Introducing

Annike Karbiener Pfeiffer

Born on Thanksgiving Day (November 25, 2010)

our little butterball weighed in at seven lbs. five oz.

and she’s simply delicious.

We’re in a state of bliss—

please spread the love!

With warmest thanks for friends and loved ones old and new,

Karen and Douglas

This year’s annual marathon reading (our SEVENTH!) of Walt Whitman’s great American epic “Song of Myself” was moved from the drizzly deck of the barque Peking to the warm interior of New York’s nineteenth-century ‘world trade center.’  Taking the ferry from his hometown Brooklyn to work (or play) across the East River, Walt passed right by this building on his walk up Fulton Street and into the heart of the city… but he stopped and communed with us this afternoon, under the eaves of historic Schermerhorn Row.  Heartfelt thanks to all participants, for making the poem feel both personally relevant and universally significant– and for helping keep poetry alive and well in Whitman’s beloved Mannahatta!  Won’t you join in the chorus next year?

— a special thanks to Matt Gold, the great Whitmanic facilitator, who helped set up this slideshow and brought his whole family down to the event (even Felix!).

Bojana (below screen) presenting her paper during the conference portion of International Whitman Week 2010

Bojana presented her paper “Can ‘Calamus 9’ Matter?: Reading and Translating Whitman” on Saturday, June 18 on a panel with Ed Folsom (University of Iowa), Caterina Bernardini (University of Macerata), and Stephanie Blalock (University of Iowa).  In her professional and yet personable way, she analyzed the history of the poem’s inception, its critical reception and her own subtle interpretation of the lines.  Bojana’s presentation of the challenges faced by a Serbian translator of Whitman held this international audience in rapt attention.  Though I could go on with descriptions of Bojana’s poise and fluency in presenting Whitman’s work and the exciting discussion that followed, I believe it’s best if you hear about the experience from Bojana herself:

The moment I found out that my paper was accepted for the Whitman Symposium, I felt tremendous excitement at the prospect of participating in another international literature gathering. However, Whitman Week in Macerata (Italy) was a literature seminar of a very special kind, indeed. It gathered scholars of different ages from around the globe with one common interest – Walt Whitman. The focus of the symposium part, held on 18 and 19 June and named “In Paths Untrodden”: The 1860 Leaves of Grass, was the third edition of Whitman’s famous poetry collection. The 1860 edition was presented through a number of most informative papers, dealing with the poems from different perspectives. Mine was the perspective of a translator. As part of the Looking for Whitman project, the participating students of the University of Novi Sad (myself included) were asked to choose a poem that has a special appeal to them, to study it and translate into Serbian. The object of my research was “Calamus 9”, the process of translating it and the problems I met with, as well as the reception of Whitman in Serbia.

As an MA student and someone who plans to continue studying Whitman, I can say that the week in Macerata was a truly inspiring and encouraging experience. In a pleasant and friendly atmosphere, students and professors were sharing opinions and experiences. New possibilities for exploring the world of this amazing poet emerged in conversations with students from different countries and also with professors like Ed Folsom, Kenneth Price and Karen Karbiener, to whom we are all grateful for bringing Whitman to Novi Sad.

As a participant in the entirety of Whitman Week (14-19 June), Elma attended plenaries, participated in resource sessions, viewed and commented upon Whitman-inspired films and performances—and even toured the beautiful Macerata landscape with the symposium leaders and graduate participants. Brilliant, ebullient, a great favorite in the group, Elma offers a wrap-up of the year’s Whitmanic odyssey below:

International Whitman Week 2010!

The whole Whitmanic experience started in October 2009 with the Professor Karen Karbiener’s introductory lecture at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. It was one of the five subjects I chose for my MA studies in English literature. My decision to take the Whitman poetry was the direct consequence of my deepest admiration and appreciation of poetry in general and since it was the only one of all the offered subjects to deal with poetry, my decision came very naturally and spontaneously. Upon having taken this class, my only expectations were to explore more of the elusive and subtle world of poetry and to expose myself to its mysterious workings. At that very moment I absolutely had no idea that the whole Whitmanic experience would have greater impacts on my personal and professional development.

It seems important to mention here few crucial aspects of “Walt Whitman: The Global Perspective” class, which was the part of a revolutionary pedagogical experiment, called “Looking for Whitman”. The first aspect would be the improvement of my computer literacy. Throughout the course in Novi Sad I was exposed to the latest technical innovations and had an excellent opportunity to learn how to use them all in an enhanced digital learning environment. Together with other great students in the class, Bojana, Indira, Josip, Neda and Sanja, I was asked to create my own blog where I was to publish all my comments, involvements and assignments on Whitman’s poetry. I cannot but mention my fellow student Dragan and his technical expertise which was of great assistance to all of us in our efforts.

The second aspect would be a translation challenge I encountered at the lectures. I translated one of the Whitman’s poems from the Calamus cluster, “Calamus 9”, which had not been translated into any of ex-Yugoslavia languages before. Some of the difficulties and perplexities that I came across while translating opened up some new perspectives to me as a translator. I came to understand even more deeply how intimately related a poem and a translator must be, and that translation is a never-ending process. Karen even had a Serbian contemporary translator, Dragan Puresic, come to one of our classes, and it was a tremendous experience enveloping mutual knowledge, skills and energy of all of us, bringing Whitman to life in Novi Sad through his poetry.

Furthermore, I was provided with guidance and support in the “professionalizing” of my academic career. As a result of Karen’s influence and things we did in the classes, I was admitted to Walt Whitman Seminar and Symposium, which was held in June at the university of Macerata in Italy. That was a remarkable opportunity in so many ways, and I am really honoured that my application was approved among many others. The Walt Whitman week represents a unique event which attracts many esteemed Whitman scholars and standout graduate students from around the world. The event itself, together with a remarkable organization of our Italian hosts, exceeded all my expectations and proved itself to be a lifetime experience.

It serves as a living proof that Whitman’s poetry has been breaking geographical, cultural, political, religious, and all other boundaries, and that art should be an indispensible part of our lives. Additionally, I have no words to express my thanks to Professor Marina Camboni, Renata Morresi and Caterina Bernardini, as well as to all other members of the organizing committee, for all their effort and touching hospitality. Che fortuna avervi conosciuto e grazie mille di cuore!

Finally, with the official part of “Looking for Whitman” project completed, I find myself sitting at my desk, reflecting on the last few months, and writing down some of the incredible aspects of the whole Whitmanic experience. Even though my feelings are still running very high, I can easily isolate my deepest and ever-lasting gratitude to Karen Karbiener for all her unselfish support and encouragement, the contentment for being a part of such a wonderful experience and all the benefits, professional and personal, I have been given through it – not only that my view of the classroom experience has been enriched, but I had opportunity to listen and to talk to some of the greatest experts in Whitman oeuvre, and learn a great deal from them. Discussions we led during the Whitman Week in Macerata and during the semester in Novi Sad have certainly left an indelible imprint on me and confirmed me in my belief that poetry does matter and that poetry really keeps us awake and ever burning. So, that is the final and the most invaluable aspect of the whole Whitman experience.

“Here my last words, and the most baffling,

Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting,

Here I shade down and hide my thoughts – I do not expose them,

And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.”

(from  “Calamus 44”, 1860)

Can poetry matter?  As part of their final assessments, I asked my students to respond to Dana Gioia’s controversial 1992 essay.  Each of the recent poetry converts gave a well-reasoned and enthusiastic affirmative response, and I found myself happily nodding along with them.  Poetry really does matter, as I witnessed firsthand bringing Walt Whitman to Serbia.  He sounds as true, beautiful, and useful in the Balkans as he does on my own Brooklyn Bridge.  Walt, wherever you are, it must do your heart good to know that we’re all still listening, still learning.

You, where you are!

You daughter or son of England!

You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! You Russ in Russia!…

All you continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place!

All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!

And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!

And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same!

Health to you!  Good will to you all—from me and America sent,

For we acknowledge you all and each.

(from “Salut Au Monde!”, 1860)

As a Fulbright scholar in Serbia in the fall of 2009, I was afforded the opportunity to work simultaneously on the two topics closest to my heart: my family history in the ex-Yugoslavia, and the global significance of a poet from my very own New York.  As disparate as these pursuits may seem, these passions both led to life-changing, bridge-building adventures during my four months in this beautiful and complicated land.

Like many first generation Americans, I grew up with an appreciation for a country that I could see only through the eyes of my father:  a land of endless fields of sunflowers, sturdy whitewashed houses with stenciled designs and backyard grape arbors, small powerful horses and huge pigs.  My father’s unusual, Hungarian-flavored German dialect, the sarma and goulash and palacsinta that were staples of our diet, and my grandmother’s unusual up-do (which she proudly sported through the streets of Brooklyn) were among the only tangible proofs of nearly 200 years of Balkan ancestry.  Even the places my father described—his village of Sekitsch, the larger trading town of Werbass, the cultured city of Neusatz—could not be found on any map.  My curiosity was only piqued by my father’s mixed feelings of nostalgia and regret, and his unwillingness to revisit his “lost homeland.”

My own desk-top explorations eventually revealed what had kept my family from returning to the region now known as Vojvodina, Serbia: memories of death camps, work farms, inhuman living conditions and the unnecessary deaths of loved ones.  The ethnic German population there had maintained a pride in their heritage and traditions, which became a source of tension with their neighbors during World War II.  And since 1941, the German army had created high levels of resentment among the Serbo-Croatian population of the region.  The Nazis executed thousands of Yugoslavian hostages in retribution for the killing and wounding of German soldiers during the occupation.  Some of the ethnic Germans themselves joined the Nazi party and committed atrocities against the Serbs.  In 1944, Josip Broz Tito collectively and indiscriminately punished the German population in Yugoslavia for these violent acts: he issued decrees that stripped ethnic Germans of Yugoslavian citizenship, took away their voting rights, and distributed their properties to Serbs and migrants from Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and Montenegro.  My father’s village of Sekitsch was renamed Lovcenac—the “highest mountain”—by the Montenegrans who now populated it, and my father and grandfather were placed in a detention camp in their former hometown.  They were eventually moved to work camps with high mortality rates in Gakowa and Krusevlje, and finally to a large death camp outside of Knicanin. My grandmother was one of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans separated from her children and sent to labor camps in Russia and the Ukraine, and my aunt was shuttled between various orphanages and foster homes.

‘Returning’ to Serbia as a Fulbrighter in 2009, I was the first member of my family to attempt to reconnect with our severed roots in Vojvodina.  My first plan of action was to locate and explore the areas of greatest personal significance, including the house where he was born and the beloved ‘salasi’ (farms) that I had explored in my imagination.  I also dug into old church and town records to locate birth certificates I had never seen. More formal research was conducted at the Archives of the Museum of Vojvodina, and through interviews with governmental officials and current activists in the war reparations issue in Serbia.  Discussing the saga of the ethnic Germans with current residents of Lovcenac (the post-WW II name for Sekitsch) and simply walking the streets of Vojvodina’s decaying villages of so-called ‘German houses’ was essential in my reconstruction of my family’s past, as was finding any living contacts who my father or grandmother had mentioned.

I had enough revelations and life-altering experiences in my pursuit of the past to fill a book—which I plan to do in the year ahead.  Key moments include an adventurous week with my cousins Lisa Karbiner and Michelle Karbiner Ball, who visited me in Serbia because they, too, wanted to ‘find their fathers.’  We wept over the birth records and marriage certificates that put together the shattered picture of family with which we had all grown up— and bonded our friendship forever.  The three of us also interviewed Professor Lijliana Pesikan-Ljustanovic of the University of Novi Sad, who had grown up in Lovcenac/Sekitsch as part of the first generation of Montenegrians that populated the village after 1945.  Hearing about her understanding of the plight of the ethnic Germans opened our eyes to perspectives we had never considered.  Weeks of research led me to the granddaughter of Radinka Pivnicki, a woman who had been generous and kind to my father at a time of desperate need.  It so turns out that Tatjana Pivnicki is a talented student of physics and a volunteer worker at the local children’s shelter—a generous-hearted and promising young woman who I am very proud to know.  Perhaps the most important and difficult experience of my Fulbright tenure, was entering my father’s birthplace for the first time and meeting with its present occupants.  Zorka Vucinic was a teenage bride when she moved into the house and watched as Tito’s troops evacuated its former residents (ie, my grandparents, father, and aunt).  Now in her 80s, Zorka welcomed me to lunch there twice, showing me the furnishings that had always been curious to her (such as the etched-glass windows reading “Eingang”, or entry).  After offering me the house for sale (at the exorbitant price of 200,000 euro), she presented me with a bottle of apricot brandy, made from the fruit of the trees that my grandfather planted long ago.  Such complicated emotional and intellectual exchanges remind us that there are no easy assessments, no set explanations in life.  I went to Serbia thinking that I would simply deepen my knowledge of a plot I already knew, and left with more questions than answers—plus, I hope, a new sensitivity for a subtle story line.

