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American poetry

Understand this section

Whitman and Dickinson open very different imaginative worlds. This is a literary section, not a shared philosophical doctrine.

The poetic speaker

The voice speaking in a poem is not automatically identical to the author in every detail.

Metaphor

An image that helps us see one thing through another. Its meaning depends on the poem around it.

I dwell in Possibility - A fairer House than Prose -

I dwell in Possibility · Franklin 466 · Opening two lines

Excerpt following R. W. Franklin’s reading edition, not a manuscript transcription

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Leaves of Grass · Song of Myself · Section 51 · 1891–1892 edition

Exact three-line excerpt in the linked edition