As a child, I made many pacts with friends for extraneous reasons. “Don’t tell Tommy I like him.” The ever-popular “Let’s stay friends forever.” However, such pacts usually withered away and were soon forgotten as quickly as the person who inspired them. In Ezra Pound’s poem “A Pact,” the narrator, assumed to be Pound himself, ...
One dictionary defines a hero as a remarkably brave person. Another dictionary describes a hero as somebody who has shown an admirable quality. But what does it mean to be remarkably brave, and what does it mean to have an admirable quality? According to those dictionaries, it means having a strong sense of character. However, ...
Allen Ginsberg is well-known as a Beat poet who condemns many aspects of contemporary American society. “A Supermarket in California” is no exception. This Ginsberg poem condemns both the lack of meaningful contact among human beings and American consumerism. Ginsberg evokes Walt Whitman in order to help him emphasize the lack of meaningful contact. Whitman ...
Death of Grimaldi the Clown, 1837 Joseph Grimaldi is the most famous of British clowns, and is said to have been the original white-faced clown. He was born into the trade: his father, “Iron Legs” Grimaldi, was a pantomimist and ballet-master, and his mother was a theater dancer. He first appeared on-stage at the age ...
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity… nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither ...
The poems that Walt Whitman wrote in the second half of the 19th century differed radically from his earlier ones. The advent of capitalism had a tremendous impact on the lives of the people. In the manipulative and calculative rat race, principles were relegated and human concerns sidelined. People in such a situation, in response ...
The best Walt Whitman quotes are repeated and retold even today. Walt Whitman had a way with words that told the story of America, the common man, inner peace, and nature in a time when the story needed telling. Which of the many Walt Whitman quotes is the best is a matter of opinion. Here, ...