There were many interesting ideas discussed in class. One of them was the reason why Charles Dickens during his trip to New York would depict the city in such a foul way. In Dickens’ work, “America notes for General Circulation,” Dickens describes humans as pigs because he felt that during his trip people were highly self-contained without care for anyone else. During class, we also separated the critics that commented on 19^th century New York in two categories, the insiders and outsiders. Those who were classified as the insiders are those such as Philip Hone who actually lived and breathed the city air. The outsiders, on the other hand, looked at the city with a different perspective. Charles Dickens is an example of an outsider who looked at the city and searched for what he thought was the true New York beyond the fancy lights.

          Depending on where you live and the way you observe things, will determine the response you will have to a new environment. The example used before about Charles Dickens was a perfect example. Dickens, originally from England, looked at the city totally different from the way Walt Whitman did, because Whitman lived in the state longer than Dickens had been there. Although he has his own opinion on the city itself, Dickens do not have the right to make generalizations without living in that place and experiencing the good and bad of it. Charles Dickens figured that the way to find the true New York was to dig deep and visit the slums. There he saw how the poor and homeless were treated and further made assumptions about the city of New York as a self-centered one. He wouldn’t have known that beyond the slums and the bright city lights there dwells people who in fact give, donate, and help out those in need. Although there may be people who are less interested in the labor it takes to provide for the poor, there are many more that enjoy and live to assist the needy in any way possible.

Personally, after I read Charles Dickens’ thoughts about his journey to New York, I got offended because he made an acute generalization about the city without really experiencing the good things it has to offer. Dickens criticized New York in his book for being selfish and uncivilized but yet still calls them “a great republican.” (From American Notes for General Circulation) He called the people of New York pigs who are worried about their own. America for what he saw was dirty. New York, just like any other city has its good and bad, but to make generalizations without living here isn’t a good way to get acquainted with a city such as New York. New York is a fast-paced city so I could understand that there aren’t as many people to take care of the poor as there should be. But classifying New York by the number of poor people in the city isn’t an effective way to describe New York.

The passage from Leaves of Grass of the “29th Bather” speaks of 28 young men bathing by the shore with a voyeur amongst them.  When I first read the passage, I felt that Walt Whitman was the actual voyeur by the way that he described the entire scene, as if he were looking through the window. I believe, in reading this passage, that he is the woman admiring the men, but to disguise his homosexuality he disguises his view in the form of a woman. As the passage proceeds, the word “she” becomes absent half way through the text. The line, “twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.” I think refers to his disguised homoesexual tendencies over the first twenty-eight years of his life before he began to write Leaves of Grass. The line, “Where are you off to lady? for I see you,” I think refers to him acknowledging the homosexual part of himself. The next line, “You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room”. It is as though he will not allow his homosexual tendencies freedeom until the next line where he joins the men, “Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them”. The rest of the passage is filled with erotic references of men as, “little streams pass’d over their bodies”, “young men glissen’d with wet”, “bending arch” and the most provacative line, “they do not think whom they souse with spray”.

There are many points of view on the use of the number twenty-eight and the symbology of the female figure. One of these opinions is that of the author Vivian Pollack who writes in The Erotic Whitman that the female figure represents Walt Whitman’s younger sister to “whom he was deeply devoted” (114). In associating it to his sister, she speaks of her, Hannah Whitman Heyde, birthday being on the 28th of the month, her being 28 years of age at her time of marriage, and the 28 day menstrual cycle of women, or the lunar calendar. Hannah Whitman Heyde was unhappy in her marriage and Pollack suggests that, “the healing touch he attributed to his ‘unseen hand’ in section II of ‘Song of Myself’ was partly inspired by his desire to free his sister of the false body of her married life”.

