Thursday, 10th of December 2009 at 11:11:12 PMsarah’s final paper Ugh. Day of Finish paper, Take nap, Sleep through Whitman party, Wake up, Post paper late, Go back to bed. I hate exam week. […]
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In which I pay essentialist homage to the [Womanly?] Whitman. […] The “Bloody Angle” is the name given to a piece of ground at the Spotsylvania Courthouse Battlefield on which, in May 1864, some of the war’s most traumatizing hand-to-hand and muzzle-to-muzzle fighting took place. Whitman would c… […] Here is a more focused set of my photos from Digital Whitman’s DC visit, which we made two days before discussing Whitman’s Lincoln writings/lecture in class. When we went into the actual theater (or, in some of my students’ cases, the napping room–shame on you!), I was disappointed at first that the guard ushered me upstairs […] […] I am indebted to Other Sam for drawing my attention to this very moving detail. One of the best things I saw at the Library of Congress was Whitman’s letter of December 29, 1862 (that is, exactly 106 years before the day I was born), to his mother about finding George in Fredericksburg. We were […] […] I’ve mentioned this podcast from Nate DiMeo at the memory palace before. I find it pretty poignant. It’s about the Booth brothers, especially John Wilkes’ older brother Edwin. Listen for a shout-out to Our Man Whitman [OMW]: Edwin Booth BOOST Here Edwin is looking pensive (or moping about his footwear): And here is a famous photo we saw […] […] I’m having trouble reconciling Whitman’s desire to portray the war honestly and his poems that are set in the midst of battle. I suppose it is a naïve assumption, but, before Drum-Taps, I felt that the voice in Whitman’s poetry was his own. In Drum-Taps, however, this is obviously not the case, as Whitman never […] […] Every week, I feel like I learn something new about Whitman. This week I learned that Whitman was apparently a racist. I suppose I had just assumed that since he was a forward thinker, and that he wrote about sheltering a runaway slave in Song of Myself that he was for equality. Of course this […] […] I spent my break in Front Royal, and happened to go there on a day where they were having a street festival or something. Anyway, they had a little Confederate museum tucked away in the downtown area, and because of the festival we got to go for free! So two things that I think are […] […] Here is a clear, color-coded map from wikimedia commons that shows the US as Whitman knew it: seceeding states, Union states with slavery, Union states without slavery, territories. And here is one that shows the same, but in a more traditional cartography: […] In my first readthrough of Drum-Taps, I noticed numerous poems using the image of the moon so I thought I’d go back through with an eye on nighttime in Drum-Taps. The first poems in the cycle, notably “First O Songs for a Prelude” and, obviously, “Song of the Banner at Daybreak”, are set at daybreak. […] […] A lot of what I was thinking about this week had to do with how Whitman compares to other civil war poets. Since my presentation this week is on “other civil war poetry” I’ve been reading Drum-Taps with the other poets in mind. It’s still weird to me how often times Whitman seems like he’s […] […] The progression of the War, and Walt Whitman’s changing perception of it, is clearly depicted in Drum-Taps. The first several poems in the series are about the glory of the war to come, invoking the memories of an old Revolutionary War veteran even. “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” exemplifies this section, with the different […] […] When we talk the periods of Whitman’s writing (or even every individual edition), Isometimes feel as if we’re talking about a different person, or at least something vaguely schizophrenic. Whitman goes through so much in the war; he goes from being the man who feels all and yet has done very little (in terms of […] […] Whitmaniacs, go HERE NOW for a Library of Congress link for schoolteachers that has digitized images of some of Whitman’s notebooks, including from the Civil War (and a wrenching photo of a dead confederate solider in Spotsylvania). Don’t just look, READ: their names, their mother’s names, their ages, where they worked, where they’re from, which […] […] Again, Sharon Olds: You move between the soldiers’ cots the way I move among my dead, their white bodies laid out in lines. ____ You bathe the forehead, you bathe the lip, the cock, as I touch my father, as if the language were a form of life. _____ You write their letters home, I take the dictation of his firm dream lips, this boy I […] […] Reading the chapter from Morris, which I loved by the way, I found myself feeling for Whitman in a way I hadn’t quite grasped before. We talked a lot last time about how his attitude towards the world, and specifically death, changed from 1855 to 1867. We talked about how seeing death up close would […] […] The first thing I notice that’s different about the 1867 version of Leaves of Grass (for pretty obvious reasons) is the first poem that Whitman chooses to introduce. The deathbed edition features “One’s-Self I Sing” about halfway through the book, under the broader section, “Inscriptions.” In the 1867 version this poem is featured at the […] […] While reading Song of Myself and comparing it to the 1855 version I had a much stronger sense of being told how to understand the world. In the first reading of Song of Myself I found myself both wanting Whitman to be more structured, and getting frustrated that he seemed to think he knew the […] […] “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” is perhaps one of my newest favorite Whitman poems. The theme of death is rampant in it, and at times, the imagery of the lost mates made me ache. But, despite all the loss, there is hope within the text; to quote a great movie and even greater king, […] […] When Whitman says, “I contain multitudes,” or even, “I contradict myself,” he seems happy about the multiple identities that he occupies. I’ve been thinking about his imagined occupation of these many selves; for me and many other people I know, living in different roles (for me, primarily professor and mother) can be less harmonious and […] […] This is the home where Whitman found his brother George in December 1862 in the makeshift Union hospital, and spent a week visiting with soldiers before traveling to DC to begin his serious work as a spiritual missionary to the wounded. This image and the one below of Marye House (Brompton) are courtesy of a […] […] This is the mansion in which the President of the University of Mary Washington resides today, which sits on the Sunken Road battlefield and was used by Confederates during the battle and later as a hospital. Shown here with rifle pits in front. […] Our town around the time Whitman came here to look for his brother George, in late 1862. […] nbsp;http://media.pbs.org/asxgen/general/wind… “The Civil War” (8:20) http://media.pbs.org/asxgen/general/wind… “Drum-Taps” (8:40) Two episodes from a pretty cool series (online and free–the whole thing is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/whitman/pro…) featuring our own Karen Karbiener as well as other scholars and writers including Ed Folsom, Ken Price, Alan Garganus, and Yusef Komunyakaa. […] |
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