Global Posts Rotating Header Image

September 13th, 2009:

Virginia for September 15th

Sep 13th, 2009
by missvirginia.
Comments are off for this post

As I was reading for this posting, I had something on my mind. In one of my other English classes, someone insinuated Whitman as just a gay old man. He said some more unsavory things towards my Whitman, and I immediately shot up my hand and said that I was in love with Whitman and did not take kindly to what he’d said.

Funny enough, in From Pent-up Aching Rivers (248), one of the first poems in the readings, I feel like there are so many allusions to bisexuality. Or maybe, not even bisexuality, just embracing all things sensual, intimate, and physical. Just on the fifth line, he mentions a phallus. Not to be “fifth grade” or anything, but hey! Phallic suggestion! Then he goes into the songs of “procreation, Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people” which reminded me of the physically obsessed Romans. It was a city-state obsessed with being the best physically, mentally, and seemingly always prepared for battle. Ironically enough, I’m sure Whitman’s rumored homosexuality was a battle for him, if he had ever been blatant about it.

The next line is “Singing the muscular urge and the blending”, which when I first read it, it seemed to be very cut and dry. The “muscular urge” is obvious phallic imagery and the blending is heterosexual intercourse. However, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed interchangeable. The muscular urge could be for both types of sex, because everyone (mostly…) orgasms which is a muscular urge/twitch/whatever. And the blending is describing the bodies creating that “superb child”. Even if the line is describing homosexual sex, blending could also describe the “two becoming one”-ness about sex.

Later on, after the swimmer lines, he lists “the mystic derliria, the madness amorous, and the utter abandonment”. I started thinking, is that the cycle for sex or relationships? I’m thinking it’s both–there is the initial attraction, the infatuation and “lust/love at first sight” ordeal. If we were to look at this from a relationship point of view, then there’s the content, “I love you, you love me, we can make this work forever” stage. Lastly, cue the jaws music…there’s the “utter abandonment”, the breakup. In sex, there’s the initial arousal that is called mystic deliria (catchy), then the main course…the madness amorous…and then the climax/refractory period where the feelings of abandonment can come in to play.

Whitman was pretty much exalting and proclaiming love. Love in armies (i.e. I Sing the Body Electric), love for women (i.e. A Woman Waits for Me), love in friendships with the same sex (i.e. Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd). In the words of Whitman himself, “Have you ever loved the body of a woman? Have you ever loved the body of a man? Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth?” I think Whitman wanted people to be able to look past the body, to look within the person.

Virginia for September 15th

Sep 13th, 2009
by missvirginia.
Comments are off for this post

As I was reading for this posting, I had something on my mind. In one of my other English classes, someone insinuated Whitman as just a gay old man. He said some more unsavory things towards my Whitman, and I immediately shot up my hand and said that I was in love with Whitman and did not take kindly to what he’d said.

Funny enough, in From Pent-up Aching Rivers (248), one of the first poems in the readings, I feel like there are so many allusions to bisexuality. Or maybe, not even bisexuality, just embracing all things sensual, intimate, and physical. Just on the fifth line, he mentions a phallus. Not to be “fifth grade” or anything, but hey! Phallic suggestion! Then he goes into the songs of “procreation, Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people” which reminded me of the physically obsessed Romans. It was a city-state obsessed with being the best physically, mentally, and seemingly always prepared for battle. Ironically enough, I’m sure Whitman’s rumored homosexuality was a battle for him, if he had ever been blatant about it.

The next line is “Singing the muscular urge and the blending”, which when I first read it, it seemed to be very cut and dry. The “muscular urge” is obvious phallic imagery and the blending is heterosexual intercourse. However, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed interchangeable. The muscular urge could be for both types of sex, because everyone (mostly…) orgasms which is a muscular urge/twitch/whatever. And the blending is describing the bodies creating that “superb child”. Even if the line is describing homosexual sex, blending could also describe the “two becoming one”-ness about sex.

Later on, after the swimmer lines, he lists “the mystic derliria, the madness amorous, and the utter abandonment”. I started thinking, is that the cycle for sex or relationships? I’m thinking it’s both–there is the initial attraction, the infatuation and “lust/love at first sight” ordeal. If we were to look at this from a relationship point of view, then there’s the content, “I love you, you love me, we can make this work forever” stage. Lastly, cue the jaws music…there’s the “utter abandonment”, the breakup. In sex, there’s the initial arousal that is called mystic deliria (catchy), then the main course…the madness amorous…and then the climax/refractory period where the feelings of abandonment can come in to play.