There are others who support my thoughts that Whitman was expressing discretely his homosexual desires. As discussed in “Sex Objects: art and the dialects of desire” by Jennifer Doyle, she touches upon Gavin Butt’s work “Between you and me: Queer Disclosures in the American Art World” and his be;ief that this “segment has become a touchstone in gay literary studies, in part because it contains some of the most explicit homoerotic writing in Whitman’s poetry”. In conjunction with this, Hilton Als sees this “she” presence as “a conduit for homosexual expression and desire”. Although I see Pollack’s idea as both valid and interesting, surrounding actual numbers, I side with the other authors who see “she” as Whitman’s disguised homosexuality.

– typical question: how would this text change if a different word were used in a particular place?  how does the particular meaning of the text depend upon the exact language used here?

ex. runaway slave passage — how would it be different if WW used “fugitive” instead of “runaway”?

– WW editing own work:  Library of Congress manuscript page

– tie your observations/analysis of WW’s work to quotations from the text — add details and avoid generalities

Statement 1:  Whitman seems like he loves everybody

Statement 2:  Whitman says that “what is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,” including professional workers like butcher boys, blacksmiths, and farmers.

– Introduce claim — provide example/support — analyze example
Quoting poetry

When quoting three or more lines, use the blockquote tag (icon button shows quotation mark).

ex.

Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet… The effect upon me of my early life… Of the ward and city I live in… Of the nation,
The latest news… Discoveries, inventions, societies… Authors old and new,
My dinner, dress. Associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks – or of myself… Or ill-doing… Or loss or lack of money… Or depression or exaltation,
They come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

– Literal vs. figurative meaning

– ex. what does water symbolize in the twenty-eight young men passage?

– why 28 young men?  why 28?  look in endnotes.  but is that the final answer? no.  do research in criticism.

– Poems are like puzzles

– Intentional fallacy

– Poetic Form

Longfellow — “Song of Hiawatha” — lines are regular. end rhymes . regular rhythm.

Whitman – Free verse — irregular line lengths.  No rhyme.  irregular punctuation

—

Professor Maura Smale’s presentation on web-based research techniques

– Research as a game — trying to explore, find specific resources related to a topic

– Primary sources — photographs, manuscripts, letters, documents

– Secondary sources — critical, interpretative texts

– Better google searching

– How does google rank searches?  page rank system — popularity.  and relevance to search terms.  search engines.  scholarly info mixed in with wider public info

– make it easier to find scholarly materials using advanced google searching

– go to basic google search screen, click advanced tab
- searching by domain.   .com vs. .org .gov .edu
- library of congress

searching — best way to search is with keywords.  pull out critical words
– digital archives, collections
– add “archive” “digital” “collection” to searches
sample search 1:  “archive digital walt whitman”
sample search 2:  advanced search, restricted by .gov domains
– narrow down search by using more search terms
sample search 3:  19th century brooklyn digital archive site:edu

Don’t just stay on first page of google search results

Can also use google advanced search when looking for images
– click “images” and then “advanced image search” — can filter by type of website
– sample search 4: image search

– research — exploration — keep trying different strategies if things don’t work out at once.  Internet good at helping you find quick info — movie times, weather — but may require more time to find more advanced resources.

Some websites useful for this class:

Two resources from City Tech library
Library databases – historic datases
– click “find articles” – click “Databases A to Z”
– look for “New York Times, Historical (ProQuest)” — full text with images and page images of all NYT from 1851 onward
– on search page, look for “more search options” — look for document type — many different types of sources
- sample search: “walt whitman” in document type articles and date range 1851-1870
[putting quotation marks around search terms enables you to search terms together]
– look at “page map”
– printing from NYT Historical can be a little dicey
– can use this database from home if you get to it from Library home page — but you need to have your activated ID — visit library to have your ID activated — has to be activated every semester.  Number starts with 22

Trial Database:  Slavery and Anti-Slavery, a Transnational Archive
– contains info from pamphlets, newspapers, and manuscripts– from broad spectrum of 19th-century
– * has to be used on campus *
– Library homepage — go to “Databases under consideration”  need password

Open Websites, can be accessed from home

Course website – look at resources page on our course site

ex. Walt Whitman Archive

Whitman’s Notebooks at Library of Congress

when you find an archive or collection that has info that you want, understand that it is often part of a larger project.  Example: whitman notebooks at LOC part of American Memory site

– so, go up a couple of levels and see what else you can find that might be relevant to work you’re doing.

