Final Project! and Evaluation.

Here is my final project, the cento poem regarding the perspectives of slavery, the west, and the Free Soil Movement. I used lines from Whitman's Calamus poems, William Cullen Bryant's 'America' and 'A Northern Legend', John Greenleaf Whittier's 'At Port Royal 1861' and 'Song of the Negro Boatmen', Langston Hughes' 'A Dream Deferred', and various quotes from Whitman and the Free Soil Party.

The Cry of [the] Free Man
[for the protection of the liberty of whites]

O western orb sailing the heaven,

OH mother of a mighty race,

I will escape from the sham that was proposed to me.

Like a raisin in the sun

every wrong shall die

by the lone rivers of the West.

[Like] the joy of uncaged birds

shall sit a nobler grace than now

where field and garner, barn and byre.

Labor must not be degraded.

[It] must shape our good or ill,

drop strength and riches at thy feet,

[give] power, at thy bounds.

The thronging years in glory rise

for the starved laborer...

[So with] a hand like ivory fair

Fight on and Fight ever

[For] sea-winds blow from east and west

[but] the clouds are coming swift and dark.

Class evaluation:

I'm not sure if I have many quarrels with how the course was ran. I really enjoyed how each class was led as more of a discussion than a lecture for it got me to think more critically about Whitman's work and learn new perspectives [from fellow students] that I would have never been exposed to if the class were set up any differently. The course load did seem a bit overwhelming at times since we had to respond to the tweet of the week, specimen days, and a poem, but over all I learned a lot and enjoyed meeting online as well as in the classroom.