Whitman Image Gallery from the Walt
Whitman Archive, a link from the EDSITEment resource American
Studies at the University of Virginia
Whitman
was fascinated by the new medium of photography, sat for many photographs throughout
his life, even—according to Ed Folsom in his Introduction
to the Whitman Image Gallery on the Walt
Whitman Archive, a link from the EDSITEment resource American
Studies at the University of Virginia—"after wandering through a daguerreotype
gallery in 1846, struck by the 'great legion of human faces—human eyes gazing
silently but fixedly upon you,' (he) mused: 'We love to dwell long upon them—to
infer many things, from the text they preach—to pursue the current of thoughts
running riot about them.'" A photographic
portrait made one wonder about the person portrayed. Photography suggested "that
anything was worth a photograph." Whitman believed that virtually anything
could serve as a subject in poetry. He regarded the working class, for example,
an especially worthy subject (see the quote from Whitman's notebook below); images
of real individuals, like those in the daguerreotype gallery, are central to many
of Whitman's poems. Share with students as
much information as you deem appropriate to help them see the connection between
Whitman's poetics and photography. Before
you read aloud Whitman's I
Hear America Singing, available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website of The
Academy of American Poets, ask students to imagine the poem were written to
accompany some photographs. What would those photographs have been? After the
reading, ask students to recall images from the poem that could have been photographs
such as the daguerreotypes students viewed in Part 1, above.
Discuss with the class basic information about
Whitman's notebooks as noted in the fourth bulleted section in Preparing
to Teach This Lesson, above. Then share the following quote from Page
65 of Notebook LOC #80, available on the EDSITEment resource American
Memory. (If desired, share the actual page image with the students either
on the computer or through a handout of the downloaded image.) I
will not discuss any professors and capitalists—I will turn up the ends of
my trousers around my boots, and my cuffs back from my wrists and go with drivers
and boatmen and men that catch fish or work in fields. I know they are sublime. Re-read,
or have student volunteers read aloud, I
Hear America Singing. How does Whitman fulfill his goal to "go with drivers
and boatmen and men that catch fish"? In what way does the "democracy" of such
a poem compare to the "democracy" of photography discussed in Part
1, above? Were "drivers and boatmen and
men that catch fish" something new as poetic subjects? Perhaps not--some of Whitman
contemporaries were including working-class subjects, and earlier in the nineteenth
century the English poet Wordsworth and his followers had explored the lives of
ordinary English people. While not without precedent, then, Whitman's radicalism
in form and subject went beyond the Romantic models. By way of example, share
the poem Poetry
by L.H. Sigourney (1791-1865), available on the EDSITEment resource The
American Verse Project. The subject is poetry. Abstractions such as "Death"
and "Morn" perform some of the action in the poem. The two human characters (a
young girl and a pilgrim) are given no individual characteristics, serving instead
as metaphors (for romantics, for seekers). It's also worthwhile to note that the
poem is written in a strict form with eight-line stanzas and a repeated rhyme
scheme. Whitman rarely used forms after he developed his poetic philosophy. Other
common subjects in 19th-century poetry were characters from the Bible, literature,
and mythology; heroes; and nobles. (Some examples you could share with the students,
if desired, include Judith
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) and Death
of the Prince Imperial by Abram Joseph Ryan (1836-1886), both available on
the EDSITEment resource The American
Verse Project.) 3.
From Whitman to Hughes Now, share this
quote from the Biography
of Langston Hughes, available on the EDSITEment resource The
Academy of American Poets: Hughes refused to differentiate between
his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted
to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture,
including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language
itself. How does Hughes' approach
reflect Whitman's notion of what should be the proper subject for poetry? How
is it different? Share with the class Hughes'
poem Let America Be
America Again from the EDSITEment-reviewed website of The
Academy of American Poets. Is the poem closer to a discussion of "professors"
or of "boatmen?" In what ways are Hughes'
and Whitman's poems similar? In what ways are they different? Have students address
these questions by filling in the chart "Comparing Two American Poems: 'I Hear
America Singing' and 'Let America Be America Again'" on page 1 of the PDF
file (see Preparing to Teach This Lesson, above,
for download instructions). (NOTE:
If you want to extend the comparison with Whitman to some contemporary poems,
consult the first bulleted item in Extending the Lesson,
below. If you want your students to write poems modeled after Whitman, consult
the second bulleted item.) Extending the
Lesson- Whitman's example has had a profound
influence on subsequent generations of American poets. If desired, share with
the class the following poems from the EDSITEment-reviewed website of The
Academy of American Poets or other contemporary portrait poems of people at
work:
- Students can write their own "democratic"
poems about a particular group of people from their own experience, using their
own form or one borrowed from Whitman (for example, "I hear the athletes practicing
/ the relay anchor with his wind sprints / the soccer midfielder…) or even using
the famous opening words ("I have seen the best minds of my generation… who")
from Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" ("I have seen the best NASCAR drivers of my generation
killed in public accidents / who-Edward Glenn "Fireball" Roberts, the greatest
driver never to win a NASCAR Winston Cup title-had accumulated 32 wins before
an untimely death from injuries at Charlotte Motor Speedway / who-Dale Earnhardt…),
an assignment originally conceived by Kenneth
Koch.
A good culminating activity would be a poetry reading combining
student work with published poems, such as I
Hear America Singing, that inspired or connect strongly with student poems.
The poetry reading can take place immediately after this lesson-and feature poems
from it-or later in the year and feature poems from various assignments. You may
also consider publishing a class literary magazine. - Students can search
for and identify other images and words of interest from Whitman's notebooks using
Princeton University's
Searchable Leaves of Grass (1891), a link from the EDSITEment resource American
Studies at the University of Virginia.
- Students
can view a reading from Whitman's Song
of Myself at the Favorite Poems Project,
a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Academy of American Poets. They can also peruse the list
of poems submitted to the project for which video readings presently exist.
Consider Whitman's test
of a poem from Notebook 80, page 110:
Test of a poem: How far
it can elevate, enlarge, purify, deepen, and make happy the attribute of the body
and soul of a man. Why do students think any one of these poems was
chosen by someone as a personal favorite? In times of stress, people often turn to poetry for comfort. Why? Students can conduct their own
favorite poem project. - For another look at the poet's process, students
can view Whitman's own correction of and comments about a published version of
"O Captain, My Captain" through the exhibit Letter
and corrected reprint of Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain" with comments
by author, 9 February 1888 on the EDSITEment resource American
Memory. Consideration of Whitman's famous dirge could also lead to discussion
of the Civil War, Lincoln, and his place in the hearts of the American people.
- Find out about the recovery and preservation process of Whitman's notebooks
on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory:
- Learn more about the process of Taking
Photographs at the Time of the Civil War from the Selected
Civil War Photographs Collection on the EDSITEment resource American
Memory.
- Students can explore the special presentation Does
the Camera Ever Lie?, part of the Selected
Civil War Photographs Collection on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American
Memory. It presents photographs with Alexander Gardner's 1865 narrative. Readers
can scrutinize the photos to determine if Gardner was accurate, and read a professional
analysis. Things are not always what they seem!
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