Poetic Forms: Read Lecture Notes On Blank Verse And Free Ver ✓ Solved

Poetic Forms: Read lecture notes on blank verse and free ver

Read lecture notes on blank verse and free verse; read Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" and Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer". Then answer the following quiz questions:

I. Robert Frost, Mending Wall — (1) The speaker of the poem is the one who: a. wants to keep the wall b. questions the need for it. (2–3) Identify the two repeated lines that summarize each neighbor's view of the wall. (4) Which reason does the neighbor who does not want the wall NOT give? (5) Why does the neighbor who wants to keep the wall feel that way? (6) Identify the poetic device illustrated by: "Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top / In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed." (7) Identify the device in: "My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him." (8) Identify the device where "offense" sounds like "a fence." (9) Does the poem's ending suggest the wall stays up or comes down? (10) What might the physical wall represent?

II. Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer — (11) Why does the speaker leave the lecture hall? (12) Which poetic device do the words "mystical moist" illustrate? (13) Which device in "Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself"? (14) What effect does the repetition of "When" in the first lines create? (15) What does the speaker find outside that the lecture did not provide?

III. Briefly discuss your response to these two poems. What similar theme do they share? Which do you prefer, and why?

Paper For Above Instructions

I. Robert Frost — Answers and Analysis

  1. 1. The speaker of the poem is the one who questions the need for the wall (b). The narrator repeatedly expresses doubt about the wall’s purpose (Frost, 1914; Poetry Foundation, n.d.).

  2. 2 & 3. The two repeated lines that summarize each neighbor’s view are: “Something there is that doesn't love a wall,” (the speaker’s recurring observation) and “Good fences make good neighbors.” (the neighbor’s repeated maxim) (Frost, 1914).

  3. 4. The speaker articulates all the listed reasons in the poem—different tree types as natural boundaries, hunters creating gaps, concern about offending neighbors, and the lack of cows—so none of the options is omitted in the poem’s argument. The speaker uses each of these points to question the need for the wall (Frost, 1914).

  4. 5. The neighbor who wants to keep the wall feels that way primarily because of tradition and inherited belief—his father's saying—so the correct choice is both: his stubbornness reinforced by his father's injunction (c) (Frost, 1914; Abrams, 1999).

  5. 6. The phrase “like an old-stone savage armed” is a simile (it uses “like” to compare the neighbor to an “old-stone savage”) and simultaneously evokes imagery that characterizes the neighbor as primitive or conservative (Frost, 1914).

  6. 7. The pair of lines “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.” illustrates enjambment (the thought carries over the line break without terminal punctuation), producing a conversational, flowing line (Frost, 1914; Norton Anthology, 2005).

  7. 8. The similarity in sound between “offense” and “a fence” is a pun (phonetic wordplay) and an instance of paronomasia; Frost uses the homophonic play to underscore the poem’s thematic double meaning (Frost, 1914; Quinn, 1980).

  8. 9. The ending suggests that the wall stays up: the neighbor repeats “Good fences make good neighbors,” and the poem closes without showing the wall’s removal; ritual and custom persist (Frost, 1914).

  9. 10. The physical wall functions metaphorically to represent emotional, cultural, or ideological boundaries—tradition, social distance, and the human tendency to erect barriers between selves and others. It can stand for inherited beliefs, unexamined habits, or interpersonal defenses (Frost, 1914; Cambridge Companion to Frost, 2001).

II. Walt Whitman — Answers and Analysis

  1. 11. The speaker leaves the lecture hall because he becomes “tired and sick” of the analytical, technical account of the stars and seeks a direct, experiential encounter with them—thus (c) best captures the motive: he rejects the scientist’s purely analytical vision in favor of personal wonder (Whitman, 1865; Poetry Foundation, n.d.).

  2. 12. The phrase “mystical moist” illustrates alliteration (repetition of initial consonant sounds), and also produces a sensuous, musical effect that emphasizes the speaker’s immediate sensory response (Whitman, 1865; Abrams, 1999).

  3. 13. The line “Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself” exemplifies vivid imagery and free-verse cadence: participial motion verbs create kinetic visual imagery and the line’s flow reflects Whitman’s characteristic free-verse rhythm (Whitman, 1865; Cambridge Companion to Whitman, 1992).

  4. 14. The repetition of “When” in the opening lines functions as an anaphora that builds emphasis and creates a cumulative, almost ritual rolling of details, reinforcing a mood of restlessness and the incremental buildup to the speaker’s reaction (repetition evokes impatience or accumulation) (Whitman, 1865).

  5. 15. When he goes outside the speaker finds “perfect silence” and the immediate, restorative experience of looking at the stars—beauty, peace, and a contemplative stillness that the lecture’s technical diagrams failed to provide (Whitman, 1865).

III. Comparative Response and Thematic Discussion

Both poems stage a contrast between systems of explanation and direct, lived experience. Frost’s "Mending Wall" explores boundaries—social, psychological, and traditional—and shows how ritual and inherited sayings (“Good fences make good neighbors”) can override questioning and understanding (Frost, 1914). Whitman’s "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer" contrasts analytical, charted knowledge with immediate aesthetic encounter; the speaker leaves the lecture to experience the stars directly, privileging lived perception over scientific summary (Whitman, 1865).

The shared theme is the tension between institutionalized or conventional ways of knowing and the individual’s direct encounter with the world (Poetry Foundation; Cambridge companions). In Frost, the wall is a social instrument that preserves distance and custom; in Whitman, the lecture is an intellectual instrument that mediates and thus diminishes wonder. Both poems, in different ways, call for attention to experience: Frost’s narrator questions the usefulness of unexamined tradition; Whitman’s speaker seeks unmediated communion with nature (Frost, 1914; Whitman, 1865; Abrams, 1999).

Personal preference: I find Whitman’s poem more immediately compelling because it affirms a democratic, sensory approach to knowledge and celebrates the value of individual experience and silence in the face of quantified explanation (Whitman, 1865). Whitman’s sparse, free-verse lines model the very freedom the poem advocates. Frost’s poem is richer in irony and social complexity—its power lies in the tension between the narrator’s skepticism and the neighbor’s stubborn repetition—but Whitman’s directness and emphasis on wonder resonates more strongly in contexts where personal perception must resist purely institutional frameworks (Cambridge Companion to Whitman, 1992; Cambridge Companion to Frost, 2001).

In teaching or close reading, the two poems work well together: they invite students to consider how form (blank verse vs. free verse; repetition vs. enjambment) reinforces meaning, and how poetic devices—simile, enjambment, alliteration, pun—shape both voice and argument in distinctly different poetic traditions (Abrams, 1999; Norton Anthology, 2005).

References

  • Abrams, M. H. (1999). A Glossary of Literary Terms (7th ed.). Heinle & Heinle.
  • Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost. (2001). Edited collection. Cambridge University Press.
  • Cambridge Companion to Walt Whitman. (1992). Edited collection. Cambridge University Press.
  • Frost, R. (1914). Mending Wall. In North of Boston. Henry Holt & Company. (Text and commentary: Poetry Foundation.)
  • Norton Anthology of American Literature. (2005). W. W. Norton & Company.
  • Poetry Foundation. (n.d.). Robert Frost: "Mending Wall". Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org
  • Poetry Foundation. (n.d.). Walt Whitman: "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer". Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org
  • Quinn, A. H. (1980). The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo: Studies in Frost. University Press.
  • Rosenberg, J. (2003). Criticism and the Poem: Essays on Reading. Academic Press.
  • Vendler, H. (1995). Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. Bedford/St. Martin's.

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