For the teaching component of my Fulbright, I taught a graduate seminar entitled “Walt Whitman: The Global Perspective” at the University of Novi Sad. Though the University had not offered a graduate seminar in poetry—much less Walt Whitman— since anyone could remember, despite the generally felt “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on sexuality and skepticism regarding American propagandistic voices (like Walt’s), I was granted approval to offer a course focusing on the radical, revolutionary poetics of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.  After years of teaching these American poems to American students at New York University, Serbia was an exciting testing-ground for my personal theories regarding ‘the measure of his song.’ And my small but fierce band of Novi Sad Whitmaniacs did not disappoint me: they participated fully and wholeheartedly, reading avidly in the new “Whitman Collection” I donated to their library (with the help of many generous individuals and corporations, including Barnes & Noble, the Library of America, NYU, Recorded Books, and the University of Iowa Press), fearlessly discussing Whitman’s boundary-breaking poems and surprising themselves with how gracefully they too could break down long-standing walls. For their final project, I required them to select a “Calamus” poem for close study and translation into Serbian.  As an illustration of how they responded, consider that three of the six chose “Calamus 9”, a subtle and daring self-analysis by any country’s standards, and one of the poems not yet translated into Serbian.

To assist in our discussion of Whitmanic translations, I enlisted the aid of Dragan Purešić, the foremost translator of Whitman living in Serbia (Belgrade: Plato, 2008).  He generously agreed to read my students’ translation drafts, and then came to Novi Sad to host a class workshop.  Dragan began with a memorable lecture on the art of translation, describing some of the challenges he faced when interpreting Whitman’s words for the Serbian people.  ”The poem is an artistic entity,” he reminded us.  ”The translator is both an artist and an artisan.”  Quoting freely and fluidly from works as wide-ranging as Lessing’s “Laocoon” and “The Godfather Part III”, he charged us with the significance and the perils of our task at hand.  And he inspired us.  ”Blessed be the messengers,” he said.  Dragan then led a translation workshop (which was further enhanced by the contribution of Novi Sad faculty members Vladislava Gordic Petkovic, Ivana Djuric, and Aleksandra Izgarjan).  We pored over Whitman’s language: what’s the connotative difference between being “content” and “happy”, as we see these terms used in Calamus 9 and 11?  What is behind the unusual statement “I am to wait” at the end of Calamus 22, and how can one achieve that feeling in Serbian?  And when Whitman asks, “I wonder if other men ever have the like” (Calamus 9), does the use of  the idea of  ’mankind’ deny the poem’s true meaning or enhance its applicability?  Dragan offered suggestions and asked thoughtful questions of all of us; all of us responded and questioned our own understandings of Whitman’s words and intentions.

Most interesting for me, was realizing how much more suggestive and even provocative my students’ interpretations were than their guide’s.  Was this a generational issue?  Did it have something to do with the way I had presented the Calamus poems, or with our predominantly (and fiercely) female makeup?  My students were receptive to and interested in Dragan’s ideas, though several of them offered well-reasoned arguments for their more direct choices of pronouns and other gendered word choices.  Whitman, I thought proudly to myself, is in for an energetic reintroduction to his Serbian readers, thanks to these progressive and fearless interpreters.

My participation in the NEH-funded “Looking for Whitman” project enabled me to introduce my Serbian students to Whitman as a poet of global reputation and application, and also connected them to other students in Whitman seminars across the US.  Grant funds provided for the introduction of new technologies in our classroom, ensuring that each student would have access to a Flipcam as well as a specially trained assistant (our own beloved Dragan Babic, a senior at the University of Novi Sad).  As a way of encouraging their use of these resources as well as their creativity, I asked each student to design a “cinepoem” that would both verbally and visually represent the translation he or she had composed as part of their final project.  Though all of them worked through frequent internet outages, some were subject to the availability of public computers, and none of them had ever worked with a Flipcam before, they each mastered the technology and produced surprisingly professional—and moving—short films.  All of their efforts are viewable on our “Video Map” at http://unovisad.lookingforwhitman.org.

Another goal that I set forth for “Whitman: The Global Perspective” was that we as a class would contribute– not just read, write, and think about–  Whitman’s worldwide impact on culture, politics, and society.  They were therefore asked to submit their papers for consideration to the International Whitman Week Conference, held in a different world site each year.  This prestigious conference invites applications from graduate students around the world, twenty of whom are selected for participation (as well as free housing, excursions, and other perks).  The last two days of the conference are reserved for lectures from Whitman scholars.  I am so very pleased and immensely proud to share the news that two of my students were chosen to participate in this year’s conference in Macerata, Italy: Elma Porobic was one of the twenty in the Whitman ‘think tank’, and Bojana Acamovic presented her paper (i.e., her final translation project for our class) among top scholars in the final sessions!  This is the first time there were any representatives from the ex-Yugloslavia region at Whitman Week, and Elma and Bojana both contributed richly and benefit greatly from the discussions and camraderie of the conference.  As I was also a participant (and delivered two talks, one of which on the subject of teaching Whitman in Serbia on the Fulbright), we three enjoyed a very happy reunion in Italy this June.

Bojana (below screen) presenting her paper during the conference portion of International Whitman Week 2010

Bojana presented her paper “Can ‘Calamus 9’ Matter?: Reading and Translating Whitman” on Saturday, June 18 on a panel with Ed Folsom (University of Iowa), Caterina Bernardini (University of Macerata), and Stephanie Blalock (University of Iowa).  In her professional and yet personable way, she analyzed the history of the poem’s inception, its critical reception and her own subtle interpretation of the lines.  Bojana’s presentation of the challenges faced by a Serbian translator of Whitman held this international audience in rapt attention.  Though I could go on with descriptions of Bojana’s poise and fluency in presenting Whitman’s work and the exciting discussion that followed, I believe it’s best if you hear about the experience from Bojana herself:

The moment I found out that my paper was accepted for the Whitman Symposium, I felt tremendous excitement at the prospect of participating in another international literature gathering. However, Whitman Week in Macerata (Italy) was a literature seminar of a very special kind, indeed. It gathered scholars of different ages from around the globe with one common interest – Walt Whitman. The focus of the symposium part, held on 18 and 19 June and named “In Paths Untrodden”: The 1860 Leaves of Grass, was the third edition of Whitman’s famous poetry collection. The 1860 edition was presented through a number of most informative papers, dealing with the poems from different perspectives. Mine was the perspective of a translator. As part of the Looking for Whitman project, the participating students of the University of Novi Sad (myself included) were asked to choose a poem that has a special appeal to them, to study it and translate into Serbian. The object of my research was “Calamus 9”, the process of translating it and the problems I met with, as well as the reception of Whitman in Serbia.

As an MA student and someone who plans to continue studying Whitman, I can say that the week in Macerata was a truly inspiring and encouraging experience. In a pleasant and friendly atmosphere, students and professors were sharing opinions and experiences. New possibilities for exploring the world of this amazing poet emerged in conversations with students from different countries and also with professors like Ed Folsom, Kenneth Price and Karen Karbiener, to whom we are all grateful for bringing Whitman to Novi Sad.

As a participant in the entirety of Whitman Week (14-19 June), Elma attended plenaries, participated in resource sessions, viewed and commented upon Whitman-inspired films and performances—and even toured the beautiful Macerata landscape with the symposium leaders and graduate participants. Brilliant, ebullient, a great favorite in the group, Elma offers a wrap-up of the year’s Whitmanic odyssey below:

International Whitman Week 2010!

The whole Whitmanic experience started in October 2009 with the Professor Karen Karbiener’s introductory lecture at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. It was one of the five subjects I chose for my MA studies in English literature. My decision to take the Whitman poetry was the direct consequence of my deepest admiration and appreciation of poetry in general and since it was the only one of all the offered subjects to deal with poetry, my decision came very naturally and spontaneously. Upon having taken this class, my only expectations were to explore more of the elusive and subtle world of poetry and to expose myself to its mysterious workings. At that very moment I absolutely had no idea that the whole Whitmanic experience would have greater impacts on my personal and professional development.

It seems important to mention here few crucial aspects of “Walt Whitman: The Global Perspective” class, which was the part of a revolutionary pedagogical experiment, called “Looking for Whitman”. The first aspect would be the improvement of my computer literacy. Throughout the course in Novi Sad I was exposed to the latest technical innovations and had an excellent opportunity to learn how to use them all in an enhanced digital learning environment. Together with other great students in the class, Bojana, Indira, Josip, Neda and Sanja, I was asked to create my own blog where I was to publish all my comments, involvements and assignments on Whitman’s poetry. I cannot but mention my fellow student Dragan and his technical expertise which was of great assistance to all of us in our efforts.

The second aspect would be a translation challenge I encountered at the lectures. I translated one of the Whitman’s poems from the Calamus cluster, “Calamus 9”, which had not been translated into any of ex-Yugoslavia languages before. Some of the difficulties and perplexities that I came across while translating opened up some new perspectives to me as a translator. I came to understand even more deeply how intimately related a poem and a translator must be, and that translation is a never-ending process. Karen even had a Serbian contemporary translator, Dragan Puresic, come to one of our classes, and it was a tremendous experience enveloping mutual knowledge, skills and energy of all of us, bringing Whitman to life in Novi Sad through his poetry.

Furthermore, I was provided with guidance and support in the “professionalizing” of my academic career. As a result of Karen’s influence and things we did in the classes, I was admitted to Walt Whitman Seminar and Symposium, which was held in June at the university of Macerata in Italy. That was a remarkable opportunity in so many ways, and I am really honoured that my application was approved among many others. The Walt Whitman week represents a unique event which attracts many esteemed Whitman scholars and standout graduate students from around the world. The event itself, together with a remarkable organization of our Italian hosts, exceeded all my expectations and proved itself to be a lifetime experience.

It serves as a living proof that Whitman’s poetry has been breaking geographical, cultural, political, religious, and all other boundaries, and that art should be an indispensible part of our lives. Additionally, I have no words to express my thanks to Professor Marina Camboni, Renata Morresi and Caterina Bernardini, as well as to all other members of the organizing committee, for all their effort and touching hospitality. Che fortuna avervi conosciuto e grazie mille di cuore!

Finally, with the official part of “Looking for Whitman” project completed, I find myself sitting at my desk, reflecting on the last few months, and writing down some of the incredible aspects of the whole Whitmanic experience. Even though my feelings are still running very high, I can easily isolate my deepest and ever-lasting gratitude to Karen Karbiener for all her unselfish support and encouragement, the contentment for being a part of such a wonderful experience and all the benefits, professional and personal, I have been given through it – not only that my view of the classroom experience has been enriched, but I had opportunity to listen and to talk to some of the greatest experts in Whitman oeuvre, and learn a great deal from them. Discussions we led during the Whitman Week in Macerata and during the semester in Novi Sad have certainly left an indelible imprint on me and confirmed me in my belief that poetry does matter and that poetry really keeps us awake and ever burning. So, that is the final and the most invaluable aspect of the whole Whitman experience.

“Here my last words, and the most baffling,

Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting,

Here I shade down and hide my thoughts – I do not expose them,

And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.”

(from  “Calamus 44”, 1860)

Can poetry matter?  As part of their final assessments, I asked my students to respond to Dana Gioia’s controversial 1992 essay.  Each of the recent poetry converts gave a well-reasoned and enthusiastic affirmative response, and I found myself happily nodding along with them.  Poetry really does matter, as I witnessed firsthand bringing Walt Whitman to Serbia.  He sounds as true, beautiful, and useful in the Balkans as he does on my own Brooklyn Bridge.  Walt, wherever you are, it must do your heart good to know that we’re all still listening, still learning.

You, where you are!

You daughter or son of England!

You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! You Russ in Russia!…

All you continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place!

All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!

And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!

And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same!

Health to you!  Good will to you all—from me and America sent,

For we acknowledge you all and each.

(from “Salut Au Monde!”, 1860)

I’m hoping to see and hear you at the annual marathon reading of “Song of Myself” on Sunday, September 26!  It’ll be the seventh time we declare Whitman’s all-embracing lines from the deck of the barque Peking and over the East River, sailing them from Mannahattta to his beloved Brooklyn.

You don’t have to read to participate– but if you’d like to, please email or call Christine Modica with your top three sections (using the 1891-1892 edition’s breakdown).  She’ll assign the sections on a first come, first serve basis.

The reading will begin at 3:00 aboard the tall ship Peking, located on Pier 16 at the South Street Seaport.  If you do decide to participate, please arrive no later than 2:30. Check in will be located on Pier 16 near the forward gangway of Peking.  If you need to arrive later, please let Christine know when to expect you.  All readers will be admitted to the event for free, as will Seaport Museum members. Guest admission to the event is $5.

Christine’s email:  cmodica@seany.org
and phone: 212-748-8738

Here’s a photo slideshow of last year’s buoyant reading:

http://karbiener.lookingforwhitman.org/page/2/

Looking forward to celebrating Whitman’s spirit with you!

Karen

–If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key,
The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.

Looking forward to our reunion in Macerata, Bojana and Elma!

Честитамо!!!!!!!!

macerata-manifesto2010

macerata-program2010

Although I was the only Tech student able to attend the Whitman Conference, there was a diverse mix of opinions, cultures and presentations that somehow managed to include all aspects of the project. For example the students from Novi Sad translated Whitman’s poems into Serbian while the students from Mary Washington came up with a mix of Papers, Poems and Video Projects.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. To start with, the train ride over was absolutely gorgeous. Looking out the window, I saw streams, open fields and old buildings – things you don’t see that often in the city (At least not without having to pay or wander deep into the middle of a large park).

In a way, there was a physical time line along the tracks. The closer we got to Camden, the older the buildings. Most of the remaining structures were churches, mansions or old factories.

The Camden Campus was everything you’d expect from a dorm college. Besides large yet somehow unimposing buildings that housed classes, the campus was large with plenty of areas to lounge around or study outside of class, and of course a Starbucks because far and few between are the college students who can go the entirety of their academic career without coffee.

After a short wait, the rest of the students arrived and I was finally able to put faces to some of the writers whose work I’d read over the semester. It’s one thing to see an image of a person online, but it’s completely different to meet them in person.

