Tag Archives: ww

Ed Norton and Walt Whitman on Stephen Colbert!

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Hi everyone! I don’t know who if anyone here keeps up with late night tv but I thought it would be relevant to share this clip from Stephen Colbert the other night where Ed Norton recites “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”. I will include the whole video with the interview and performance because I think there is some really great stuff about purposeful action and poetry as a solution for the anxiety that comes from constant stimulation on the internet.

Whitman’s Prose

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When reading for today, I was really interested in the difference between Whitman’s poetry and prose. Specifically, it was interesting to me to compare the very abstract and theoretical nature of Whitman’s poetry to the very literal and factual nature of his prose. I’m not sure yet which one I prefer though I have grown found of his poems and the messages behind them.

Whitman Changing Up His Style?

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In Drum-Taps, Whitman makes a few new choices that we have not really seen from him so far. In two of the poems within this collection (“Song of the Banner at Daybreak” and “The Centenarian’s Story”), Whitman separates the poem into sections dictated by the person who seemingly is speaking. This method gives these poems a sort-of story-like feel, which is something we may expect more from prose rather than poetry. Another change that I noticed was in “Dirge for Two Veterans”, in which Whitman both uses much shorter lines than in his other poems and adds an indent to the first and fourth line of each stanza. Why do you think Whitman made these changes? Do you think that they are supposed to represent something, or is merely noticing their difference supposed to mean something in itself?

Body vs Soul or Body & Soul?

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In “I Sing the Body Electric”, Whitman describes the human body, both the female and male bodies, describing their different parts and what makes them sacred and divine. In Section 9, Whitman lists of basically every part of the body, emphasizing this distinction between the body and the soul. And yet, he ends the poem with the line “O I say now these are the soul!” (Whitman 258). So which is it? Are the body and the soul two distinct features of human existence that work together to function within human life, or are these two features interconnected to an extreme degree where they are undistinguishable from each other?

Sarah’s CS for February 5th

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Hi all! In stark contrast to the other works of Whitman that we have read and focused on so far, the Calamus poems allow us to take a deep breath after engaging in Whitman’s long-winded and rambling nature, and instead take a dive into his homosexual side.

As mentioned above, the Calamus poems, a collection of 39 relatively, at least by Whitman’s standards, short poems, explore a variety of themes. This is drastically different than the type of long-form writing we have seen from Whitman in “Song of Myself” and “Song of the Open Road”. What does this difference signify? How did this shorter form affect your reading and understanding of the works? Did you feel as though there was an overarching theme found amongst most, if not all, of the poems, or did each poem feel distinct and separated from the others?

One theme that I noticed developing, especially as I continued further into the collection, was the idea of homosexual love, specifically between two men. In the first few poems, such as “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand”, Whitman’s description of a romantic and/or sexual connection between two men (one of those men presumably being himself) feels more obscure and almost hidden: “With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss, / For I am the new husband and I am the comrade” (Whitman 271). To some, this may feel obvious, but compared to the ways that Whitman describes this relationship in poems further within the collection, such as the line “And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,” (Whitman 276) from “When I Heard at the Close of the Day”, the first quote feels less public and more shied away. Why do you feel that Whitman’s descriptions of homosexual relationships, both romantic and sexual, became more clear and obvious as he gets further into the collection? Is he becoming more comfortable with himself or does he feel that he needs to speak out about this love and desire because he is growing old and running out of time to say it?

Throughout all of these poems, Whitman describes and labels homosexual love and desire, and people who engage in those types of love and desire, different things. For example, in some poems, such as “For You O Democracy” and “The Base of All Metaphysics”, he refers to men who are involved in these relationships as comrades, while in other poems, such as “Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me?” and “City of Orgies”, he refers to them as lovers. Do you see these terms as interchangeable, or is there a distinction between when someone is a comrade versus when they are a lover? In “O You Whom I Often and Silently Come”, Whitman seems to hint at the idea of an unrequited love in the line “Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me” (Whitman 286); is comrade used when someone does not reciprocate the feelings Whitman has for them, and is lover used when those feelings are returned?

