Walt Whitman: “The Poet”

1. Walt Whitman: “The Poet” 19th Century American Transcendentalism November 29th 2010

2. Whitman in 1854

3. Emerson’s praise • Emerson’s call for a poet who can unite parts into a whole: “Our log rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our negroes, and Indians, our boasts and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet unsung.” • In a letter to Whitman (quoted in the preface): “I give you joy in your free and brave thought…” • Think of Wordsworth in the preface to Lyrical Ballads: “There is no object standing between the poet and the image of things.”

4. Whitman’s Appeal for Transcendentalists • Whitman’s expansiveness and inclusiveness, an open-ended aesthetic • His work as a printer (like Thoreau, his practical, physical experience directly informs his prose) • “grass” = preliminary typesetting, drafts • The Civil War’s influence on Whitman’s verse (see “When Lilacs Last…Bloom’d”) • The importance of sex and sexuality to “nature” • The value of human labor • Equality, self-divinity, democracy

5. The Body • Whitman’s frank approach to sex offends some Transcendentalists and their contemporaries (Longfellow, Holmes) • Emerson remains Whitman’s defender • The implicit homosexual undertones of the “Calamus” poems and “Children of Adam” poems

6. Whitman’s unconventional style • Experimental long lines • Unrhymed • Journalistic • No consistent meter • Biblical • Prophetic • Mundane • What do you notice about his varying modes of perception? (Self-representation as a “cosmos” but also a “loafer”)

7. Whitman as a Romantic • British Romantics often wrote passionately about the lives of common people • “The poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and appraise us not of wealth but of commonwealth” (Emerson, “The Poet”).

8. Conversation starters, part I • What type of picture is illustrated in “City of Orgies” and how does parataxis (The placing of sentences, clauses or phrases without a conjunction) cater to it? • In “I Sing the Body Electric” Whitman explores the value of the physical body. Moreover, what is Whitman’s argument concerning the value of the physical body and slavery, in sections 7 and 8? • How does Whitman utilize the concept of democracy in “Song of Myself”, specifically in sections 6 and 11? • The speaker in “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” relates with the “live-oak” as its solitary state speaks to him. Can the speaker perhaps be looking in nature the same way Henry Thoreau views Walden Pond as a “mirror?” • Why isn’t it possible for the speaker to speak to the stranger in “To a Stranger,” but is able to think about the stranger while being “alone?” Does solitude prevent a verbal encounter?

9. Conversation starters, part II • The speaker in “Full of Life Now” claims that he is no longer “visible” and bestows upon the “compact” and now “visible” reader a newfound purpose. Is this perhaps referring to the cyclical relationships between the old age poet’s influences on the new age poets? • In “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” a boy observes a bird’s solitary plight. Is the natural occurrence of death in the poem being used in any way to suggest an inspirational reminiscence of the poet? • Faith seems to be the only reliance the speaker has in “The Wound Dresser.” However the urgent calling of death in section 3 is noted, when the soldiers’ pain becomes unbearable. Could this be an in the speakers part an act of desperation and a lack of faith? • What does the lilacs symbolize in the poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d? How are they significant to the death of Abraham Lincoln? • What objective is accomplished in “O Captain! My Captain!” as a “victor ship” is deemed the winner? Who or What is the “victor ship” pertaining to?