There was a Whitman statue on campus that everyone stopped to look at on the way to the campus center to lounge, talk about our experience and wait for pizza.

The lounge in the Camden Campus Center

Everyone I talked with agreed that the project and the various types of work that went into it were completely new and challenging experiences. Personally that surprised me since most of the students were english majors and graduating ones at that. However challenging the class was, everyone’s opinion of the course was the same. The Looking for Whitman project was something that made the college experience unique not only for the students, but for the professors as well. The mixing of technology – blogging, tweeting and  making use of social networking- with classic poetry made for a class that produced work as original and quirky as Whitman himself.

A perfect example of that is Sam P’s final video project ‘In search of Wendell Slickman’  which mixed the life of Elvis Presley with Walt Whitman’s which as unlikely as the idea sounds, works perfectly.

We watched Sam’s project along with the presentation of a few others over pizza before hopping on the bus to take a tour of Whitman’s final home at 328 Mickle Street.

No cameras were allowed inside the house, but everything in it was photo worthy. Chairs that Whitman sat in, the stove he cooked on, the stairs he walked up and the bed he slept in – we got to see it all and experience Whitman in a way you can’t get just by reading his work. I couldn’t get any pictures of inside, but I got plenty of photos outside the house and of  his garden.

From Whitman's back yard into the light

The trip didn’t end here. After visiting Whitman’s home we went to the only other place in Camden where we could feel a physical connection to him – his grave.

Unfortunately the Cemetery was closed, but that didn’t stop us from getting in to see Whitman. A conveniently placed and obviously well used hole in the fence allowed us to get to the final resting place of the great writer and bring some closure to the semester. The area in which Whitman and his family are interred is absolutely beautiful.

It was an emotional moment for many of the students as we took turns reading the last few lines of  Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’. Reading one of Whitman’s greatest works in a place where he could be truly felt brought some closure to what has been the most challenging and rewarding project I’ve ever participated in.  The Looking for Whitman project was a long journey that led many a student in frustrating circles, searching for some link to Whitman to make his presence more tangible than just some old writer remembered only through his books and honestly I don’t think anyone could phrase it better than Whitman himself:

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.

– Walt Whitman “Song of Myself”

Although I was the only Tech student able to attend the Whitman Conference, there was a diverse mix of opinions, cultures and presentations that somehow managed to include all aspects of the project. For example the students from Novi Sad translated Whitman’s poems into Serbian while the students from Mary Washington came up with a mix of Papers, Poems and Video Projects.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. To start with, the train ride over was absolutely gorgeous. Looking out the window, I saw streams, open fields and old buildings – things you don’t see that often in the city (At least not without having to pay or wander deep into the middle of a large park).

In a way, there was a physical time line along the tracks. The closer we got to Camden, the older the buildings. Most of the remaining structures were churches, mansions or old factories.

The Camden Campus was everything you’d expect from a dorm college. Besides large yet somehow unimposing buildings that housed classes, the campus was large with plenty of areas to lounge around or study outside of class, and of course a Starbucks because far and few between are the college students who can go the entirety of their academic career without coffee.

After a short wait, the rest of the students arrived and I was finally able to put faces to some of the writers whose work I’d read over the semester. It’s one thing to see an image of a person online, but it’s completely different to meet them in person.

There was a Whitman statue on campus that everyone stopped to look at on the way to the campus center to lounge, talk about our experience and wait for pizza.

The lounge in the Camden Campus Center

Everyone I talked with agreed that the project and the various types of work that went into it were completely new and challenging experiences. Personally that surprised me since most of the students were english majors and graduating ones at that. However challenging the class was, everyone’s opinion of the course was the same. The Looking for Whitman project was something that made the college experience unique not only for the students, but for the professors as well. The mixing of technology – blogging, tweeting and  making use of social networking- with classic poetry made for a class that produced work as original and quirky as Whitman himself.

A perfect example of that is Sam P’s final video project ‘In search of Wendell Slickman’  which mixed the life of Elvis Presley with Walt Whitman’s which as unlikely as the idea sounds, works perfectly.

We watched Sam’s project along with the presentation of a few others over pizza before hopping on the bus to take a tour of Whitman’s final home at 328 Mickle Street.

No cameras were allowed inside the house, but everything in it was photo worthy. Chairs that Whitman sat in, the stove he cooked on, the stairs he walked up and the bed he slept in – we got to see it all and experience Whitman in a way you can’t get just by reading his work. I couldn’t get any pictures of inside, but I got plenty of photos outside the house and of  his garden.

From Whitman's back yard into the light

The trip didn’t end here. After visiting Whitman’s home we went to the only other place in Camden where we could feel a physical connection to him – his grave.

Unfortunately the Cemetery was closed, but that didn’t stop us from getting in to see Whitman. A conveniently placed and obviously well used hole in the fence allowed us to get to the final resting place of the great writer and bring some closure to the semester. The area in which Whitman and his family are interred is absolutely beautiful.

It was an emotional moment for many of the students as we took turns reading the last few lines of  Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’. Reading one of Whitman’s greatest works in a place where he could be truly felt brought some closure to what has been the most challenging and rewarding project I’ve ever participated in.  The Looking for Whitman project was a long journey that led many a student in frustrating circles, searching for some link to Whitman to make his presence more tangible than just some old writer remembered only through his books and honestly I don’t think anyone could phrase it better than Whitman himself:

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.

– Walt Whitman “Song of Myself”

The Tattooed Camerado,

Ben

One of the most poignant moments in the conference for me was when we were touring the Whitman House.  I, like most others, was walking slowly and quietly taking everything in.  I was hoping to feel “something” walking where his bootsoles had, but I wasn’t getting anything.  Again, I think I saw other people in awe and couldn’t help but be envious.  Anyway, we progressed through the house, and the upstairs was smaller so only a few of us could be in certain areas at a time.  I was still feeling this block between me and Whitman except–and this is going to sound strange–when I entered his bathroom.  The bathroom, as some of you will recall, was teeny tiny and really couldn’t fit more than one or two people.  So I walked in by myself, and once I crossed into that room, once everyone I was with had disappeared from my scope of vision, it was truly like I was in a new dimension.  For a second or two, I got a little dizzy, I had tears in my eyes, and I really believed that he had been there.  But after those couple seconds, as I exited the bathroom, my connection with him deflated, and I was back to trying to force an experience.  Obviously there is only so much that can be accomplished when you’re thinking as hard as I was to feel something spiritual.  But I am still unsettled because he’s a figure who, given his principles and purposes, should have a more natural significance for me than he does.  He exudes democracy, and I almost feel intellectually/spiritually marginalized when I study him.

So now I have this tendency to see Whitman as sad and lonely instead of unifying.  I’m probably making this too much a black-and-white issue; maybe I’m mourning that that he had things figured out over a century ago but not enough of the world/country does today, especially for how ubiquitous an icon he is.  This is not an issue I’ve given up on, and I will continue to read him to see if I can settle into a more organic relationship with him and his ideas.

I write this post listening to this Fresh Air interview with Robert Hass on Whitman.  Hass and Terry Gross discuss some of the points of democracy/spirituality/narcissism that we explored in class, and it is comforting, I think, to hear these issues played out in other conversations.  For the most part, I think the interview is pretty good for people who don’t know Whitman to listen to.  Additionally, there are some things I think every Whitmaniac will appreciate, but of course there are other things that don’t get the attention they should.  A little over four minutes from the end, his grave gets kind of a negative shoutout which I think might spark interesting conversation from those of us who visited.  Also, at the very end, there is an excerpt from Fred Hirsch’s album Leaves of Grass. I have not bothered to listen to the album in its entirety, so I don’t want to admonish the whole thing, but the small piece of Song of Myself previewed after the interview sounds pretty bizarre.

My participation in the NEH-funded “Looking for Whitman” project enabled me to introduce my Serbian students to Whitman as a poet of global reputation and application, and also connected them to other students in Whitman seminars across the US.  Grant funds provided for the introduction of new technologies in our classroom, ensuring that each student would have access to a Flipcam as well as a specially trained assistant (our own beloved Dragan Babic, a senior at the University of Novi Sad).  As a way of encouraging their use of these resources as well as their creativity, I asked each student to design a “cinepoem” that would both verbally and visually represent the translation he or she had composed as part of their final project.  Though all of them worked through frequent internet outages, some were subject to the availability of public computers, and none of them had ever seen a Flipcam before, they each mastered the technology and produced surprisingly professional—and moving—short films.  All of their efforts are viewable on our “Video Map” at http://unovisad.lookingforwhitman.org.

Each of these videos is quite different in style and tone, though they all seem to combine the makers’ deep-rooted love of their country with their new passion for Whitman.  Neda found new freedom of expression in the video mode, as her provocative (even sexy) interpretation of “Calamus 11” demonstrates.  Josip kept the imagery simple and straightforward, preferring to let his translation of “Calamus 6” speak for itself.  Sanja’s visual interpretation of “Calamus 9” invites contemplation, while  Bojana’s setting of the same poem is a Whitmanic celebration of Belgrade, her beloved hometown.  Indira’s translation of “Calamus 22” is recited by a wonderful collective of Serbs young and old (including her toothless grandfather), creating a video montage of overwhelming emotional impact.  And Elma, a resident of beautiful war-torn Sarajevo who commuted seven hours to our class each week, offered a powerful raison d’etre for poetry: it keeps us burning.  Images of Sarajevo’s “eternal flame” segue to Elma’s candlelit reading of “Calamus 9.”

Can poetry matter?  As part of their final project, I asked my students to respond to Dana Gioia’s controversial 1992 essay.  Each of the recent poetry converts gave a well-reasoned and enthusiastic affirmative response, and I found myself happily nodding along with them.  Poetry really does matter, as I witnessed firsthand bringing Walt Whitman to Serbia.  He sounds as true, beautiful, and useful in the Balkans as he does on my own Brooklyn Bridge.  Walt, wherever you are, it must do your heart good to know that we’re all still listening, still learning.

You, where you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! You Russ in Russia!…
All you continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same!
Health to you!  Good will to you all—from me and America sent,
For we acknowledge you all and each.
(from “Salut Au Monde!”, 1860)

My participation in the NEH-funded “Looking for Whitman” project enabled me to introduce my Serbian students to Whitman as a poet of global reputation and application, and also connected them to other students in Whitman seminars across the US.  Grant funds provided for the introduction of new technologies in our classroom, ensuring that each student would have access to a Flipcam as well as a specially trained assistant (our own beloved Dragan Babic, a senior at the University of Novi Sad).  As a way of encouraging their use of these resources as well as their creativity, I asked each student to design a “cinepoem” that would both verbally and visually represent the translation he or she had composed as part of their final project.  Though all of them worked through frequent internet outages, some were subject to the availability of public computers, and none of them had ever seen a Flipcam before, they each mastered the technology and produced surprisingly professional—and moving—short films.  All of their efforts are viewable on our “Video Map”– the link’s just at the top of this page.

Each of these videos is quite different in style and tone, though they all seem to combine the makers’ deep-rooted love of their country with their new passion for Whitman.  Neda found new freedom of expression in the video mode, as her provocative (even sexy) interpretation of “Calamus 11” demonstrates.  Josip kept the imagery simple and straightforward, preferring to let his translation of “Calamus 6” speak for itself.  Sanja’s visual interpretation of “Calamus 9” invites contemplation, while  Bojana’s setting of the same poem is a Whitmanic celebration of Belgrade, her beloved hometown.  Indira’s translation of “Calamus 22” is recited by a wonderful collective of Serbs young and old (including her toothless grandfather), creating a video montage of overwhelming emotional impact.  And Elma, a resident of beautiful war-torn Sarajevo who commuted seven hours to our class (each way) each week, offered a powerful raison d’etre for poetry: it keeps us burning.  Images of Sarajevo’s “eternal flame” segue to Elma’s candlelit reading of “Calamus 9.”

Can poetry matter?  As part of their final project, I asked my students to respond to Dana Gioia’s controversial 1992 essay.  Each of the recent poetry converts gave a well-reasoned and enthusiastic affirmative response, and I found myself happily nodding along with them.  Poetry really does matter, as I witnessed firsthand bringing Walt Whitman to Serbia.  He sounds as true, beautiful, and useful in the Balkans as he does on my own Brooklyn Bridge.  Walt, wherever you are, it must do your heart good to know that we’re all still listening, still learning.

You, where you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! You Russ in Russia!…
All you continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same!
Health to you!  Good will to you all—from me and America sent,
For we acknowledge you all and each.
(from “Salut Au Monde!”, 1860)

Armitage Hall Room 121 – 11am – 5pm

MLA Presentation

And here is the brief paper commenting on the chaos I have tried to control:

All These I Feel or Am:

Whitman as Hip-Shaker, Self-Promoter, and Idol

By reading Walt Whitman (the poet; the icon) through the images and sounds/musical attitudes associated with Elvis Presley, and creating the hybrid character Wendell Slickman, I originally intended to investigate the general cast of American celebrity.  Presley and Whitman, by my original thesis, could be used to trace a shared (and therefore repeated/repeatable) pattern of ascendancy in the American public eye, relying first on a provocative, highly sexualized presentation to garner early celebrity, and then on a mid-to-late-career campaign to sanitize that sexual image in favor of a more wholesome, continent-encompassing form of American iconicity.  The result would have been a relatively linear narrative, possible to tell in a video that spoke from beginning to end.