There are so many more questions I could ask, and so many other things I could talk about when it comes to this collection of poems, but I will leave it there for now! Please let me know what you think about any of the things that I mentioned above, or anything else you noticed in this collection of poems; I have a whole list of other things I would love to talk about in regards to them 🙂

Which is the Better “Song of Myself”?

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When reading the Deathbed version of “Song of Myself”, I kept thinking back to the first version that we read. Specifically, I kept trying to find what the differences between the two versions were, and what the significance of those differences is. The main thing that stuck out to me, as I’m sure it did to most other people, was the inclusion of section breaks. We have seen sections in other of Whitman’s writing, such as “Leaves of Grass”, but we did not have them in the first version of “Song of Myself” that we read. Last class, we talked about how the pacing and flow of “Song of Myself” (due to a minimal use of periods and instead a constant use of commas) lead us to feel like we are always moving forwards, unable to stop and sometimes unable to breathe. I felt as though the usage of separate sections slowed down this pacing and made the act of reading more manageable, but also less unique and interesting. What did you think of the usage of sections? Do you feel that it helped or hindered the reading experience? What do you think the intention was behind separating the poem into sections?

Who are we talking to? And who are we?

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When reading for class tomorrow, all I kept thinking was “who is the ‘I’ that is narrating the poem?” and “who are the ‘you’ that is being talked to?”. I naturally assumed that the narrator is supposed to be Whitman and we are supposed to be the person spoken to, but I always like to think about if that was necessarily the intention of the author. I don’t necessarily have any specific ideas of who the narrator/reader would be if not Whitman and ourselves, but I wonder if the main ideas of the poem would be more impactful if these people were represented by someone else than who we naturally assume them to be.

Reviews of “LoG”

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When doing the readings for today’s class, I was very interested by the completely opposite reactions to Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” expressed in the two reviews of it. While I don’t think the fact that this work was controversial and lead to such different views of the work is surprising, it was very interesting to me to see how differently the reviews were written. I feel like the way that they were written directly reflects the views that the reviewer had on the work.

The negative review, written by Rufus W. Griswold, is what you would expect of a traditional review/comment on a work. It briefly describes the type of things the work talks about (even if it is done so in a very biased way), and then goes into the reviewers opinion of the work. Griswold discusses how the views of Whitman go against social virtues, and therefore should not be read or distributed by anyone. The standard nature of the review reflects want for society to follow a standard socialized order, abiding by certain moral codes and rules.

In contrast, the positive review, written by Fanny Fern, is not written in a traditional way. It is much more confusing and requires more thought to understand what exactly she is saying about Whitman’s work. Fern is directly expressing her appreciation and positive feelings towards Whitman’s work not just through her actual words, but through her going against of the standard order and format of a review.

Notes from the Grossly Reductive Introduction to Transcendentalism

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Hi! I don’t have any crazy thoughts provoking questions or ideas for the blog (at least not yet), but I wasn’t able to be in class week because of a conference I was attending out of town. As I was doing the readings from this past week, as well as reading over the notes a friend (thanks Tanner) sent me from Thursday’s class, I was just wondering what people’s thoughts on transcendentalism, the poets we are studying, and just the general purpose of this course are. What big ideas or important details did you take away from the readings and Thursday’s class?

Based off of the readings, it feels like transcendentalism, and therefore this course and the works we are going to read within it, focus heavily on the idea of humanity and that people’s lives should not be tied to, dependent on, or only fulfilled by conforming to the capitalist society that we live in. To be truly satisfied, we need to have emotion and social connections with one another, which is what WW and ED seem to have used poetry to do; it is a medium through which they can create those connections with others not just for themselves, but for people who read those works and then connect with each other (like us in this course!). I know I’m posting this pretty soon before class tomorrow (sorry Dr. Scanlon…), but any notes or thoughts are super helpful, and I’m excited to actually get to be in class and a part of discussion tomorrow!