Whitman was pretty much exalting and proclaiming love. Love in armies (i.e. I Sing the Body Electric), love for women (i.e. A Woman Waits for Me), love in friendships with the same sex (i.e. Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd). In the words of Whitman himself, “Have you ever loved the body of a woman? Have you ever loved the body of a man? Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth?” I think Whitman wanted people to be able to look past the body, to look within the person.

Sam P. for Sept. 15

Sep 13th, 2009
by s-words.
Comments are off for this post

Walt Whitman has me beside myself.  More to the point, he has put me on safari inside a population of humans.  Stranger still, I remain human.

In “I Sing the Body Electric” even more than in most of his poetry, Whitman draws up the human body, and the ways in which people relate to each other physically, as the crucial link between the experiences of observing others and living alongside them. This awareness-as-connective-tissue flies into foreground when Whitman engages others most closely, a body among bodies.  He affirms that “To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough… There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well, / All things please the soul, but these please the soul well” (253).  Earlier in the poem, he locates that soul within his flesh and bones down in the dirt among others, asking, “if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?” (250).  If the body and the soul are inextricable, then one’s contact with other bodies “pleases the soul well” because that touch pleasurably stimulates the flesh.

This “flesh,” though, has got me going.  Whitman insists that contact between one person’s skin and another constitutes the truest closeness between two human beings, but characterizing a group of companions as “beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh” almost seems to me to accomplish the opposite effect of reducing people to the materials they are made of, leaving them somehow “less human” to me.  I have thus experienced as a separation what Whitman intended as an intermingling, in moments that I could hardly have expected.  For example, while sitting alone at Ball Circle late on Friday night I watched a group of people pass on their way to a party.  Suddenly I felt quite far from them, as if I understood them only in the abstract.  I could not help but be excited at the physical facts of their behavior: the way they clumped together and spread apart to accommodate conversation, their loud shouts and laughs, their habit of running after and hitting each other as the mood struck them.  I seemed to be less an anthropologist than a naturalist, marveling at creatures that I imagined quite different than myself.

Of course, I recognized immediately afterward how my behavior is essentially identical to theirs (and that I, like Whitman, was being a bit of a creep).  I cannot, however, escape the sense that Whitman’s willingness to situate human experience within an entirely corporeal context problematically objectifies human beings, robbing them of specificity or even recognizability. As an emblem of the body and soul as inseparable, the passage successfully equates human togetherness with the biological reality of shared skin.  But as an image, it leans on a single element that I seem incapable of separating from the larger whole.  Whitman obviously means “flesh” synecdochally, since it somehow “breathes, laughs, and shows curiosity.”  In a single moment of tactile insecurity at that image, however, I somehow get thrown and have to puzzle my way back into the text.

Sam P. for Sept. 15

Sep 13th, 2009
by s-words.
Comments are off for this post

Walt Whitman has me beside myself.  More to the point, he has put me on safari inside a population of humans.  Stranger still, I remain human.

In “I Sing the Body Electric” even more than in most of his poetry, Whitman draws up the human body, and the ways in which people relate to each other physically, as the crucial link between the experiences of observing others and living alongside them. This awareness-as-connective-tissue flies into foreground when Whitman engages others most closely, a body among bodies.  He affirms that “To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough… There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well, / All things please the soul, but these please the soul well” (253).  Earlier in the poem, he locates that soul within his flesh and bones down in the dirt among others, asking, “if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?” (250).  If the body and the soul are inextricable, then one’s contact with other bodies “pleases the soul well” because that touch pleasurably stimulates the flesh.

This “flesh,” though, has got me going.  Whitman insists that contact between one person’s skin and another constitutes the truest closeness between two human beings, but characterizing a group of companions as “beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh” almost seems to me to accomplish the opposite effect of reducing people to the materials they are made of, leaving them somehow “less human” to me.  I have thus experienced as a separation what Whitman intended as an intermingling, in moments that I could hardly have expected.  For example, while sitting alone at Ball Circle late on Friday night I watched a group of people pass on their way to a party.  Suddenly I felt quite far from them, as if I understood them only in the abstract.  I could not help but be excited at the physical facts of their behavior: the way they clumped together and spread apart to accommodate conversation, their loud shouts and laughs, their habit of running after and hitting each other as the mood struck them.  I seemed to be less an anthropologist than a naturalist, marveling at creatures that I imagined quite different than myself.