I almost misled myself.  In actuality, Whitman and Presley evince both impulses, to sexually sensationalize and to self-sanctify, from the beginnings of their careers onward.  I also realized, and just as pressingly, that my goal was not to use Whitman and Presley as equal partners in a sweeping commentary on American cultural mores.  Instead, Presley serves as a sort of shorthand for the ICONIC AMERICAN, while his libido-flaunting musical medium allows me to reify the more dramatically performative aspects of “Song of Myself.”  The rock ‘n’ roll documentary, a standard venue for discussing rock musicians that comes fraught with its own stylistic baggage, further allows me a set of characters—performer, commentator, collaborators—that help dramatize what I take to be the central textual enterprise of “Song of Myself”: integrating vastly disparate types of narrative authority into an identifiably central voice, a single figure from which radiates both the kosmos and a set of aphoristic claims large enough to fit it.  Whitman essentially creates that core presence by constantly asserting it, thus presenting an illusion of unity that, if not for the force of his repetitive self-assertion, might easily break apart into disconnected (catalogic) observations, or splinter into disconnected speakers for every different voice or style he absorbs.

Much like Elvis, but to an arguably lesser degree, Whitman stands among a rarefied class of American figures whose fame and cultural relevance derive in great part from heavily disseminated images of him, prompting many American cultural consumers to “assume they know Whitman the poet because they are familiar with some graphic image of him” (Allen 128).  That image most frequently follows the template laid out by William Douglas O’Connor, one of Whitman’s so-called disciples, in a pamphlet that gave Whitman the moniker that has long stood as an emblem of his literary/cultural latter-day sainthood.  “The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication,” published in 1867, valorizes Whitman repeatedly to the point of Christliness, proclaiming that Whitman’s “is the great goodness, the great chastity of spiritual strength and sanity” (2).  Bridging the apparent gulf between this image and Elvis’ venerated hip-shaking, O’Connor goes to great rhetorical lengths to characterize Whitman as “one of the greatest sons of men” at least nominally because the poet had just been dismissed from the Department of the Interior due to the supposed immorality of the 1860 Leaves of Grass (Blake 186).  Whitman’s unblinking acknowledgment of the “disorderly fleshy and sensual” (Library of America 50) constitutes the immorality discovered in his work.  But quite significantly, O’Connor defends that “fleshiness” as just the quality that dignifies Whitman’s writing.

“The Good Gray Poet” calls up the “indecent passages” created by a litany of other writers, like Shakespeare, Dante, Plutarch, Virgil, Goethe, and Byron—those “among the demi-gods of human thought” (O’Connor 8)—and even invokes the Bible’s references to genitalia and sexual contact, in order to color Whitman’s supposed indecency with a golden holiness.  Though O’Connor’s efforts may seem like little more than good discipleship, his pamphlet’s broad and persistent influence has allowed even Whitman’s current readers to inherit an impression of the poet as something of an American apostle, while the pamphlet originating the “good gray poet” title sanctifies Whitman’s performance of sexuality, if not necessarily homoerotic desire, as an expression of his natural godliness.  This management of Whitman’s iconic status bears striking resemblance to the common pop-culture impulse to spiritualize eroticism and deify sexy performers, an impulse represented perhaps most popularly by Elvis fans’ desire to both lust after and create shrines to “the King,” untroubled by the possible contradiction between those two acts (Doss 76).

However, Whitman’s followers cannot be held entirely responsible for their emphasis on the godliness of Whitman’s sexiness—not when the poet’s own writings champion that same conceptual transformation.  Starting with the 1855 version of “Song of Myself,” long before Whitman and his handlers had retroactively consolidated a better (“good-er?”), grayer Poet persona, the poet delivered this avowal: “Magnifying and applying come I, / Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, / The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a spirt of my own seminal wet, / Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah and laying them away” (Library of America 73).  Whitman’s speaking persona here not only endows his sexuality with kosmic significance, linking his “seminal wet” with “offers” made to “mankind and eternity,” but also suggests by this stanza’s sequence that the same “seminal spirt” might equal the “dimensions of Jehovah.”  Sex and spirituality thus emanate in like proportion from the single poetic/priapic source.  Why? How?  In large part, because the persona says so.

Whitman’s rhetorical practice in “Song of Myself” finds him both enacting and attempting to neutralize this tension between the flesh-man and the prophetic poet, taking on voices that switch unpredictably from the erotic to the elegiac, and from unrestrained sexuality to reverent self-commentary.  For example, Whitman lends the passage of “Song of Myself” most frequently described as an orgasm an aftershock denouement that remains in the kind of explicit but elevated hyper-phallicism that precedes climax: “Sprouts take and accumulate…. stand by the curb prolific and vital, / Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.”  The next stanza, though a continuation of that thought, and itself including a relatively “graphic” image of the “obstetric forceps of the surgeon,” actually opens with a sudden turn to the philosophical and aphoristic, with the persona heavily reminding the reader that “all truths wait in all things” (56).  Though the two passages share a common grandness of scale, the first quite clearly emerges out of the “indecent” trajectory of foregoing pages, while the second might be found in any “wisdom literature.”  Presumably, the reader should look for no disjunction between the two statements, since the persona wishes him or her to find none.

In fact, Whitman’s chief poetic project seems to be a muscular synthesis of disconnected vocal styles and subjects by virtue of his single, exceptional, even godlike personality.  Using a Bakhtinian analytical model to search “Song of Myself” for signs of textual dialogism, Dana Phillips argues that the poem’s long catalogues, often containing fragments of narrative like the “suicide” that “sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom” (Library of America 33) but preventing those fragments from taking on an intelligibly linear sequence, create “dissipating, centrifugal effects” (204).  By Phillips’ argument, Whitman’s speaker must constantly assert a “unified and unifying” identity, insisting on “his own lyric personhood” in order to “usurp… the utterances of others” (209).  True to its title, “Song of Myself” remains monologically “poetic” in Phillips’ reading of Bakhtin’s term; appropriately, Whitman’s persona admits “many long dumb voices” only with the condition that they come “through me” (Library of America 50).  In my video, I have sought to separate the single Whitman into at least two distinct voices: the demonstratively sexual performer (Wendell proper); and the eloquent, self-promoting “authority” who seems to study an outside specimen but actually specializes in himself (the rock scholargist—scholar/clergyman—who fabricates Wendell’s journal and self-penned eulogy).  By lending both characters long stretches of “Song of Myself,” I sought both to dramatize the division within Whitman’s self-claimed oneness, and to use Whitman’s text as a unifying presence that blurs the division between Wendell and his disciple(s).

This separation of performative Whitman (perhaps best exemplified by the relatively nonsexual line “It is time to explain myself…. let us stand up” (Library of America 79)) and his self-commenting counterpart further enables me to visually represent the ways in which Whitman envisioned the populace that would deliver him iconic status.  Referring principally to the 1855 Leaves Preface’s Emersonian claim that “the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it” (26), David Haven Blake contends that, because “the audience’s image was central to sustaining [Whitman’s] identity as the authentically American bard,” the poet “would use his poems to project a fictive celebrity until true admirers materialized” (63).  The “scholargist” in my video stands in both for Whitman’s disciples and for the poet’s willingness to act as his own greatest fan, thereby illustrating the great disparity between Whitman’s own sense of himself as the fulcrum on which his nation turns, and the reality of American cultural politics that kept his “immoral” brand of aesthetic self-affirmation from receiving the limitless audience he had imagined.  By insisting so stridently that these divided selves must be identified with the persona as a single generative being, Whitman thus accompanies his countless cries for camaraderie with the sense that he carries the burden of a colossal loneliness equal to his self-proclaimed singularity.

Works Cited

Allen, Gay Wilson.  “The Iconography of Walt Whitman.”  The Artistic Legacy of Walt Whitman: A Tribute to Gay Wilson Allen.  Ed.    Edwin Haviland Miller.  New York: New York University Press, 1970.  127-152.  Print.

Blake, David Haven.  Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.  Print.

Doss, Erika.  Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith & Image.  Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1999.  Print.

O’Connor, William Douglas.  “The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication.”  The Walt Whitman Archive.  Ed. Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price.  Web.  24 November 2009.

Phillips, Dana.  “Whitman and Genre: The Dialogic in ‘Song of Myself.’”  Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”  Ed. Harold Bloom.  Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.  195-221.  Print.

Whitman, Walt.  Poetry and Prose.  Ed. Justin Kaplan.  New York: Library of America, 1996.  Print.

And…

Finally, I have prepared a brief guide to the movie’s references/background, in order of appearance:

1. Opening graveyard scene: shot in and around my family’s plot at Elmwood Cemetery in Norfolk, Virginia.  Ellwood and Lucy Lee, whose stone is visible in the title shot, were/are my great-great-grandparents.

2. “1935-1992”: Combines Presley’s birth-date with Whitman’s century-removed year of passing.

3. Performance 1: “I’m Just a Lonely Guy,” released in 1955 on Specialty Records as the B-side to “Tutti Frutti.”  All performances shot in this basement are loosely modeled after the sit-down, girls-sitting-around presentation seen during Elvis’ “1968 Comeback” television performances (for example, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1OLU5IsJ7g).

4. Scholargist: “I have heard what the talkers were talking…. the talk of the beginning and the end… Always the procreant urge of the world” (Library of America 28).

5. Performance 2: “That’s All Right, Mama,” written by Arthur Crudup and released as Elvis’ first single in 1954 on Sun Records.  Contains a verse based on Whitman’s line “Press close barebosomed night!” (47).

6. Shacky Mansionette: extremely loose approximation of Sam Phillips, owner of and producer for Sun (in this case, Slam) Records.

7.  Shacky: “Bootsoles” (88).

8. End of “That’s All Right”: “YAWP” (87).

9. Performance 3: “One Night (of Sin),” written by Dave Bartholomew, Pearl King, and Anita Steiman and released by Elvis in 1958 on RCA.  Elvis tamed the original version, which was preoccupied with a night of sexual profligacy that the lyrics claim would “make the earth stand still,” and substituted these suggestive themes with a banal proposition of faithful monogamy (“One night with you / is what I’m now praying for / The things we two could plan / would make my dreams come true”).  Quite notably, Elvis returned to the original first verse in his ’68 “Comeback” performance of “One Night,” choosing to re-sexualize a song that he and his handlers had long before sanitized. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plQIs3zoDHE for the 1968 version.)

10.  Scholargist: “They do not know how immortal, but I know” (33), with “eternal” replacing “immortal.”

11.  “”: “I might not tell everybody but I will tell you” (45).

12.  “”: Wendell as “the [singer] of the body… and of the soul” (46).

13.  “”: Wendell Slickman, “one of the roughs, a “kosm[ic]” conman (50).

14.  Performance 4: “Milk Cow Blues Boogie,” written by Kokomo Arnold and released by Presley in 1954 on Sun Records.  All performances shot in this close-framed, hair-in-bun style refer to Elvis’ famous waist-up, shoulder-shaking performance of “Heartbreak Hotel” filmed in 1956 (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKYf8LGRyHw).

15.  Scholargist: “What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is” him (38).

16.  Wendell: “Very well, then (I contradict myself)” (87).

17.  Scholargist: “Disorderly fleshy and sensual” (50).

18.  “”: “Gathering and showing more always and with velocity” (58).

19.  Performance 5: “Baby Let’s Play House,” written by Arthur Gunter and released by Elvis in 1954 on Sun Records.

20.  Scholargist: “I do not decline to be the [singer] of wickedness… Evil propels me and the reform of evil propels me” (48).

21.  “”: “With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds” (52).

22.  Performance 5: “Heartbreak Hotel,” written by Mae Boren Axton, Thomas Durden, and Presley, and released on RCA in 1956.  This performance relies on a stanza from “Song of Myself”: “There was never any more inception than there is now, / Nor any more youth or age than there is now; / And will never be any more perfection than there is now, / Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now” (28).

23.  Scholargist: “O Christ!  My fit is mastering me!” (69).

24.   “”: “I do not despise you priests; / My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths” (77).

25.  Performance 6: “Trying to Get to You,” written by Rose Marie McCoy and released by Elvis first as a 1955 Sun single, and then as a track on his first RCA album, Elvis Presley.  One of the few early Elvis songs to explicitly describe the continental grandness of Whitman’s poetry (the song begins “I’ve been traveling over mountains”), “Trying” begins in this version with a characteristically sweeping self-assertion by Whitman’s speaker: “I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe…. and am not contained between my hat and boots” (32), “and can never be shaken away” (33).

26.  Scholargist: “All these I feel or am” (65).

27.  “”: “These are the thoughts of men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me… If they are not the riddle or the untying of the riddle… If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing” (43).

28.  “”: “You shall no longer take things at second or third hand” (28).

29.  Performance 7: “Queen Jane Approximately,” written Bob Dylan and appearing on his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited on Columbia Records.  This performance’s first verse includes a paraphrased form of Whitman’s “lunatic… carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,” restructured to fit the mood and rhyme scheme of Dylan’s song:

When the lunatic carried from the foot of his mother’s mattress

Is waiting for her in a home for the insane,

And he sends all of his poems to the wrong address,

Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?

The chorus is also extended to include another Whitman line:

Won’t you come see me, long-hair?

“I am the man, I suffered, I was there” (64).

30.  Scholargist: “There is that in [this]…. I do not know what it is…. but I know it is in [this]” (86)

31.  “”, paraphrased: “Perhaps I might tell you more… OUTLINES! …. It is not chaos or death…. it is form and union and plan…. it is eternal life…. it is happiness” (87).