New York Public Library

Brooklyn Public Library – great place to go for historic Brooklyn photographs — at Grand Army plaza — can go and look at old images.  but many scanned too — look for “Brooklyn Collection” in lefthand sidebar
– can search for photos of streets, intersections
– Full Brooklyn Daily Eagle — whole run — available online
– can always email or call librarians at BPL if you can’t find what you’re looking for

New York Public Library — look for digital collections
– look in images and digital text
– manuscripts under image collections
– Walt Whitman Manuscripts

Citation

– when posting things on blog, need to cite sources
– even with images
– help other researchers find what you found.  Knowledge builds on knowledge.  Need to leave a trail for people who will follow you.
– Images:
– give author/where it came from.  + link to where it came from.  Make URL active link so that others can follow

I read Whitman’s work, ” Song of Myself”, and I do some research online.   Whitman ’s works are powerful, many people love his works.  I love reading poems and try to understand what the writters wants to tell and touch his readers. Different people read the poem, even those they are reading the same poem, they have different feeling.  I love go to class because professor will discuss Walt Whitman’s works with us, and my classmates love to share their feeling too.  During the class, I hear and learn and know more than I read by myself. 

In the new reading assignment ” Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman,

I am with you,, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;

I project myself – also I return – I am with you, and know how it is.

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky so i felt;

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

Whitman assumes that they feel and see things as he does, and they react in the same ways as him.  You may have the same feeling as me when we are taking subway, looking in the same sky or walking on the street…..

A blog is:

(a contraction of the term “weblog“)^[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

-Wikipedia

We can derive from the definition above that Blogging (verb) is the act of posting and maintaining a blog. Web 2.0 is a paradigm shift in the way the Internet is used and viewed. In web 1.0, most of the websites were static and only offered information. Forums were used to discuss such content.  Web 2.0 is all about user contributed content and collaboration thought the web. Blogs have really led the way and are the purest incarnation of web 2.0

Having students post on blogs has several implications.  Because blogs were made for sharing and public in nature, students are motivated to produce quality work. They know that anyone can bring up their page and read their writing.  In a traditional classroom, you can just hand in poor work and not care too much because only your professor will read and grade it. With a larger audience such as the web, students are hesitant to post work without thought. It can also scare students into not doing any work because they are afraid of having their worked scrutinized. If a student lacks confidence in their writing, they become paralyzed as a result.

Another aspect to consider is the permanency of the Internet. Once something is online, it’s there forever. Almost everything on the web is crawled by web engines and archived for research and other use. One example of this process is the waybackmachine website which makes complete copies of certain websites. People can jump online and look at older versions of certain websites. Things like the ‘waybackmachine’ may increase the anxiety of students who know their work is out there forever. I feel blogging is suited for more advance courses.

The immediacy of information at our fingertips makes the internet  a great resource. Students will look for their answers on the Internet regardless so why not bring it into the classroom.  I notice students have difficulty separating their online habits.  Personally, when I chat with friends,  I am using abbreviations and other jargon because I want to get my point across and I have another five blinking windows open. Students have to be careful and not allow their casual online presence to spill when they write academically. Hopefully, students can stay away from Facebook and other websites and get their work up.

Students are becoming part of the blogopshere, a community of contributors about various topics of the world. Students may not want to be in the public eye for various reasons.  Employers are known to search for your name and should some questionable content come up as a result of that search, you may not get a job. A person’s online presence is very important and people don’t understand how to manage it. I tell people to assume their is no privacy on the Internet. Anything you post is open to questions by various parties, even if you toggle the privacy button.

