Comments on: Virginia for November 17

By: bcbottle

bcbottle — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:43:05 +0000

I definitely agree with you Virginia about Whitman being all about embracing everything, even the ugly. I agree with Chelsea as well that he wanted to embrace it to see the great in everything else. I think that part of this was because he felt that one could not truly change things without understanding them at their worst. How would Whitman have become the Wound Dresser without the Civil War? It took something terrible and ugly for him to realize his calling as a caretaker.

In this way I think he was all about embracing the ugly, but as Erin talked about in her post, he was all about hope for the future.

By: chelseanewnam

chelseanewnam — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:25:29 +0000

Virginia, I think you bring up an interesting point at the end of this blog. Embracing the ugliness of humanity and everything else that comes with it is (I agree) exactly the kind of thing Whitman would suggest. But, I think he would urge this only in the sense that a person cannot fully understand how to love something or someone unless it can embrace every part of it or him/her, even those parts he disagrees with. This is perhaps why Whitman had to help in the hospitals; he had to embrace the sick and dying soldiers in order to fully love his country, he had to get down into the grit of despair in order to come out with a smile on his face. It is something I hadn’t thought of before, but I do think it makes sense and I agree that Whitman might have said to Ginsberg, “Boy, this is good, but where’s the light?”

(And you should buy Howl …I really think you would enjoy it)

By: Allison Crerie

Allison Crerie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:57:51 +0000

Whitman + Inspiration = Great Blog Post!

(and that is the extent of my math skills).

Whitman certainly does find beauty in the “grit” of America, something Higgins draws attention to when discussing Carl Sandburg’s work. Whitman celebrates time and time again the common man, the working man, and despite his literary success and long-lasting legacy, never lived a life of luxury himself. Both Sandburg and Whitman praise the importance of work that’s dirty and raw and honest, i.e. work that most everyone complains about, and work that all of us earning our college degrees are trying to avoid. But there is something genuine, something more rewarding than sitting at a computer screen– to feel physically exhausted at the end of the day, to have tangibly created something, or destroyed something, or fixed something, is a wholly different feeling of satisfaction. It’s a bit ironic, admittedly, that POETS are writing about this, but someone has to and we know Whitman worked hard during the war.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make along with your point is that some times the things we look down upon are really pretty darn great. I mean, no one wants to be the person who cleans out porta-Johns but it would be really shitty (literally) if it never got done, so we should be grateful for those who do it. You smell what I’m steppin’ in?