This is the assigned reading from last week.

Mother, Father, Wather, Earth, Me

I think Whitman can wrote those influential and innovative poet because his life experience. Whitman moved to Brooklyn in 1823, and Brooklyn grow quickly in 1855.  He was seeing the changes of Brooklyn.

Unlike Walt Whitman has a ” restless and unhappy childhood”, I am happy that I was born in today and live with my lovely family with no war and financial problem.  Whitman has brothers and sisters, but he said ” we are not alike, that’s a part and whole of it”.  Jeff was a “real brother” to him rather than Eddy who had physic disease and “mostly like a son to him”.  Whitman and his family kept moving from one place to another place, he needed to take care his family because he was the second eldest son in his family. After his father was died, his mother Louisa Whitman loved to ask Whitman to take care the family with her.  Louisa Whitman said Whitman ” was a very good, but very straight boy”.  This is his role and responsible to take care his family after his father was dead.  I think this is why he said he has a restless and unhappy boyhood.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious
you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

                                                                               by Walt Whitman

this is how the Fulton Ferry Landing looks like in 1880s and the ferry croosing over the sea.

compare to present:

We still can see the Brooklyn bridge still standing here. Now the ferries are more faster and looks more pretty than before.  People are taking the ferries everyday as the people did in the past.  As Whitman say ” And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”

sources:

 http://fultonferry.org/history/

http://nicole.lookingforwhitman.org/files/2009/09/brooklyn_bridge_new_york.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/CBF/closereading/imageside/images/ferry1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/CBF/closereading/closereading.html&usg=__Jwo-BmCZNrORXht2XcMDxPb8740=&h=321&w=500&sz=90&hl=en&start=18&um=1&tbnid=JxPWhJZ_cc0XJM:&tbnh=83&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcroosing%2Bbrooklyn%2Bferry%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUS346%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1