I follow many blogs myself and find them to be valuable resource of information. Blogging is the new way companies provide their customers with updates (I didn’t forget about Twitter but I will get to that one day). Students are learning how to contribute to the online community, thank goodness there is an edit button while they do it. Students get to state their opinions and become independent thinkers. When they leave class, they may start a blog of their own on a particular topic they have a passion for. More importantly, they are become independent publishers of their own work… like Whitman.

   “By the age of eleven, Whitman was done with his formal education (by this time he had far more schooling than either of his parents had received), and he began his life as a laborer, working first as an office boy for some prominent Brooklyn lawyers, who gave him a subscription to a circulating library, where his self-education began. Always an autodidact, Whitman absorbed an eclectic but wide-ranging education through his visits to museums, his nonstop reading, and his penchant for engaging everyone he met in conversation and debate. While most other major writers of his time enjoyed highly structured, classical educations at private institutions, Whitman forged his own rough and informal curriculum of literature, theater, history, geography, music, and archeology out of the developing public resources of America’s fastest growing city. http://whitmanarchive.org/biography/walt…

     At first, I thought he definitely had someone in his life courage him to study, advising and directing, however based on information above we can see that he was self motivated who had passion on learning and writing.

       In last class we had, there was this discussion about some of his lines, which were about slaves during the time. His line started as “The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside…(p37)  and he continues that briefly saying he  took care of the slave  by giving him a room and clothes. Based on these lines I thought of Whitman as brave for helping a slave and concerned of human rights, not racist and had an image of being enlightened. During the time slavery was legal in USA, I also found a short info about slavery and history of it on Wikipedia that as follows; “From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of much of the present United States.[6] Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves; there was a small number of white slaves as well. The majority of slaveholders were in the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture, with farms of fifteen or more slaves proving to be far more productive than farms without slaves. According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_…

 In relation to slavery he explain his ideas in his lines perfectly and talks to people how he defends equality between people.

I am the poet of the body
And I am the poet of the soul
I go with the slaves of the earth equally with the masters
And I will stand between the masters and the slaves,
Entering into both so that both shall understand me alike.

 One of the things that strike me the most was his level of compassion for the runaway slave. In his poem “Song of Myself,” in Walt Whitman’s 1855 edition of “Leaves of Grass” he writes, “The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside, I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak, and went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him, and brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet, and gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes…” From this passage here we can ask many questions about both the hospitality of Walt Whitman and the nature of the “runaway slave.” This passage in his poem makes me think first of why would Walt Whitman not proceed to do what some of the other folks regarding runaway slaves during this time of 1855, where there were still acts of segregation and slavery taking place. For example, sometimes if people saw that a runaway slave had approached their doorstep, the mean slave masters and hunters would shoot them down, beat them, torture them, hang them, or even worst send them back to where they came from. But yet, there were even some that, like Walt Whitman, had compassion for people and desired to help them in anyway possible, whether it is making them food, giving directions, clothes or a place to sleep at night.

 As we, the students in class began to interpret Walt Whitman’s poem, we looked at it in a couple ways. We first observed the text in a biographical and historical context. Now tackling the biographical context we asked questions based on the passage above. Some of these questions included what type of exposure did Whitman have to slavery? What experience did he have in nursing? Did Walt Whitman ever come in contact with a runaway slave before? I began to wonder about these same questions and even thought of some on my own, such as how did the runaway slave distinguish Walt Whitman’s house as a safeguard and not one of an evil slave master? What events lead up to Walt Whitman becoming so compassionate and hospitable to foreign people, especially during a time where it was unlikely to care for a runaway slave? These are some of the question, based on this passage that interested me and may want to further interpret and discuss.

 This class was really helpful because it made us not only think more deeply about the name Walt Whitman, but his character, personality, background, past, and sexuality and the type of influences he had on people as well as what  influenced some of the decisions he made. Interpreting the literary text made us also think outside the box of his family or the things that he was known for and to try to correctly analyze the man Walt Whitman.