Of course, I recognized immediately afterward how my behavior is essentially identical to theirs (and that I, like Whitman, was being a bit of a creep).  I cannot, however, escape the sense that Whitman’s willingness to situate human experience within an entirely corporeal context problematically objectifies human beings, robbing them of specificity or even recognizability. As an emblem of the body and soul as inseparable, the passage successfully equates human togetherness with the biological reality of shared skin.  But as an image, it leans on a single element that I seem incapable of separating from the larger whole.  Whitman obviously means “flesh” synecdochally, since it somehow “breathes, laughs, and shows curiosity.”  In a single moment of tactile insecurity at that image, however, I somehow get thrown and have to puzzle my way back into the text.

Jessica Pike for September 15

Sep 13th, 2009
by jpike1.
Comments are off for this post

In Walt Whitman’s letter to Emerson, Whitman discusses the lack of sexual description within literature and states, “This filthy law has to be repealed- it stands in the way of great reforms” (Whitman 1358). After reading Whitman’s thoughts regarding the suppression of sex within texts in his letter to Emerson, I believe Whitman placed an emphasis on the body and sexual experiences for a specific reason, mainly to demonstrate that sex is natural and should be included in literature.  When I read Whitman, I try to think of  Whitman’s poems serving as a model in which he wants the readers and thus the American people to follow. Thus, in “Children of Adam” and “Calamus” the focus is on love and relationships. Whitman wants readers to see that sexual experiences and friendships are a way to bind together as a nation and when there is friendship and love the product is equality.

Since we, as a class have discussed Walt Whitman as a prophet-like individual, in this section he is preaching that love can solve some of the injustices in the world. In “I Dream’d in a Dream”, Whitman describes a utopian city that was invincible to attacks and states, “Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest…”(Whitman 284). Also, in “To the East and to the West”, Whitman further illustrates the intersection between love and the nation when he writes, “I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb friendship” (Whitman 285).  In these lines, Whitman does not specifically mention what kind of love, if it be hetero- or homosexual it does not matter, merely Whitman focuses on the importance of friendship.

Whitman finds pleasure in companionship and in “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” Whitman uses nature to describe the power that friendship has. Whitman expands on this idea when he reflects, “I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not” (Whitman 279). Whitman highlights experiences with women and men through the many poems in “Children of Adam” and from each poem readers can see that physical intimacy goes hand in hand with companionship. Whitman writes:

To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea (253).

This physical intimacy and touch is something that binds humans together as well. Placing an emphasis on the body in “I sing the Body Electric”, Whitman lists parts of the body from both women and men. Whitman does not state, which he believes is greater, yet he states that each “please the soul” (253). Whitman uses these lines and describes physical intimacy and sexual experience as a natural part of friendship that can be not only pleasing to the soul, but also can create a common equality among all humans.

Jessica Pike for September 15

Sep 13th, 2009
by jpike1.
Comments are off for this post

In Walt Whitman’s letter to Emerson, Whitman discusses the lack of sexual description within literature and states, “This filthy law has to be repealed- it stands in the way of great reforms” (Whitman 1358). After reading Whitman’s thoughts regarding the suppression of sex within texts in his letter to Emerson, I believe Whitman placed an emphasis on the body and sexual experiences for a specific reason, mainly to demonstrate that sex is natural and should be included in literature.  When I read Whitman, I try to think of  Whitman’s poems serving as a model in which he wants the readers and thus the American people to follow. Thus, in “Children of Adam” and “Calamus” the focus is on love and relationships. Whitman wants readers to see that sexual experiences and friendships are a way to bind together as a nation and when there is friendship and love the product is equality.

Since we, as a class have discussed Walt Whitman as a prophet-like individual, in this section he is preaching that love can solve some of the injustices in the world. In “I Dream’d in a Dream”, Whitman describes a utopian city that was invincible to attacks and states, “Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest…”(Whitman 284). Also, in “To the East and to the West”, Whitman further illustrates the intersection between love and the nation when he writes, “I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb friendship” (Whitman 285).  In these lines, Whitman does not specifically mention what kind of love, if it be hetero- or homosexual it does not matter, merely Whitman focuses on the importance of friendship.

Whitman finds pleasure in companionship and in “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” Whitman uses nature to describe the power that friendship has. Whitman expands on this idea when he reflects, “I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not” (Whitman 279). Whitman highlights experiences with women and men through the many poems in “Children of Adam” and from each poem readers can see that physical intimacy goes hand in hand with companionship. Whitman writes:

To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea (253).

