"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" -- Walt Whitman (1856)
free verse poem in several parts -- part of Leaves of Grass -- written at a time before Brooklyn Bridge had been built and *before* Brooklyn was part of NYC -- speaker addresses both people and inanimate objects (i.e., flood tide) -- long lines -- anaphora -- speaker refers to past, present, and future
link to poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45470/crossing-brooklyn-ferry
link to video with pretty pictures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXJKYOvzGTw&t=6s
link to video with Will Geer's reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBm65n7azwc&t=32s
"Defending Walt Whitman" -- Sherman Alexie (1995)
free verse -- Walt Whitman plays basketball on an Indian reservation -- refrain ("Every body is brown!") -- how does the poet represent Whitman?
link to poem: https://web.archive.org/web/20060615052432/http://home.earthlink.net/~jandsgordon/Poems/whitman.htm
link to performance by Tim Murray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpsF6S0ue3k
"A Supermarket in California" -- Allen Ginsberg (1956)
free verse -- was intended to be written as a tribute to Whitman on the 100th anniversary of Leaves of Grass' first publication -- Ginsberg is a pioneering poet/Beat poet/gay poet speaking to a poetic ancestor -- supermarket/California is a very 1950s setting -- Beats in opposition to conventional life
link to poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47660/a-supermarket-in-california
link to poet reading his poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhTh01CO60Y&t=19s
"My Life had stood -- a loaded Gun" -- Emily Dickinson (written before 1886)
poem with rhythm and rhyme -- capitalization & dashes -- relationship between men and women
link to poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52737/my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun-764
link to slam reading of poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2yXlA_A34g
"Because I could not stop for Death" -- Emily Dickinson (written before 1886)
off-rhyme -- 1800s relationship to death -- ED often writes about death
link to poem with reading by Robert Pinsky: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-479
"Nature the gentlest mother" -- Emily Dickinson (written before 1886)
presentation is more standardized -- ED often writes about nature
link to poem: http://www.bartleby.com/113/2001.html
link to setting by Aaron Copland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfa6Kc8nmkw
"On Meeting Robert Hayden in a Dream" -- Abdul Ali (2015)
free verse -- three-line stanzas -- no punctuations but spaces
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/meeting-robert-hayden-dream
"I, Too, Sing America" -- Langston Hughes (1926)
free verse -- American voice but traveled throughout the world -- influenced by Walt Whitman -- Hughes would later change "I" to "we" towards the end of the poem -- Hughes participated in the Harlem Renaissance & lived until the Civil Rights movement -- Hughes was the first African-American writer to "live by his pen"
link to poem: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-too
link to reading by poet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rti7vmujaL4
"I Hear America Singing" -- Walt Whitman (1860)
free verse -- part of Leaves of Grass -- anaphora -- repetition -- poem about Americans who weren't typically in poems or taken seriously -- sense that Whitman is apart from them but is one of them -- according to David Reynolds, this poem "reflected a pre-mass-media culture in which Americans often entertained themselves and each other. Whitman’s spouting Shakespeare atop omnibuses, declaiming Homer and Ossian at the seashore, and humming arias on the street typified these performances in everyday life."
link to poem: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-hear-america-singing
link to reading of poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eNQqCmXLxA
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" -- Langston Hughes (1920)
like Whitman -- free verse, more spiritual, listing, anaphora -- written when he was very young & on his way to his father in Mexico -- wanted his poetry to be accessible -- speaker is more of a communal voice
link to poem: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/negro-speaks-rivers
link to reading of poem by poet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cKDOGhghMU
"Madam and Her Madam" -- Langston Hughes
comic verse with rhyme and meter -- song like -- is it a ballad -- it's part of a series -- short lines -- persona poem -- speaker is not the poet
link to poem: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/madam-and-her-madam
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