32.  Eulogy: a patchwork of moments in “Song of Myself” I find especially elegiac, even self-eulogizing.

“My final merit I refuse you… I refuse putting from me the best I am” (53).  “Logic and sermons never convince, / The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul” (56).  “Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing and wicked and real, / Ever the old inexplicable query… ever the sobbing liquid of life, / Ever the bandage under the chin…. ever the tressels of death” (75).  “And as to you corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me” (86).  I remember…. I resume the overstaid fraction, / The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it…. or to any graves, / The corpses rise…. The gashes heal…. the fastenings roll away” (71).  “The last scud of the day holds back for me, / It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds, / It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. / I depart as air…. I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, / I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags” (87-88).  “By my life-lumps!  becoming already a creator! / Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows!” (75).

33.  Performance 8: “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” written by Tom Waits and placed at the end of his 1985 album Rain Dogs (Island Records).  Because of its lyrical intensity, articulated in bodily images that are at once familiar and unfamiliarly lurching (“My head is spinning ‘round, / My heart is in my shoes”), and because of the way in which the chorus manages to feel both self-assured and remarkably lonely (“Anywhere I lay my head, boys, / That’s where I’ll call my home”), I have long found this one of the most Whitmanic songs in C(c)reation.  In order to more directly call out the funereal quality of the song, I aligned “Anywhere” with part of “Peace in the Valley,” the highly recognizable gospel song by Thomas Dorsey that Elvis performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1957 (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNE9wsh8ld4).

As stated in the video’s credits, all of these arrangements (including the vocal parts for the last scene), performances, and lyrical alterations were created specifically for “In Search of Wendell Slickman.”

After planning, changing, deciding, it is finally finished… I must say that it was more fun filming it than it is watching it. Almost like I’m sorry it is all over.

Calamus 22

The scenes are not taken only in one place, but in towns, cities and villages in Vojvodina. People in the video are some of my closest friends and family as well as people I’ve just met. They are of all ages, of different nations,  because there are no discriminations to people who can significantly alter you life. That stranger who can mean the world to you could be…just ANYONE.

After planning, changing, deciding, it is finally finished… I must say that it was more fun filming it than it is watching it. Almost like I’m sorry it is all over.

Calamus 22

The scenes are not taken only in one place, but in towns, cities and villages in Vojvodina. People in the video are some of my closest friends and family as well as people I’ve just met. They are of all ages, of different nations,  because there are no discriminations to people who can significantly alter you life. That stranger who can mean the world to you could be…just ANYONE.

With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!

WITH husky-haughty lips, O sea!
Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,
(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,
Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the
sun,
Thy brooding scowl and murk – thy unloos’d hurricanes,
Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;
Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears-a lack from all
eternity in thy content,
(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee
greatest – no less could make thee,)
Thy lonely state – something thou ever seekist and seekist, yet never
gain
Surely some right withheld-some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of
freedom-lover pent,
Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those
breakers,
By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,
And undertones of distant lion roar,
(Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear-but now, rapport for
once,
A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)
The first and last confession of the globe,
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,
The tale of cosmic elemental passion,
Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

This reading was done in Whitman park in Brooklyn.

I Sing the Body Electric: A Cinepoem

Your Friendly Neighborhood Joe D! Reads Walt Whitman’s Thoughts (Parts 1 & 2)

Your Friendly Neighborhood Joe D! Presents Walt Whitman’s A Font of Type

And here’s Erin’s wonderful work!

Erin McCool Reads Walt Whitman’s Years of the Modern

Erin McCool Presents Walt Whitman’s I Sing the Body Electric

When I read the passages from the Leaves of Grass, I felt that the surroundings blended with the lines of the poem.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
—Song of Myself

Thesis

Walt Whitman was a narcissist. His narcissism began in childhood when, as an infant unable to idealize his father or detach from his mother, he became his own love-object. Whitman’s attachment to his mother and disappointment in his father lasted throughout his lifetime and complicated his role in the Whitman family. His narcissism was the cause of both his obsession with the public’s reception of his work and his determination to be the nation’s poet. It is also the root of the autoeroticism in his poetry and an explanation of the fractured self his poetry portrays. Most poignantly, Whitman’s narcissism informed his homosexual impulses and the commingled pleasure and torture Whitman experienced as a nurse in the Civil War hospitals.

Research
In terms of theoretical research, I analyzed Whitman from a Freudian standpoint and did not address later theories of narcissism (either Lacanian or post-Freudian psychoanalysis) at length. Any information on post-Freud theories was based on Lynne Layton’s article, “From Oedipus to Narcissus: Literature and the Psychology of the Self,” which explores the roots of narcissism through a modern psychoanalytic lens. Primarily, I relied on theory provided by Freud’s essay “On Narcissism” in The Freud Reader, although I found useful information in some of his other essays as well (for example, Civilization and Its Discontents). “On Narcissism” was useful in defining narcissism and providing a theoretical framework with which to establish Whitman’s narcissism and relate it to his autoeroticism, homosexuality, and relationship with his mother.
Regarding historical research, I contextualized Whitman’s sexuality and mother-son relationship using Reynolds’s Whitman biography and Myrth Jimmie Killingsworth’s article “Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View.” Reynolds provides an excellent description of the views of same-sex relationships in Whitman’s time and Killingsworth explains Whitman’s use of the motherhood mystique in relation to the intense mother-son relationships that were typical of the nineteenth century. My analysis of Walt Whitman’s narcissism was based on both biographical information and a selection of his writing that included the poems Song of Myself, “As at Thy Portals Also Death,” and “The Wound Dresser;” and the prose work Specimen Days.

Works Cited

Bauerlein, Mark. “Whitman’s Language of the Self.” American Imago 44.2 (1987): 129-148. Print.
Cavitch, David. My Soul and I: The Inner Life of Walt Whitman. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985. Print.
Fredrickson, Robert S. “Public Onanism: Whitman’s Song of Himself.” Modern Language Quarterly 46.2 (1985): 143-60. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: Norton, 1989. Print.
Killingsworth, Myrth Jimmie. “Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View.” American Literature 54.1 (1982): 28-43. Print.
Layton, Lynne. “From Oedipus to Narcissus: Literature and the Psychology of Self.” Mosaic 18.1 (1985): 97-105. Print.
Moder, Donna. “Gender Bipolarity and the Metaphorical Dimensions of Creativity in Walt Whitman’s Poetry: A Psychobiographical Study.” Literature and Psychology 34.1 (1988): 34-52. Print.
Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage, 1996. Print.
Whitman, Walter. Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose. Ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Library of America, 1996. Print.
Zweig Paul. “The Wound Dresser.” Ed. Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Views: Walt Whitman. New York: Chelsea House, 1985. Print.

Final Paper Presentation

I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
—Song of Myself

Thesis

Walt Whitman was a narcissist. His narcissism began in childhood when, as an infant unable to idealize his father or detach from his mother, he became his own love-object. Whitman’s attachment to his mother and disappointment in his father lasted throughout his lifetime and complicated his role in the Whitman family. His narcissism was the cause of both his obsession with the public’s reception of his work and his determination to be the nation’s poet. It is also the root of the autoeroticism in his poetry and an explanation of the fractured self his poetry portrays. Most poignantly, Whitman’s narcissism informed his homosexual impulses and the commingled pleasure and torture Whitman experienced as a nurse in the Civil War hospitals.

Research
In terms of theoretical research, I analyzed Whitman from a Freudian standpoint and did not address later theories of narcissism (either Lacanian or post-Freudian psychoanalysis) at length. Any information on post-Freud theories was based on Lynne Layton’s article, “From Oedipus to Narcissus: Literature and the Psychology of the Self,” which explores the roots of narcissism through a modern psychoanalytic lens. Primarily, I relied on theory provided by Freud’s essay “On Narcissism” in The Freud Reader, although I found useful information in some of his other essays as well (for example, Civilization and Its Discontents). “On Narcissism” was useful in defining narcissism and providing a theoretical framework with which to establish Whitman’s narcissism and relate it to his autoeroticism, homosexuality, and relationship with his mother.
Regarding historical research, I contextualized Whitman’s sexuality and mother-son relationship using Reynolds’s Whitman biography and Myrth Jimmie Killingsworth’s article “Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View.” Reynolds provides an excellent description of the views of same-sex relationships in Whitman’s time and Killingsworth explains Whitman’s use of the motherhood mystique in relation to the intense mother-son relationships that were typical of the nineteenth century. My analysis of Walt Whitman’s narcissism was based on both biographical information and a selection of his writing that included the poems Song of Myself, “As at Thy Portals Also Death,” and “The Wound Dresser;” and the prose work Specimen Days.

Works Cited

Bauerlein, Mark. “Whitman’s Language of the Self.” American Imago 44.2 (1987): 129-148. Print.
Cavitch, David. My Soul and I: The Inner Life of Walt Whitman. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985. Print.
Fredrickson, Robert S. “Public Onanism: Whitman’s Song of Himself.” Modern Language Quarterly 46.2 (1985): 143-60. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: Norton, 1989. Print.
Killingsworth, Myrth Jimmie. “Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View.” American Literature 54.1 (1982): 28-43. Print.
Layton, Lynne. “From Oedipus to Narcissus: Literature and the Psychology of Self.” Mosaic 18.1 (1985): 97-105. Print.
Moder, Donna. “Gender Bipolarity and the Metaphorical Dimensions of Creativity in Walt Whitman’s Poetry: A Psychobiographical Study.” Literature and Psychology 34.1 (1988): 34-52. Print.
Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage, 1996. Print.
Whitman, Walter. Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose. Ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Library of America, 1996. Print.
Zweig Paul. “The Wound Dresser.” Ed. Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Views: Walt Whitman. New York: Chelsea House, 1985. Print.

Final Paper Presentation

For our last lecture it was only fit to finish with a group reading of whitman.

I propose that women to Whitman were necessary tools in his creation of the ideal nation.   Influenced by early eugenic thinkers, Whitman needed women to fulfill his dream of creating a perfect nation of physically fit and intelligent beings capable of understanding the unifying purpose of his poetry.

I analyze 3 poems based on their chronological composition to reveal eugenic influences in his writing:

A Woman Waits for Me

Democratic Vistas

With All Thy Gifts America

I conclude stating that: The woman reader could rejoice in the admiration Whitman had for her reproductive ability.  However, women should take caution, for behind the praise is an over-zealous American who prefers what the womb can offer rather than the person attached to it.

   For my final paper, I used Derrida’s theory of the inferiority of writing to view Whitman’s poetry. The Derridain lens actually worked quite well. Whitman wrote in a style recently named the “oracular.” Meaning that Whitman wrote poetry that purposely imitated speech. He combined techniques like anaphora and wave patterns to accomplish poetry that would read like public speaking. To conclude, although they were writing sevenity-five years apart and in different languages, Whitman the poet and Derrida the theorist viewed the relationship of writing and speaking in an overwhelmingly similar way…. My final paper can be read here.

I found whitman in times square, down in the subway system, the arteries of new york. For sure Whitman would have found much to write about in the underground city we call the subway system.

Below are links to my final project and the meditational exercise on powerpoint.  Hope everyone has a great break!

whitman&meditation

Presentation1

Below are links to my final project and the meditational exercise on powerpoint.  Hope everyone has a great break!

whitman&meditation

Presentation1

“I know I am august,

I do not trouble my spirt to vindicate itself or be understood,

I see that the elementary laws never apologize,

I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by

after all.

I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

and if each and all be aware I sit content.

Thank-you Professor Gold for opening up the world of Walt Whitman to us. It was different, and made you think about life not just from my own perspective but from that of another. Research is hard work and dedication, I did not know how much it took to accomplish a task such as this. Until now, I thought a few books could tell you quite a bit. The books do tell, but researching further put the pieces together much more efficiently. I think I see Walt Whitman everywhere now, especially in Brooklyn. Thanks again Professor, the class was well worth the effort and beneifical to students moving on to higher degrees. And Thank-you to Clair Fontaine for all her technical support and advice on blogging, it was very helpful. I look forward to blogs in the future. Keep your eyes open!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely, WHITNICK

I choose to use Whitman’s I DREAM’D a Dream.  To me this poem represents 9-11.  Whitman’s presentation of this poem seems to me about love of a community , love of a world coming together.  I feel that this is what happened after 9-11.

Ok. So here’s my disclaimer:  I cheated. (technically)

This was supposed to be a video of me reading. I’m in the video, but only my feet can be seen. My excuse is two-fold. 1. Whitman told us (via his epitaph) to look for him under our bootsoles. I looked under my moccasins. 2. The old saying that some people come into our lives and leave footprints and we are never ever the same. I think my influence on my students is not my face – but the learning I (hopefully) inspire – about life more than English. Thus, when all is said and done, my footprints have far more impact than the rest of me – that will change, the influence will last forever.

I cheated one more time. This video was supposed to be in Camden. This video was filmed in my classroom at Timber Creek High School in Erial, NJ. My excuse, again, is two-fold. 1. Whitman didn’t stay in Camden either in his later life. He traveled to many places in NJ – one of which was Timber Creek (the actual creek…but still!). 2. This poem for me had to be in a classroom. When I think about “The Unexpress’d”, I think about my students and the potential they hold to change the world, be the next Whitman, and begin to express themselves – and expression that remains unexpress’d until they send it into the world.

