Good day everyone,
Here are a few questions that I asked you at the end of last class. What differences do you recognise between the two poems?
What specific words support your assessment?
Remember to consider how the tone is established.
Have a nice week,
Olivier Pelletier
About Me
- Olivier P.
- I am an English teacher at Collège Édouard Monpetit in Longueuil Québec. I am currently working on a Student project that will allow a group of Language Arts students to visit Lowell Massachussetts during the Jack Kerouac Literary Festival. I created this Blog to encourage a discussion on Jack Kerouac and the students` adventures "On the Road".
For the first poem : To a Locomotive in Winter there is a different tone than the poem of Emily Dickinson: I like to see it lap the Miles. The tone is musical and it tells a song, but in the other poem it is a more errogant and rythmic tone. It written as if the train wanted to destroy the land. In the other hand, the first poem is more describing the train and whats his road. Moreover, this poem is written in middle english, for example Thee and Thy. This is what I think are the most obvious differences.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Marianne when she says that the poem The Locomotive in Winter is more descriptive than the one of Dickinson. I'll add that the first poem is magnifiying the beauty and the gleaming aspect of the train, when the second shows more its destructive power in it's natural state. In my opinion, when we read the poem of Withman, we can imagine a big and shinny train and in Dickinson's it seems more like a rusty and poulluting train.
DeleteBoth poems are different, there's no arguing with that. Basically, it's pretty much like how Marianne's comment above describes it; the rhythmic tone of To A Locomotive In Winter along with its old English style gives it a detailed description, almost exageratly-so, of the train. The other poem, on the other hand, is more lyric
ReplyDeleteAlthough both poems are describing a train, Emily Dickinsons' ''I like to see it lap the Miles'' is very lyric, and she describes it with a 3rd person narrator; on the other hand, Walt Whitman writes directly TO a locomotive, using old English (I know it is supposed to be Modern English but to me, 'thee', 'thy' and 'thou' are Old English), and the locomotive image is overwhelming the whole poem, even through its tone: it is rythmic just as a train's sound.
ReplyDeleteboth poems have the same subject: a train, but present them in different ways and styles. Both present repetitions of the same word at the beginning of the senteces (Thee, thee,thy, thy... and I like, i like, and, and...). One presents it in continuous sentences (Whitman) and the other in prose (Dickinson). I usually prefer poems that rhyme, but in this case, I prefer Whitman's poem which doesn't: it is more of an appreciation of the train, as if it had no other meaning then appreciating the train. As for Dickinson's, it is as if there is a hidden image, something that she wants us to understand: I feel I must read in between the lines to understand, and I do not really like that kind of reading haha!
ReplyDeleteIn the poem " I like to see it lap the Miles", I like the fact that it sounds like a song, but at the same time, when she breaks the sound and takes it back it s kind of surprising and interesting. I think it really marks the reader.
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