“Banish Air from Air–” by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was a contemporary of Walt Whitman’s, and the two are often considered the greatest poets of the 19th century. Their poetic style and aesthetics would create a legacy that would influence subsequent poets like Ezra Pound and Robert Frost. Whitman’s poetry and Dickinson’s poetry shared many similarities, including thematics. Religion and death were subjects which both poets explored in their poetry. Just as Whitman focused on the realist elements of the common person’s everyday existence, Dickinson focused on similar elements. In “Banish Air from Air–,” the air represents the everyday needs which people need to survive. The natural imagery in the poem serves as a representation of how influential nature is to humankind and how dependent upon nature humankind actually is.

“The Gift Outright” by Robert Frost (1942)

Written in the 1930s but not published until 1942, this poem is the poem Frost read at the inauguration of US President John F. Kennedy. Frost described the poem as a history of the United States. In the poem, he alludes to the confiscation of Indigenous lands, the establishment of the 13 colonies, and the subsequent founding of the United States of America after the Revolutionary War.