Full text of the poem in Whitman’s own writing: (from whitmanarchive)

I found Whitman at the promenade in Ikea at Red Hook, Brooklyn. I found Whitman here because the boats in the background really appeal to me. In the poem “Mannahatta”, Whitman speaks about the steamships and shuttles and the ones in the background reminded me of what he wrote. The background had no skylines like today’s Manhattan and I felt like the scenery was like Manhattan during Whitman’s times, where when you looked out from Brooklyn to Manhattan, the tall buildings werent’ built yet. The water taxi’s also arrives and departs here which is another reason why I found Whitman here, the water taxi’s are like the modern day shuttle ferries from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

First Cholera Summers

Moved to Liberty Street. were one of’ Cholera summers- (The old

Hardenburghs upstairs) I was there alone in the house a while.

The miserable scoundrel Gil Reid and the suffering he caused us all.

Graham the old devil, that owned the house.

Moved from Liberty Street to Front Street and lived there in Spring

and early summer of 1833.

– Walt Whitman

Final Paper

There were two main reasons why the Tunnel was built. The first reason was for the safety of pedestrians; the street level trains were unable to brake in time and had caused the deaths of two youths. Steam trains did not begin operating in the United States until 1830. Therefore, locomotive travel was new and dangerous; both because pedestrians were unfamiliar with steam trains and because the system of braking had yet to be refined. In 1844 “C. Davis and others, and of William Cook and 170 others” brought forward petitions “requiring the Long Island Rail Road Co. to remove the cars and engines from the street to the wharf and ground near the foot of Atlantic St., and cut through, or tunnel through, the hill on said st…” (‘Common Council’, 2). The safety of Brooklynites was the most plausible reason for moving trains underground, but another source has a different reason for moving the train system underground. The second reason is stated in an article in the Brooklyn Eagle from 1911. According to the article, “The old subway was built that the beauty of Atlantic Avenue, planned to become the finest business highway of any street in any city in America, might not be destroyed”(‘Oldest Subway’, 3). For these reasons the corner stone of the two-train tunnel was laid on May 24^th, 1844 and it was open for travel seven months later on the 2^nd of December, 1844.

The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was built by mostly Irish immigrants using the cut and cover method. Cut and cover is a method where a trench is excavated and roofed over. The street was dug up for roughly 12 blocks, a wooden frame was built, a barrel vaulted brick roof put in, and the street relayed. From start to finish the tunnel ranged from one foot to thirteen feet under the street. The entrance to the tunnel was between Boerum Place and Court Street; thus the tunnel is only a foot under Court Street. From there it quickly descends as it gets closer to the East River. Its dimensions are seventeen feet high and 21 feet wide. The terminus of the tunnel is around what was then Emmett Street but is now called Willow Place. Where the tunnel ended is where the train then came above ground and ran for another block and a half; it made a turn and ended between Columbia Street and the East River at a station. Passengers then were within walking distance of the Ferry house. The July 23^rd, 1911 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle reported that as of then, the old station still stood but was being used as a double store.

Opening day of the tunnel, December 2^nd, 1844, was seen as a day of celebration in Brooklyn. Guests were invited to ride the newly opened rail along with the president of the Long Island Railroad and other important officials. Upon “[r]eturning to the depot, a collation was spread out for their entertainment, at which His Honor the Mayor of Brooklyn presided” (‘Opening Of The Tunnel,2). One engine operated in the front to pull the train while another operated in the back to push it. Because of this dual engine process, the LIRR train was the fastest mode of transportation in the United States at that time. The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was part of a longer route named the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad which ran from the village of Jamaica to the then named East River Front.

Even though one of the reasons why the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was built was because it was a safety precaution, one should not be led to believe that just because the train was now underground it meant that there were no longer any train-related accidents. There were multiple deaths from the outset. The Brooklyn Eagle states that one man died from falling into the tunnel during construction (‘Petitions’, 2), while the Brooklyn Evening Star writes that one worker was killed during a cave-in (‘Accident’, 2) and an overseer was murdered by a disgruntled employee (‘Reported Murder In Brooklyn’, 3). Another death occurred in 1854 when a man threw himself in front of the train as it began to enter the tunnel. His body was severed into two (‘Shocking Accident’, 3).

These accidents did not decrease the popularity of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Initially, Brooklynites patronized the Long Island Railroad with relish. Yet, for all its initial popularity and profit, the tunnel was closed after sixteen years. The Brooklyn Eagle sites financial trouble in more than one paper. The May 31^st, 1896 edition states that, “[i]n 1850 the Long Island road passed into the hands of the supreme court of New York on the foreclosure of a mortgage…” (‘Atlantic Avenue Tunnel’, 18), and the July 23^rd 1911 edition states that it was “sold out under foreclosure”. The second reason why it was closed was because of a group of people who organized against the use of steam power on Atlantic Avenue. Their voice was powerful because “[l]egislation went through Albany for the old tunnel from South Ferry to Boerem place to be closed. This was on June 6, 1859” (‘Oldest Subway’, 3). The Long Island Railroad Co. was paid $125,000 to relinquish their rights to the use of steam power within city limits. The tunnel finally closed in the year 1860.

After its closing, the Tunnel was mainly remembered by people who were filing lawsuits against it. Several suits were brought up by men who “were assessed for the closing Atlantic avenue tunnel in 1860…”(‘Long Litigation’, 4). Disgruntled Brooklynites who wished for faster transportation would write into the Brooklyn Eagle with suggestions of re-opening the tunnel (‘Proposition To Re-occupy’, 3). A few men tried to purchase the tunnel (‘The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel’, 3).

But it seems that only one man wrote about the tunnel with nostalgia. That man was Walt Whitman. In 1861, Whitman wrote columns for the Brooklyn Standard. He titled this collection “Brooklyniana”. One long excerpt he wrote was his thoughts about the tunnel. Whitman writes:

The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of Acheron-like solemnity and the darkness, now all closed and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences…The tunnel: dark as the grave, cold, damp, and silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable, now and then, to send us mortals-the dissatisfied ones, at least, and that’s a large portion- into some tunnel of several days’ journey. We’d perhaps grumble less, afterward, at God’s handiwork (306-307).

Whitman realized that the tunnel could give people perspective on life, even if it had outlived its monetary usefulness. What was once supposed to be the seat of splendor was slowly fading out of the minds of most people. By 1902 the articles pertaining to the tunnel had dwindled to reference of dirt being taken from the tunnel to be used to fill stagnant pools of water (‘L.I.R.R.’s New Terminal’, 9). As years went by the tunnel lived on through legends and rumors. People knew or heard of its existence, but by 1911 not only was the question of who owed the tunnel unanswerable, but the entrance to the tunnel seemed to be lost entirely (‘Oldest Subway’, 3 ).

Something as large as the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel can never be forgotten entirely. The tunnel transformed through imagination into a source of literary inspiration. In 1893 a fictional story was published in The New York Times entitled Atlantic Avenue Tunnel- A Romance. This story tells of two friends who go looking for the tunnel after one hears a death-bed confession that it exists and is filled with treasure. They do not find the entrance to the tunnel, much like the 1911 reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. In 1925 H.P. Lovercraft wrote a story titled The Horror at Red Hook. It is a story of horror and the occult involving a detective who discovers the occult activities in a tunnel underneath a cellar. The cellar collapses on top of the detective and the villains, yet the detective mysteriously lives. The folklore and legends surrounding crime and the Atlantic Avenue tunnel appears to come from the fact that the Atlantic Avenue area had fallen into hard times and developed into a slum called “Smoky Hollow”. The reality of the gangs and slum life, coupled with the mysterious presence of the hidden tunnel allowed for creative writing to flourish. A second fact that may have fed into the folklore of the tunnel being used as a denizen of crime is that a blind distillery was being operated in it at one point. A bar room in an Atlantic Avenue store had a pipe underneath it that led to the distillery (‘Oldest Subway’, 3).

The truth of the tunnel is hidden. Relative obscurity prevailed until very recently. In 1979 whispers and rumors of the forgotten Atlantic Avenue Tunnel reached the ears of a 19-year-old Brooklynite named Robert Diamond through a radio show. Diamond set out to do what so many before him had failed at; he went to find the entrance to the tunnel. Diamond found a copy of the plans in the borough president’s office. He used these plans to locate the entrance; a manhole at Atlantic Avenue and Court Street. When Diamond opened the manhole he found a wall of dirt. This did not deter him and he began using his hands to dig into the tunnel. Under the dirt was a cheap brick wall that Diamond quickly broke through with a metal pole. The other side of the wall revealed a gaping hole that was the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Excited with his discovery, Diamond got together a group of volunteers to aid him in hollowing out the tunnel, in order to allow entrance deeper into the tunnel. Now, 30 years after Diamond first heard of the tunnel on the radio, he still holds tours once a month so that interested people may see the tunnel that was almost completely forgotten, save for rumors and fiction writing (Diamond).

There is still some mystery surrounding the tunnel, though, as part of it is still blocked off. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle there is an old woodburning locomotive still buried in the depths of the tunnel; Diamond believes this train is what is buried in the yet unexcavated section of the tunnel. Diamond writes on his website, “[a] ccording to oral tradition, back in 1861, an obsolete locomotive was being used by Mr. Litchfield to haul dirt fill for sealing up the tunnel.   The crank axle broke, and without the means to repair or remove it, they just left the engine in the backfill at the western end of the tunnel.  Perhaps this explains why the tunnel was not fully filled in. Without the means of hauling in more fill, Litchfield decided to simply wall off the tunnel at both ends instead of fully filling it in” (Diamond). Until the entire tunnel is excavated, what really is hidden behind the wall will remain a mystery.

From the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel’s inception on December 2^nd, 1844 there has been a rich history that is both factual and fictional, even if for many years the tunnel was silent. Originally built for the safety and beautification of Brooklyn, it was not without its own share of accidents and tragedies including one murder. The tunnel was very popular and profitable in the beginning but was in operation only until June 6^th, 1859 because of financial trouble and public outcry against steam power. It is after the closing that the tunnel’s history becomes more of a mystery. Once boarded up, people tried for many years to find an opening and failed. Writers saw the tunnel as a source of inspiration for stories that may have had some grains of truth in them. The slums and crime that arose around the area where the tunnel exists were also a source of inspiration for these writers. It was not until 1980 that the tunnel was rediscovered by a young Brooklynite named Robert Diamond. Diamond and volunteers dug through dirt and brick in order to re-enter the tunnel and make it accessible for tours. New Yorker’s with an interest in the underground history of the Atlantic Tunnel can now come and explore, and even contemplate the ongoing mystery of what lies in the unexcavated portion of the tunnel or whether re-opening the tunnel would be profitable for Brooklyn and the Long Island Railroad.

Barrel-Vaulted Tunnel

Works Cited

Whitman, Walt. The Uncollected Poetry And Prose Of Walt Whitman: Much Of Which Has Been But Recently Discovered With Various Early Manuscripts Now First Published. Ed. Emory Holloway. 1st ed. Vol. 2. Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921. Print.

“Common Council.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 16 Jan. 1844, Vol. 3 ed., No. 29 sec.: 2-2. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“Brooklyn Has The Oldest Subway In The World.” The Brooklyn Eagle 23 July 1911, Vol. 71 ed.: 3-3. Print.

“Opening Of The Tunnel.” The Brooklyn Eagle 05 Dec. 1844, Vol. 3 ed., No. 294 sec.: 2-2. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“Petitions.” The Brooklyn Eagle 17 Sept. 1844, Vol. 3 ed., No. 226 sec.: 2-2. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“Accident.” Brooklyn Evening Star 11 July 1844: 2-2. Print.

“Reported Murder In Brooklyn.” Brooklyn Evening Star 29 May 1844: 3-3. Print.

“Shocking Accident On The Long Island Railroad.” The Brooklyn Eagle 27 Sept. 1854, Vol. 13 ed., No. 226 sec.: 3-3. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.” The Brooklyn Eagle 31 May 1896, Vol. 56 ed., No. 151 sec.: 18-18. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 01 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“A Long Litigation Over the Matter of the Asessment for the Closing of the Tunnel.” The Brooklyn Eagle 28 Feb. 1873, Vo. 34 ed., No. 5 sec.: 4-4. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“Proposition to Re-occupy the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel- Railroad Management.” The Brooklyn Eagle 12 Aug. 1873, Vo. 34 ed., No. 190 sec.: 3-3. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.” The Brooklyn Eagle 5 July 1876, Vol. 37 ed., No. 158 sec.: 3-3. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“L.I.R.R.’s New Terminal At Rockaway Beach.” The Brooklyn Eagle 29 Dec. 1902, Vo. 62 ed., No. 359 sec.: 9-9. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/>.

“Atlantic Avenue Tunnel – A Romance.” The New York Times 23 Jan. 1893: 10-10. The New York Times. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9907EEDF1031E033A25750C2A9679C94629ED7CF>.

Lovecraft, H.P. Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1997. Print.

“Interviewing Bob Diamond.” Personal interview. 6 Dec. 2009.

Image- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Barrel_vault_top_force.jpg

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What caught my attention at first was the fact that Walt Whitman started the story by not telling you Franklin Evans age. I suppose he did that to reach all age groups. If he would’ve mentioned an age, whoever wasn’t in that age group would probably think that his message wasn’t meant for them. Then Whitman begins every chapter with a poem, that actually tells you what that particular story is about. It seemed like he was baiting you, the reader to want to know more maybe. Once you read the poem, you actually ask yourself, “What does this have to do with this story?”. I found myself reading to figure out the significance.

The book was written to teach a lesson. Around the time Walt Whitman wrote Franklin Evans Brooklyn was going through major changes. Its’ people were in and out of work, not enough money, children to feed, issues on how to run Brooklyn, manage the large rush of people moving in, people did what they usually do when times are bad, THEY DRINK! Whitman not only saw it, he participated, which gave him a good insight on how how people behave once intoxicated. He saw first hand what it did to people and their families that he decided to write about it hoping to save some from self destruction and family destruction.