This physical intimacy and touch is something that binds humans together as well. Placing an emphasis on the body in “I sing the Body Electric”, Whitman lists parts of the body from both women and men. Whitman does not state, which he believes is greater, yet he states that each “please the soul” (253). Whitman uses these lines and describes physical intimacy and sexual experience as a natural part of friendship that can be not only pleasing to the soul, but also can create a common equality among all humans.

who is whitman to me so far?

Sep 13th, 2009
by oatakan.
Comments are off for this post

September 15th       

ty 002      Until registering this course I haven’t known anything about Whitman and I thought that the course would be similar to other literature classes. At first day of class it was surprising for me that class was online based which really makes me enjoy reading  other’s writings and being able to ask questions and submit comments.

        I found Whitman very clever, enchanting person the way that he plays with words.  He touches with his writings to variety of occupations, different age groups, the nature, the religion, sexuality, etc and by combining those, creates amazing image in one’s mind. I personally kind of able to see what he sees when I read his lines. I do wonder about his personality and family life and wonder that what made him start writing poems. We know that he dropped out the school age of 11. In order to write these poems, I think he sort  of educated himself but how? Did he have anybody helping him showing the directions? Or is it possible to have passion and being talented to write and develop yourself from reading that you do regularly?

       After reading the “Song of Myself”, it has come to my attention that he uses some words constantly like earth, sky; sun; shortly the nature to explain his feelings. Also, the words like man and muscularity which I think his being homosexual plays a role in those lines. Furthermore I admire his courage to write anything about prohibited to talk about.
“Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.”

Song of Myself 53

We see that, he really wouldn’t care about anything that would happen to him after expressing himself in any way he wants. As we told  in class, Church was the dominant power in those times and he shows himself against it in some of his lines. Additionally, I think, he is a positive thinker, friendly and open minded and he wants others to see what he sees based on his poem.

who is whitman to me so far?

Sep 13th, 2009
by oatakan.
Comments are off for this post

September 15th       

ty 002      Until registering this course I haven’t known anything about Whitman and I thought that the course would be similar to other literature classes. At first day of class it was surprising for me that class was online based which really makes me enjoy reading  other’s writings and being able to ask questions and submit comments.

        I found Whitman very clever, enchanting person the way that he plays with words.  He touches with his writings to variety of occupations, different age groups, the nature, the religion, sexuality, etc and by combining those, creates amazing image in one’s mind. I personally kind of able to see what he sees when I read his lines. I do wonder about his personality and family life and wonder that what made him start writing poems. We know that he dropped out the school age of 11. In order to write these poems, I think he sort  of educated himself but how? Did he have anybody helping him showing the directions? Or is it possible to have passion and being talented to write and develop yourself from reading that you do regularly?

       After reading the “Song of Myself”, it has come to my attention that he uses some words constantly like earth, sky; sun; shortly the nature to explain his feelings. Also, the words like man and muscularity which I think his being homosexual plays a role in those lines. Furthermore I admire his courage to write anything about prohibited to talk about.
“Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.”

Song of Myself 53

We see that, he really wouldn’t care about anything that would happen to him after expressing himself in any way he wants. As we told  in class, Church was the dominant power in those times and he shows himself against it in some of his lines. Additionally, I think, he is a positive thinker, friendly and open minded and he wants others to see what he sees based on his poem.

A Woman Waits for What Now?

Sep 13th, 2009
by bcbottle.
Comments are off for this post

When I sat down to do the reading for Whitman this week I was all prepared for some more descriptive work of the busy life of the farmer and the gorgeous views along the universal path. I poured myself a glass of wine and made myself some dinner, then as I sat reading I had one of those moments where, if it had been a movie, I would have dropped my monocle in my glass and uttered “My word!” to the woman with the mink wrap sitting next to me.

I found myself reading through Whitman’s poetry, particularly “A Woman Waits for Me,” with a feeling similar to, although I’m sure greatly muted, the feelings most likely felt when the book first came out. In short, I felt rather scandalized. Now I’m not particularly uncomfortable when it comes to talk of sex, although perhaps more so than some, but I hadn’t really expected such graphic detail and was a bit surprised, especially after I realized what he was referring to when he talked about “the sensitive, orbic, underlapped brothers” (I’d started the next line before I got it).

Now this post probably makes me sound a bit prudish but I think it was more the fact that I wasn’t expecting it from a book published in 1891 (shows how much I know about Whitman), then the actual poem. However, after my original “Whitman, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” I took a step back to look at the poetry in context.

