Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

"O Captain! My Captain!"


"In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged" and "cleansed" life. He wrote freelance journalism and visited the wounded at New York-area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1862 to care for his brother who had been wounded in the war.

Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals and stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet."
-From www.poets.org/whitman

Today I read sections 1-3 of Whitman's poem, 'Leaves of Grass'[Song of Myself]. Whitman embodies the American Poetic aesthetic of writing in a bold, fresh, and new way. If we compare his writing to that of Tennyson, his English contemporary, we can truly appreciate the modernity of his writing. Rather than focusing on ideas and forms of the past, Whitman is writing as he lives, an ideal in poetry personified in American writing. The premise of 'Songs of Myself' is a celebration of humanity, using himself as an example. The poem starts with 'I' and ends with 'You', embodying the spirit of connection I was talking about in my 'definition of poetry' post. In Whitman's work, the poet is a mouthpiece.

"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."
(Section 2)

Though I like that he sees a definitive universal secret meaning to poetry, I struggle with his self-absorbed narrative voice. It is with no irony that he says
"I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself."
The point is clearly that he is great, and everyone is great, yet I find this tone of omniscience to be rather irritating.
Whitman embodies the poet as a prophet idyll, and the poem is loose with little formalised structure. As a result, it reads like an epiphony, and the narrator's voice is obviously a product of organic construction, rather than an architectural product. Though it was published in 1855, Whitman uses a style similar to the 'Stream of Conscious' narrative, which would not become popular until the early 1900s, illustrating his goal of creating the modern.

What constitutes poetry?

Today's introductory lecture and seminar focused on the way that we define poetry as a medium, and the art behind its construction. We were asked to think about what 'poetry' was to us as individuals, and how we would describe it objectively. My attempt:

Poetry is...
A successful mastery of language used to convey an emotion or idea that we, as human beings, can connect to and appreciate.

My definition sits in between the two main schools of American thought regarding poetry, One of which championing the poet as a prophet, where content is integral, and its wisdom is the product of an epiphany or genius of the creator; The other focusing more on form, where content is secondary to structure, and the work is revered as a construction, and valued as a form of literary architecture. Though I feel structure is integral to a poem, and not only adds emphasis to the content, and showcases the poet's mastery of language even in constraint, I feel that content should be held with equal importance.

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer."
-E.M Forster

As a human being, I believe it is empathy that seperates us from animals, The fact that we can feel, understand, and sympathise even in situations that we have never experienced, is definitive in our species, and the fact that this empathy can override instinct demonstrates both our free will, and capacity for emotional logic. I feel that for poetry to be truly great, it needs to carry a message, however vague that message may be, that the reader can connect to. From the poet's perspective, it gives the work a purpose, and references its original inspiration or cause. From the reader's perspective, it allows entry into a collective union of humanity, forming an emotional connection to the products of a stranger, that can be shared by others.
I think it is important to define ourselves as readers in the poetry process, for if it is this connection which is important, to some extent it removes the genius from the creator. Last term, I studied Roland Barthes, and his theories in The Death of the Author.
Barthes argues that our Postmodern society puts too much emphasis on the ‘Author’ behind the work. He argues that a good piece of literature is one entirely devoid of marks left by the ‘creator’. Why? Because by linking a creator with His product, Barthes believes that one will automatically search for His voice. His biography will provide the definitive answer on the correct “meaning” or “explanation” of his work, and so ultimately, “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text." Barthes goes on to say that no ‘product’ is an original work, but rather a “tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of cultures”. By claiming that the Author’s products were simply a culmination of the fruits of the variations in society, he takes away the God-like status of the Author, and shifts the importance to the reader. "A text's unity lies not in its origins, but in its destination," and so it is instead the reader who takes the active role in piecing together these fractions and assuming meaning, it is The reader who is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost“.
If this is the case, poetry's worth could be judged by two merits; As a piece of architecture, the genius lies with the poet, but for the connective content, the reader supplies its value.



Quotes are from:
Barthes, Roland. 'The Death of the Author' from Image, Music, Text. (London: Hill and Wang,1978.
Forster, E.M. Howards End (London: Penguin Books, 1972)

Assessment

This Blog will act as part B of the written assessments,

A research file (50%) further broken down into:

1. An annotated bibliography of relevant secondary sources (10 minimum), either on individual poets or poetic schools (15%)
2. Brief reflective commentaries on three groups of poets, minimum 300 words each (20%)
3. Two creative writing exercises along with brief commentaries (300 words minimum for each commentary) situating this work in relation to forms of poetics encountered on the unit (15%).

-Dr Nikolai Duffy 2011

The Course Outline

This unit will introduce you to the range and diversity of twentieth century American poetry and poetics. Considering both ‘mainstream’ and ‘experimental’ works from modernism to the Beats, confessional poetry to cyber poetry, we will discuss the ways that poets explore ideas around such issues as poetic tradition, language, knowledge and identity. We will analyse individual poems in relation to theoretical essays on poetics, considering what typifies a specifically American poetic tradition, as well as reflecting on the cultural significance of poetry during the twentieth century. Some of the material we will be discussing can be challenging. Try not to be put off by this but think about why a poem might make a feature of being ‘difficult’. As much as trying to work out what a poem might be saying, always try to think about what it is a poem is doing, as well as how it is doing it. We’ll be exploring why and how a poem works as much as what it appears to be saying. Finally, remember that it’s ok to get lost; it’s difficult to discover things if we’re not prepared to have our assumptions challenged, if we’re not prepared to lose ourselves.
-Dr Nikolai Duffy. 2011