Whitman claimed he wrote the novel while intoxicated. He might have. Sometime you find yourself in a bad way, and need a way to let the pain out. Maybe this was a bad time for Whitman, I can not say for sure but he wrote this novel, he says, to teach intemperance. He might of wrote it for forgiveness also.

I found the paper that Franklin Evans was first published. I thought that everyone would like to see it. This novel was originally written in the paper, not as a book. If you haven’t read it, check it out. It’s interesting, seems different but to me sounds like Whitman. It’s risky writing with a twist.

So, I know it seems like I’m cheating, but I found Whitman in my kitchen. I was going to go to Camden and just pick a random spot, but that didn’t seem honest. I read all of our assignments at my kitchen table where I do my work. I’ve written before that there are times when it seems as though Whitman is talking through the page, and there were instances when it seemed as though he was sitting across the table from me letting out whatever words reached his tongue in that moment.

So anyway, I chose “The Wound-Dresser” because it reminds me of some of my patients.

The Wound-Dresser

1

AN old man bending I come among new faces,

Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,

Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that

love me,

(Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and

urge relentless war,

But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I

resign’d myself,

To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch

the dead;)

Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these

chances,

Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other

was equally brave;)

Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,

Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?

What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,

Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what

deepest remains?

2

O maidens and young men I love and that love me,

What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden

your talking recalls,

Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat

and dust,

In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly

shout in the rush of successful charge,

Enter the captur’d works–yet lo, like a swift-running river

they fade,

Pass and are gone they fade–I dwell not on soldiers’ perils

or soldier’s joys,

(Both I remember well–many the hardships, few the joys,

yet I was content.)

But in silence, in dreams’ projections,

While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,

So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints

off the sand,

With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for

you up there,

Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong

heart.)

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,

Straight and swift to my wounded I go,

Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,

Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,

Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d

hospital,

To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,

To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do

I miss,

An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,

Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, empties, and

fill’d again.

I onward go, I stop,

With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,

I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,

One turns to me his appealing eyes–poor boy! I never

knew you,

Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if

that would save you.

3

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)

The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the

bandage away,)

The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and

through I examine,

Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet

life struggles hard,

(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!

In mercy come quickly.)

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,

I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the

matter and blood,

Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and

side-falling head,

His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on

the bloody stump,

And has not yet look’d on it.

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,

But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and

sinking,

And the yellow-blue countenance see.

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-

wound,

Cleanse the one with a gnowing and putrid gangrene, so

sickening, so offensive,

While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray

and pail.

I am faithful, I do not give out,

The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,

These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in

my breast a fire, a burning flame.)

4

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,

Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,

The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,

I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,

Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,

(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d

and rested,

Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)

It was also a little intimidating to be taking a class with English graduate students. Their responses were always well thought out and they thoroughly analyzed Whitman’s work. They also went the extra distance when it came to doing video projects. I honestly didn’t know what to say in response to most of their posts because they covered almost every base of the whatever topic was being discussed.

I wouldn’t recommend this class to anyone who already has a heavy course load or isn’t accustomed to or willing to accommodate hard work. There’s no way to earn a decent grade in this class if you aren’t willing to take the time out to read and update blog posts, travel around to various Whitman related sites and do heavy research. On a more personal note, this at least gave me a glimpse of what’s expected of you when doing graduate level work. It’s definitely not easy, but at least I know I can do it.

The field trips and projects were a welcome breath of fresh air in comparison to the rest of my classes. You can learn just as much out of the classroom as in it, and this class was proof of that. I learned more about Brooklyn than I ever knew before- about the borough’s history and about the significance of landmarks that I’ve seen but ignored all my life. I got to visit a library that looks like it came out of a bookworm’s dream. Despite all the late nights and pots of coffee I needed to finish everything- the class was worth taking.

I appreciate all of the patience and understanding during this time. It means a lot to my family. Hope everyone has a wonderful break. See most of you in the W.O.M.B.

           Field trips were so helpful that made class more fun and more informative.  The projects were interesting too, especially the address project which was my favorite. We really had done professional work on that. Being able to handle those historical documents and thinking through the history was a different enjoyable feeling for me.   Our visit to Brooklyn Historical Society and learning about maps and land conveyances became sample rewarding educational experience for me.  I didn’t know anything about Whitman when I registered for this class and I can see that now I made a perfect selection by choosing this class. Now I am able to see how great poet Whitman was. Briefly, Whitman thought me about life like how to be positive and love the life. Besides all, I also learned about blogging, posting such media and pictures.  

          Prof. Gold and Claire were very responsive and helpful.  Prof. Gold gave us great courage to create better work on exploring Whitman. Class discussions were so much fun that while we learn we developed friendships.   I would recommend this class to every student to experience unique settings of this class which is very enjoyable and especially biggest advantage of getting known of Whitman.

–but Walt, did you ever consider how fluid and strong and beautiful all of these words would sound… in Serbian?

Sati protiču dugi, mučni i teški,

Sati u suton, kada se povlačim na neko osamljeno i

Pusto mjesto, sjedam, naslanjajući lice na ruke…

That is Elma Porobic’s stunning translation of the first lines of Calamus 9.  Those of you who can read Serbian will not just note her sensitive treatment of Whitman’s language, but her ear for his music.  Elma is one of my six students in “Walt Whitman: The Global Perspective”, and one of three that have chosen to absorb, translate, and interpret Calamus 9 as her final project.  Sanja Stanimirovic offers a different perspective on Whitman’s emotional opening:

Sati teku dugi, bolni i tegobni,

Sati u sumrak, kada se povlačim na neko samotno mesto, retko pohođeno, sedam i zarivam

lice u šake…

And then we have Bojana Acamovic’s nuanced reading:

Sati teku dugi, bolni, nesrećni,

Sati sutona, kada se povlačim na usamljeno i pusto mesto, kada sedam, spuštam lice u šake…

Indira Janic brings another level of meaning to Calamus 22 (later “To a Stranger”) by interpreting him using the Cyrillic alphabet:

Странче у пролазу! Ти не знаш колико те чежљиво гледам…

Neda Kosoric has diligently labored to resolve interesting questions regarding the use of gender in Serbian, in her translation of Calamus 11:

…i njegova ruka lagano prebacena preko mojih grudi,

i te noci ja bio sam srecan.

And Josip brings passion and intensity to Calamus 6 as he continues to try to wrestle down a Serbian word for a distinctively Whitmanic term:

Ne s bilo kim niti sa svima, O adhesiveness! O bȉlo mog života!

Potrebno mi je da postojiš i prikazuješ se, više no u ovim pesmama.

Dragan Purešić, Karen, Indira, Sanja, Neda, Bojana, and Elma: united we Whitmaniacs stand!

On Saturday 12 December, we were honored to welcome the esteemed translator Dragan Purešić to our classroom at the University of Novi Sad.  In addition to his crucial contributions to the success of the Serbian Book Market Project (see http://www.ceebp.org/book-market.htm for more info), Dragan has published noteworthy translations of the works of William Blake (Belgrade: Plato, 2007) as well as Walt Whitman (Belgrade: Plato, 2008).  He presented us with a memorable lecture on the art of translation, describing some of the challenges he faced when interpreting Whitman’s words for the Serbian people.  “The poem is an artistic entity,” he reminded us.  “The translator is both an artist and an artisan.”  Quoting freely and fluidly from works as wide-ranging as Lessing’s “Laocoon” and “The Godfather Part III”, he charged us with the significance and the perils of our task at hand.  And he inspired us.  “Blessed be the messengers,” he said.  Whitman sounds really good, really true and beautiful, in Serbian.

Ringed round by Dragans: Whitman's women (don't forget Indira, behind the lens!)

Dragan then led a translation workshop (which was further enhanced by the contribution of Novi Sad faculty members Vladislava Gordic Petkovic, Ivana Djuric, and Aleksandra Izgarjan).  We pored over Whitman’s language: what’s the connotative difference between being “content” and “happy”, as we see these terms used in Calamus 9 and 11?  What is behind the unusual statement “I am to wait” at the end of Calamus 22, and how can one achieve that feeling in Serbian?  And when Whitman asks, “I wonder if other men ever have the like” (Calamus 9), does the use of  the idea of  ‘mankind’ deny the poem’s true meaning or enhance its applicability?  Dragan offered suggestions and asked thoughtful questions of all of us; all of us responded and questioned our own understandings of Whitman’s words and intentions.

We strolled out of Classroom 37 three hours later, with full hearts and minds.  You see, Dragan knows Walt Whitman.   He ‘gets’ the poet in a fluid and intuitive way, in addition to possessing a finessed scholarly knowledge of  Whitman’s life and work.  And Dragan communicated his love and understanding for Whitman to us with honesty and passion, encouraging and helping shape our responses to these elusive Calamus poems.

In a few weeks, you will be able to listen to my students’ final versions of their Calamus translations on our “video map” (just swing the pointer a bit east of Walt’s usual stomping-grounds).  You, too, will be able to enjoy the benefits of Dragan’s sensitive tutelage– as channeled by this outstanding, unforgettable collective of new Serbian Whitmaniacs.

Hvala, Dragan! Vidimo se, Josip, Indira, Elma, Bojana, Sanja, Neda, and faithful right-hand man Dragan!

…I ostavlja vama da dokazujete i određujete,

I glavne stvari očekuje od vas.

(the rousing challenge of “Poets to Come”, as delivered by Walt Whitman and Dragan Purešić)

            My Experience in the Looking for Whitman class was an especially complicated but beneficial one. I think that Whitman himself was a difficult person to completely understand within a short amount of time.  At the same time, I learned to keep trying at the things I want to achieve, and to look more deeply at what New York has to offer because there are a lot of ancient places that are still standing that I never knew existed before, and also all about Whitman’s life of course.

            The class was overall a good one. We had people in there that were willing to learn and explore the World of Whitman along with the rest of us, so I appreciated the people that we had in the class. Now Professor Gold is an exceptional teacher. Not only does he have a positive personality, but he is eager to learn and to get his students to understand the material, while being open to new suggestions and ideas. To have a professor who is excited about what they are teaching and is willing to help in whichever way possible is the teacher that I have found in Professor Gold and the type of teacher I need for the rest of my classes.

            The projects that we have done in this class were interesting for the most part. Some were more appealing than others, but all were somewhat fun projects. One of my favorite projects was the Material Culture project. In that project we basically had to pick a topic and explain what it’s all about while also connecting it to Walt Whitman. This was a favorite because I had to make a new blog working on the computer and show my classmates and other students within the overall project why my topic was unique. Another one of my favorite parts of the class was the walking tour. The walking tour was good not only because that was the first opportunity we had to explore Whitman’s Brooklyn from outdoors, but also because I got a chance to observe a part of New York City in a new light and began to have a new respect for it. By the way it was a nice day out that day too. The Old Brooklyn Ferry was another place we went that I did my independent blog post on. It was cool to see where and how Whitman and a lot of other people got across the water from Brooklyn to Manhattan every day, whether it be to work or school. I enjoyed seeing the different kinds of boats that day. I saw water taxis, police boats, transportation boats across the water and regular boats that were just bypassing.

            I enjoyed the class and our exploration of finding Walt Whitman. I think that this class was a beneficial one that allowed students to study and work but differently outside the classroom and using modern technology to capture our discoveries. I hope that other students will be eager to learn and understand about Whitman as well as the world outside of our mundane lives.

The following essay examines Walt Whitman’s criticism from 1973-2004 in relation to motherhood, feminism, and the woman reader.  Four articles discuss Whitman’s relationship to his mother.  Six articles debate if Whitman’s poetry reveal feminist support.  Two articles discuss Whitman’s relationship with the woman reader.  Through this, one can view the ambivalence surrounding Walt Whitman’s relationship with his mother and women.

Motherhood

Barbara Schapiro’s, “Shelley’s Alastor and Whitman’s Out of the Cradle: The Ambivalent Mother” introduces the reader to a psychological approach to understanding Whitman’s relationship with his mother.  Schapiro counters Gustav Bychowski and Edwin Miller who see the bird in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” as a representation of an oedipal triangle (254).  To her, “the bird song portrays an essentially loving mother, but a mother who is specifically withdrawing her love to the bird/boy” (Schapiro 255).  Schapiro provides insight on the complex relationship between Whitman and his mother.  Perhaps the withdrawing of love is Whitman’s conflict over his mother’s disinterest in his poetry.  Unfortunately, Schapiro fails to provide necessary biographical information in understanding her hypothesis.  Further research into Whitman’s relationship with his mother could provide a greater understanding of his poetry regarding the maternal and its position in the Women’s Rights Movement.

“Whitman’s Impossible Mother” by Steven A. Wartofsky describes Whitman as a man grappling with the voice of the Other.  The Other is described as society’s patriarchal voice.  Wartofsky analyzes “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life” to determine that Whitman is trying to empower the voice of his mother.  This voice represents both himself (possibly his homosexual identity) and his mother’s voice repressed by patriarchy.  Wartofksy notes that Whitman’s mother’s voice is finally freed from the oppressive Other however Wartofsky writes, “But that’s the catch: the fierce old mother never really says anything in ‘As I Edd’d with the Ocean of Life” (206).  This article benefits the reader in showing Whitman’s revolutionary behavior.  He is a man trying to speak out against male dominated society.  However, the reader is left perplexed with the knowledge that the mother did not speak.  Once again, an ambiguous Whitman is revealed.  Is he a revolutionary or not?  Future work should analyze the ambivalence presented in Whitman’s work to determine if there are certain points which he stresses more often than others.  Perhaps a researcher could determine his true thoughts regarding women and a patriarchal society by tallying remarks in opposition of and in support of certain beliefs.

