So I was looking on a bookshelf in my house and I found Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. I looked up the poem Oh me! Oh Life! I found that in the answer it says "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse". The paper Ms. Stariha gave us says "That the powerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse". Will and may two way different things. It changes the meaning. You "will" makes it so that no matter what it is going to happen, while "may" means that you have the choice. This makes me want to change everything in my essay for the third time. haha. I thought really hard about rewriting it. But in the end, I decided to stick with what the sheet said that Ms. Stariha gave us and leave my essay alone. I just thought I would point this out to all of you(:
I love that you point that out Sarah. I pulled the poem off the Internet and didn't even notice that the printed version in Leaves of Grass (I love that collection BTW) is different. It does totally change the meaning. I think it is even more powerful, because it suggest the reader must want and work to create their verse... and it gets rid of the sense of entitlement that "will" suggests. Nice close reading!
ReplyDeleteThats funny I didnt notice that. I think thats really interesting.
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