Just wanted to drop in a quote said by Yusef Komunyakaa from in an interview back in 2013 (thank you, Dr. Scanlon)!

I think that what happened is that Whitman gave me a deeper hearing, which may be in concert with a deeper singing. Because I think it’s all about listening. And sometimes if we have, even accidentally, listened, we can hear an echo of the singing. I don’t think that Whitman really sets out to make sense of the world. However, we participate as listeners and readers, to make sense of Whitman. And in that sense, we are making sense of Whitman’s world. Maybe what’s most constructive, for me, is to continue to believe that there’s mystery. Whitman I think taught me to accept mystery. Everything doesn’t have to be explained. Everything doesn’t have to equal a neat number. But there is this immense mystery.

This made me think about our class today, the idea of witnessing (which Komunyakaa discusses more, especially in regards to Whitman and race), and how the act of witnessing can be a song in itself. To witness means to see, to conversate, to repeat, to answer, to reflect—all of which Whitman/the speaker and the reader are required to do in “Song of Myself.” We echo each other in both concrete and ambiguous ways.

Aaliyah