After a conversation with Sam P. I spent some time thinking about the time period Whitman was writing in and how that may have affected his work. I think it’s expressive of the fact that Whitman was trying to wake people up that he used such graphic language and colorful descriptions (I mean, he compares his ejaculation to a river, clearly he’s trying to make people notice). Had he used softer language, more veiled descriptions, his writing would never have had the effect that it did. If he had merely referred to his gentle caresses and loving release, or something equally as mundane and boring, people could have simply written off his work as something for schoolboys to giggle over behind the schoolhouse. Instead, people were forced to categorize his work as something scandalous and unfit for public viewing, particularly women with their weak constitutions.

Now, it seems like this would do the opposite of what Whitman wanted, which was to lead people to recognize the value of being alive, but what his scandalous work did was make people confront their values (and even as I write this I wonder why I was so scandalized by his words). In order to categorize Whitman’s work as scandalous, the readers had to address what about it was scandalous, in doing so they had to examine why such things went against their moral code. I’m sure most people simply picked up a bible and ran, but I’m betting there were a select few who were able to look at Whitman’s words and wonder “Why don’t we celebrate our sexuality?” I’m not saying these people then ran over to Whitman’s house and ravished him, although maybe some did, but at least the thought was there. Now that they were thinking it, Whitman’s plan was in motion. If they could question that belief for even a moment, couldn’t they question the value of slavery? Of suppression of women? Of the mistreatment of laborers?

So yes, Whitman managed to scandalize and shock, but he also managed to plant a seed of awareness, which after all, is the beginning of his utopia. So Whitman, I may be a little uncomfortable hearing you talk about “the limpid liquid in a young man” or your “slow rude muscle” but bravo to your bravery, bravo to your scandal.

A Woman Waits for What Now?

Sep 13th, 2009
by bcbottle.
Comments are off for this post

When I sat down to do the reading for Whitman this week I was all prepared for some more descriptive work of the busy life of the farmer and the gorgeous views along the universal path. I poured myself a glass of wine and made myself some dinner, then as I sat reading I had one of those moments where, if it had been a movie, I would have dropped my monocle in my glass and uttered “My word!” to the woman with the mink wrap sitting next to me.

I found myself reading through Whitman’s poetry, particularly “A Woman Waits for Me,” with a feeling similar to, although I’m sure greatly muted, the feelings most likely felt when the book first came out. In short, I felt rather scandalized. Now I’m not particularly uncomfortable when it comes to talk of sex, although perhaps more so than some, but I hadn’t really expected such graphic detail and was a bit surprised, especially after I realized what he was referring to when he talked about “the sensitive, orbic, underlapped brothers” (I’d started the next line before I got it).

Now this post probably makes me sound a bit prudish but I think it was more the fact that I wasn’t expecting it from a book published in 1891 (shows how much I know about Whitman), then the actual poem. However, after my original “Whitman, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” I took a step back to look at the poetry in context.

After a conversation with Sam P. I spent some time thinking about the time period Whitman was writing in and how that may have affected his work. I think it’s expressive of the fact that Whitman was trying to wake people up that he used such graphic language and colorful descriptions (I mean, he compares his ejaculation to a river, clearly he’s trying to make people notice). Had he used softer language, more veiled descriptions, his writing would never have had the effect that it did. If he had merely referred to his gentle caresses and loving release, or something equally as mundane and boring, people could have simply written off his work as something for schoolboys to giggle over behind the schoolhouse. Instead, people were forced to categorize his work as something scandalous and unfit for public viewing, particularly women with their weak constitutions.

Now, it seems like this would do the opposite of what Whitman wanted, which was to lead people to recognize the value of being alive, but what his scandalous work did was make people confront their values (and even as I write this I wonder why I was so scandalized by his words). In order to categorize Whitman’s work as scandalous, the readers had to address what about it was scandalous, in doing so they had to examine why such things went against their moral code. I’m sure most people simply picked up a bible and ran, but I’m betting there were a select few who were able to look at Whitman’s words and wonder “Why don’t we celebrate our sexuality?” I’m not saying these people then ran over to Whitman’s house and ravished him, although maybe some did, but at least the thought was there. Now that they were thinking it, Whitman’s plan was in motion. If they could question that belief for even a moment, couldn’t they question the value of slavery? Of suppression of women? Of the mistreatment of laborers?

So yes, Whitman managed to scandalize and shock, but he also managed to plant a seed of awareness, which after all, is the beginning of his utopia. So Whitman, I may be a little uncomfortable hearing you talk about “the limpid liquid in a young man” or your “slow rude muscle” but bravo to your bravery, bravo to your scandal.

← Earlier Posts
Skip to toolbar