Personal Poems, Complete

John Greenleaf WhittierProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 311K words
Chapters: 32

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Personal Poems, Complete by John Greenleaf WhittierAuthor: Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Dec 1, 2005

Editor's review

Personal Poems, Complete is the complete collection of Whittier's personal lyric poems, centering on the side of his poetry where private feeling and moral concern intertwine. Compared with his long narrative poems, these works stay closer to personal experience: memory, mourning, friendship, local life, and faith, in plain language, steady rhythm, and restrained yet not cold emotion. As a sample of nineteenth-century American poetry, it helps readers understand the tone and thematic boundaries of lyric poetry of the time, and makes it easy to observe how the poet turns everyday experience into verse. There is no need to finish it in one sitting; read in groups by theme or length, first aloud and then silently, to feel the meter and pauses. Readers unfamiliar with English poetic rhythm are advised to start with the short poems.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers who enjoy nineteenth-century English lyric poetry
Literature students studying the full range of Whittier's poetry
Readers who want to learn English poetic rhythm by reading aloud
Poetry lovers interested in personal lyric and moral themes

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer modern colloquial and experimental poetry
Self-taught beginners who need detailed notes and line-by-line explanation
Readers who only want to read long narrative poems

Reading tips

Read the short poems aloud first to feel the rhyme and pauses, then read silently to sense shifts in tone.
Read in groups by theme, such as memory, mourning, and local life, and observe similarities and differences in the emotional threads.
Read only three to five poems at a time and write one or two sentences of response afterward, to avoid fatigue from reading straight through.
Look up the general meaning of unfamiliar words first; there is no need to translate word by word, so as to keep the overall sense of rhythm.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Do these poems need to be read straight through in order?

No. The poems are relatively independent, so you can start with short poems or themes that interest you and expand from there; reading in order is also fine, but it is better done in several sessions to avoid rhythmic fatigue.

Can I read them if my English is average?

You can try the short poems. Whittier's language is generally plain, but there are still nineteenth-century usages and allusions; read with a dictionary and an annotated edition, first grasping the general meaning and mood, then examining the words closely.

How are these different from Whittier's narrative poems?

This collection is mainly personal lyric, with shorter lengths and emotion closer to private experience and little continuous plot; to understand his narrative ability, you need to read his long works separately, and the two can be compared.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

John Greenleaf Whittier Author · American · 1807–1892

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) was an American poet and abolitionist, a Quaker, and one of the nineteenth-century "Fireside Poets," born in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He devoted himself early to the anti-slavery cause, edited several abolitionist newspapers, and gave voice to the movement in verse collected in volumes such as the Anti-Slavery Poems. His poetry ranges widely: the narrative poem Snow-Bound depicts New England country life and family memory in plain, homely language, while other works include nature poems, subjective and reminiscent pieces, religious poems, and legendary narrative poems such as The Tent on the Beach. His writing is simple and warm in feeling, marked by strong local color and moral concern. The library holds 44 of his works. Public information is limited, so this note gives only the main points of his life and writing.