How you know muse, is amusing. Poets display talent in their ability to make a deeper connection to the mundane, or maybe they help the reader explore ancient civilizations, or maybe they are the reader connecting and exploring their own imagination. For poets, inspiration is a spark, it lights a fire and provides them with the energy to write. The energy is converted into work product and is transferable to everyone who has learned how to appreciate these creative works. That is why Emma Lazarus can be inspired by the Greek gods, and wind up with her work on display for all to see when they tour the Statue of Liberty; that is why Walt Whitman can inspire other poets like Alan Ginsberg, for example, when he writes about the grand beauty and uncertainty of life by examining blades of grass.

            Writing Leaves of Grass was where Walt Whitman would sharpen his poetic parulis. He published it himself in 1855 but continued to work on it throughout the rest of his life. This text was a compilation of many poems. As a boy, he grew up making money in the printing trade working his way up to editor of a newspaper by the time he was twelve. He would eventually take a job in the Department of the Interior. One could say he was laid off because at the time Leaves of Grass was viewed as controversial and overly sexual.

            In the poem Song of Myself, Whitman draws the attention of the audience with the use of ‘I’ statements. In the first few stanzas for our muser, everything is good. Modern psychology describes positive thought in the laws of attraction, with the general belief that positivity can attract positive things. Whitman gives us a muser who connects with us by literally having us say, “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (Song of Myself, I, 3).

            Emma Lazarus’s The New Colossus was published 1833 and like Whitman, she was also born in New York. A child of wealthy parents, she had private education. She was proficient in multiple languages. As a Jewish American, child prodigy she studied “American literature, and the work of medieval Hebrew poets” (American Women’s History 307). While her life was short, her works are timeless.

The famous lines “Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (The New Colossus) on display at perhaps, the most popular tourist attraction in the world. Gaining the attention of other well-known writers of her like Ralph Waldo Emerson, “who became one in a series of male mentors” (307). Emma Lazarus is proof that the energy generated from words can be perpetual.

                The technology of modern language allows humans to communicate with. Long before computers, print material, or written language was a need to convey a message. Ancient pictographic images and hieroglyphics from Native American and Egyptian civilizations provides proof of mankind’s long history of storytelling. Survival may have been the instinct but the creative pursuit to instruct youth through comedy and drama is an evolutionary advantage. Storytelling has paved the way for people to communicate complex needs and desires. If we believe ideas and thoughts are energy, then the furtherance of language as a technology increases the transference of energy.

While it may be simply an honor to be an inspiration to another writer, it is the technology that puts the invocation into practice. We see this with Alan Ginsberg’s A Super Market In California, when he imagines Walt Whitman has joined on the journey to the market. The story that must be told is probably the story of identity, and how one should not feel alone; for many people have questioned what it is to exist and what it is to feel, and something about that brings us closer together. “Author Blair Niles provided her readers with an extensive list of books to read by having her protagonist discover Whitman’s Leaves of Grass…. [s]he also identified [sic] numerous other historical figures, as homosexual” (Gay New York 285).

Whitman was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson proclamations in Nature, “that nature is the emblem of the soul” (ANB). And the pattern that begins to unfold is in the art of communication. Communication combines the technology of language, the invocation of other writers and other literary devices [i.e. pentameter, rhymes, allusion, and so on…], and develops this ‘New Language.’ The simple reason for this is because it gives people a more efficient means of getting their desires. “Whitman’s rhythm reflects the speech patterns and verbal pace of Americans and American life” (ANB 285).

All writers add to the tapestry of language. Emma Lazarus’s The New Colossus is incredibly clear in its message. The rhyme structure makes it very easy to ready. Like music the reader or orator arrives at the crescendos and decrescendos simply by identifying punctuation and word choice and capitalization. It’s not surprising that so many people from all around the world can find inspiration from her use of the English Language.

                With regards to this rhetorical exploration of written expression as a technology that employs high level language, and how create writers write, primarily to have those words read. The result is expressed as the manifestation of new language. So long as words exists, inspiration is perpetual. “What America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry…?” (Ginsberg).

Works Cited:

1. Whitman, Walt. “From Song of Myself.” Literature: The Human Experience. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2019. Print.
2. Lazarus, Emma. “The New Colossus.” Literature: The Human Experience. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2019. Print.
3. Garraty, John A, and Mark C Carnes, editors. American National Biography. Vol. 23, Oxford University Press, 1999.
4. Boyer, Paul S. The Oxford Companion to United States History. Edited by Malvyn Dubofsky et al., Oxford University Press, 2001.
5. Chauncey, George. Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. BasicBooks, 1994.
6. Berkin, Carol, and Laslie Horowitz, editors. Women Voices, Womens Lives: Documents in Early American History. Northeastern University Press, 1998.
7. Skinner, Ellen. Women and the National Experience: Sources in Womens History. 3^rd ed., vol. 2, Pearson Education, 2011.
8. Howard, Angela M., and Frances M. Kavenik, editors. Handbook of American Womens History. 2^nd ed., SAGE, 2000.