Hello All, 

I’m sorry this letter is getting to you so late in the day. My daughter was home sick, and I had to take her to the doctor. 

This week we are reading Walt Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” The subject of this poem is the commuter ferry that ran from Brooklyn to Manhattan in the decades before the Brooklyn Bridge was built–so, a long time ago. Whitman imagines connecting with and identifying with his fellow commuters while simultaneously trying to define and assert himself as an individual. Some see this as a poem about the relationship between the individual and the community; I prefer to see it as the relationship between the individual and the masses. 

You’ll notice that Whitman’s style is very different from Emily Dickinson’s. We read her last week and she was alive around the same time Whitman was–roughly the 1810s to the 1890s. Dickinson’s style is very different–she uses tightly wrought, short lines and she chooses her words carefully; whereas, Whitman spills his vocabulary on the page. Whitman was published during his lifetime, and he was well-known as a poet. He was a staunch self promoter, and continually published and promoted his own work. 

So, this week you have two tasks related to Whitman:

1. Complete the annotations based on the prompt in the poem’s title
2. Complete a blog post that responds to the prompt I posted. 

To make both of these assignments more fun it would be great if you keep responding to each others’ posts. 

Other than this, I would like you to start gearing up for Paper 1. To begin this assignment, I would like you to complete a short, one-page paper proposal. I have detailed the assignment here. And, you can see the video I made where I talk about both assignments here. 

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to reading your work. 

All best, 

PF