Arthur Wrobel in “Nobel American Motherhood” presents Walt Whitman not as a revolutionary feminist but as a poet influenced by the middle class ideals of motherhood.  Wrobel details various thoughts regarding nineteenth century women.  Inspired by eugencics and phrenologists Wrobel writes that, “The ideal woman according to Whitman, is a willing agent of republican America’s racial destiny” (19).  This article suggests that Whitman’s esteem for motherhood originated not from securing women’s rights but from a desire to attain a strong nation.  Although Wrobel initially contests D.H. Lawrence’s criticism that Whitman’s portrayal of women reveals, “muscles and wombs: functional creatures-no more,” (7) the article suggests Whitman’s women were used only as tools in creating his ideal nation.  This criticism follows others in that in conveys Whitman as influenced by the ideals of his time.  On the other hand,  it presents a new image of the poet desperate to create a utopia.  Future analysis of Whitman’s work could focus not on his relationship with his mother but on his identity as a mother seeking an ideal mate to create an ideal nation.

“Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View” by Myrth Jimmie Killingsworth provides an understanding of Whitman’s portrayal of motherhood.  Killingsworth questions whether Whiman’s women support the feminist cause or abide by nineteenth century ideals of motherhood. He analyzes “Democratic Vistas, A Woman Waits for Me”, “On the Beach At Night Alone,” “I Sing the Body Electric,” “As At Thy Portals Also Death,” and “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” to determine that “The theme of motherhood as it is treated in Whitman’s poems, whether good or bad, is decidedly Victorian” (42).  Killingsworth also connects Whitman’s feelings toward motherhood to eugenicists and phrenologists.  Again the reader sees Whitman greatly admiring motherhood for reproductive purposes as “She holds the key to sex, life, love, and death” (35).  Killingsworth’s comprehensive analysis of Whitman’s poems and description of nineteenth century sentimentalism fosters a greater understanding of Whitman’s ideal of motherhood.  Future avenues of research could examine Whitman’s social and phrenological influences on his image of the ideal woman and mother.

Feminism

Kay Reinartz asserts that Walt Whitman is indeed a feminist in “Walt Whitman and Feminism.”  Although Whitman was not a political activist, she claims that he “was a feminist in the sense that he endorsed the theory of political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” (127).  This article benefits the reader in that it aids in understanding of Whitman’s relationship to his mother and the Quaker religion which influenced his belief in the equality of women.  Reinartz explains that Whitman’s mother may have “influenced Whitman’s attitudes toward women by her failure to demonstrate an intelligent sympathy for, or interest in, Whitman’s poetry” (131).  Reinartz unfortunately only analyzed “Democratic Vistas” to evidence Whitman’s belief in feminism.  Though supportive of her claim, she could have included more poems.  In the future, one could analyze Whitman’s desperate need for his mother’s approval and its relationship to eagerly seeking a women readers (see below).

In “The American Woman in ‘Song of Myself’” Judy Womack describes each instance in the poem in which Whitman represensts women as “equals, as laborers, as lovers” (67).  Womack demonstrates Whitman’s understanding of “the force which women have on society and he lauds them for the compassion which makes them so necessary to all” (72).  This acknowledgement of Whitman reinforces his feminist beliefs.  On the other hand, Womack neglects to analyze what each line would mean for Whitman, nineteenth century society, or feminists.  Future work could compare each section of “Song of Myself” in relation to the Women’s Rights Movement.

Muriel Kolinsky  in ‘”Me Tarzan, You Jane?’: Whitman’s Attitudes Toward Women from a Women’s Liberation Point of View” counters critics who doubt that Walt Whitman’s feminism. She examines numerous poems from Leaves of Grass to conclude that, “even when Whitman extolled motherhood, he was probably more of a feminist, a believer in free choice for women” (158).  This article was useful in that Kolinsky analyzes several poems which direct the reader to Whitman’s admiration for women.  Of particular interest, Kolinsky notes Whitman’s “attack” on the word lady in “Democratic Vistas” and praises Whitman for making the woman’s body acceptable in “I Sing the Body Electric” (162).  Kolinsky however fails to address the question “does Whitman restrict women to stereotype occupations” (160-161).  Kolinsky writing in 1977 accepts Whitman as a feminist, future research could compare twenty first century feminists to Kolinsky’s analysis of Whitman.

In “Writing the Male Body: Naked Patriarchy and Whitmanian Democracy” Robyn Wegman adamantly opposes any notion of Whitman as a defender of women.  She believes he is “phallocentric” and that his ideal image of motherhood “confines the female to a use-value contingent on her relation to the male and, significantly, the phallus” (18).  Wegman presents an opposing view to those who see Whitman as the equalizer of men and women.  It is useful to read Whitman’s poems with this background  of phallocentrism.  It is unclear though in which context Wegman is writing.  Could she be examining Whitman’s poetry by feminist standards set forth at the time of her 1987 writing?  In the future, one could examine this hypothesis of Whitman as an egotistical man concerned with the power of the phallus and using woman only as a means to achieve his ideal America.

Harold Aspiz describes Eliza W. Farnham’s book Woman and Her Era in “An Early Feminist Tribute to Whitman.”  Aspiz states that in Farnham’s book Whitman “is hailed as the precursor of a new feminist conscience” (404).  However this statement is contradicted in the article when Aspiz comments that Whitman’s name appears only three times in Farnham’s work and “none of them in the body of the text” (407).  This article proved useful in presenting insight on a feminist contemporary of Whitman.  Aspiz writes that Farnham’s book “is predicated on the hypothesis that woman is nature’s most highly evolved organism, physically, and spiritually, because she is charged with the highest function” (405).  Although Whitman and Farnham share similar thoughts regarding women Aspiz’s contention that Woman and Her Era is a tribute to Whitman fails to be proven in this article.  Future research should include a comparative study of Farnham’s beliefs, Whitman’s poetry, and the beliefs of other nineteenth century feminists.

Diane Middlebrook’s “Making Visible the Common World: Walt Whitman and Feminist Poetry” compares Walt Whitman to two feminist writers: Susan Griffin and Adrienne Rich.  Middlebrook writes that Whitman, Griffin, and Adrienne Rich share a common task of finding a space of their own and a woman audience.  Middlebrook explains that feminist writers use “Whitman as a model and precursor, feminist writers have identified an analogous need to free women from the literary culture long dominated by men as writers, critics, and publishers” (15).  This article proved useful in gaining a foundational knowledge of the task of feminist writers and it was inspiring to view Whitman as a model for which feminists could learn.  Middlebrook does not however indicate that Whitman was a feminist.  This foundational knowledge could be used in future work to inspire other feminist writers.  One could analyze Whitman’s pleas for unity in comparison to other feminist writers ultimately linking the two.

The Woman Reader

Lottie L. Gutty’s “Walt Whitman and the Woman Reader” describes the important role a woman audience played to Walt Whitman.  Like the feminist authors mentioned above, Whitman sought a female audience.  Whitman spoke to women encouraging self-esteem, equality with men, and treated them as adults (108).  Guttry explains, “The metamorphoses and expressions of sympathy reinforce the poet’s statements of love with evidences of real concern and understanding of women” (107).  Guttry portrays Whitman as an advocate for women.  According to Guttry, Whitman’s approach to women was counter-Victorian.  He wanted to release them from the middle class ideal of a weak woman in need of protection.  Guttry fails to incorporate Whitman’s feelings toward motherhood and his belief in strong mothers.  These maternal feelings had a great impact on one woman reader as evidenced below in Anne Gilchrist.  Future studies could examine a contemporary young woman’s reading of Whitman to determine if they are as empowered as Whitman would have wanted them to be.

In “Lover, Mother, Reader: The Epistolary Courtship of Walt Whitman” Suzanne Ashworth analyzes the correspondences between Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman to reveal Whitman’s influence on a woman reader.  From this critique, one views Whitman as a deeply in awe of the domestic woman.  Gilchrist uses this fascination to present herself more favorably to Whitman.  Ashworth writes, “Anne courts Whitman with domestic idylls-with visions of homebound happiness and normative gender roles” (186).  Ashworth points out the influence of nineteenth century society’s Whitman’s poetry.  She describes, “Anne’s conception of herself as a mother draws heavily on the strains of mother-worship that pervaded both her culture and Whitman’s poetry” (188).  Whitman desperately sought women readers and Gilchrist represented the intellectual, domestic, and sensual woman who understood Whitman.  Future research should analyze contemporary women’s feelings towards Whitman’s poetry.  Will the Whitman as read by a twenty first century evoke the same emotions as that of nineteenth century Anne Gilchrist?

Works Cited

Ashworth, Suzanne. “Lover, Mother, Reader: The Epistolary Courtship of Walt Whitman.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 26.2 (2004): 173-97. Print.

Aspiz, Harold. “An Early Feminist Tribute to Whitman.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 51.3 (1979): 404-9. Print.

Guttry, Lottie L. “Walt Whitman and the Woman Reader.” Walt Whitman Review 22 (1976): 102-10. Print.

Killingsworth, Myrth Jimmie. “Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View.” American Literature 54.1 (1982): 28. Print.

Kolinsky, Muriel. “Me Tarzan, You Jane: ‘”Me Tarzan, You Jane?’: Whitman’s Attitudes Toward Women from a Women’s Liberation Point of View.” Walt Whitman Review 23 (1977): 155-165. Print.

Middlebrook, Diane. “Making Visible the Common World: Walt Whitman and Feminist Poetry.” Kenyon Review 2.4 (1980): 14-27. Print.

Reinartz, Kay F. “Walt Whitman and Feminism.” Walt Whitman Review 19 (1973): 127-37. Print.

Schapiro, Barbara. “Shelley’s Alastor and Whitman’s ‘Out of the Cradle’: The Ambivalent Mother.” American Imago: A Psychoanalytic Journal for Culture, Science, and the Arts 36 (1979): 245-59. Print.

Wartofsky, Steven. “Whitman’s Impossible Mother.” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 9.4 (1992): 196-207. Print.

Wiegman, Robyn. “Writing the Male Body: Naked Patriarchy and Whitmanian Democracy.” Literature and Psychology 33.3-4 (1987): 16-26. Print.

Womack, Judy. “The American Woman in ‘Song of Myself’.” Walt Whitman Review 19 (1973): 67-72. Print.

Wrobel, Arthur. “‘Noble American Motherhood’: Whitman, Women, and the Ideal Democracy.” American Studies 21.2 (1980): 7-25. Print.

The attached represents the beginning of my search for evidence supporting/disproving Whitman’s support of the women’s rights movement.

My conclusion…I need more information!bib essay

I was in shock when I could actually stand next to the rocking chair that he sat in.  We were actually allowed in the rooms of the house.  How rare????  I along with my classmates were probably amazed that we were actually standing in the rooms right next to Walt Whitmans articles that he used.  We stood right next to his bed, his kitchen table and stove among so many other of his belongings.  It was wonderful, of course we could not touch the items but it was great to be able to stand in the same places and Whitman himself.

The last of the tour was the backyard.  It, to me, looks like it did when Whitman lived there.  I think it was great that we were given this opportunity to see Whitman’s house as it was when he was alive and lived there.

Meeting under similar weather conditions to the one today (i.e. cold with rain), I was still super excited to see everything. Even though I am a native Virginian, it takes about four and a half hours to get to Washington, D.C. and thus, I have only explored the city (minus trips to Dulles, traveling through or past, etc) once on a field trip in 7th grade. Sad, I know. So, I was extremely excited and and the whole ride up I was chomping at the bit to finally get out of the car and race around D.C. acting like Mrs. Whitman (Sorry, Brendan ;] ). I think pictures captured my favorite moment…you know, when I started tearing up and had to fight back a break down when his haversack was revealed to us. Even his hair or glasses didn’t have the same effect on my emotions as that old, crumbly leather bag. That bag saw things we can’t even imagine, it sat on the ground, on the ferry, on the wooden boards of hospitals. Who knows the kinds of dangerous, gangrenous bacteria that lived on it because of the hospital trips. Could that bag be the a main reason Whitman’s health declined so much? Would Whitman touch the bag, then touch his eyes, nose, or mouth with the same hand and, in that infinitesimal moment, compromise his wellbeing and health? It fascinates me to think “if only that bag could talk”. I wanted to hug and kiss our Library of Congress guide (her name has left me, I’m sad to say-Laurie Ann?) and just thank her for appreciating our enthusiasm and understanding our rabid adoration for this man who some Americans don’t even know about.

Flash forward ([shoutout] to a really great show!) to last night and my contemplation must have stirred something in Whitman. I had a dream where I sat with Whitman (in his last days, think the photo of him with his caretaker in a shipyard, I think it was) and we talked. I held his hand and told him that he left an imprint on my heart a hundred and half years from when he walked the earth. He told me it was simply coincidence that it all happened. He wanted something great to happen and feels like he achieved it with my experience. I don’t remember much more from that magical dream, but when I woke up I couldn’t believe it. I told my mom and she just frowned and said, “Oh, that’s weird…and kind of creepy,” while paying bills or something. I know no one else will appreciate this except for the people who traveled this Whitmanian journey with me. So there ’tis…I hope I meet him again in dreamland, maybe he’ll tell me he’s choosing Brendan over me, and if he does, I’ll just have to smile and hold his hand.

Meeting under similar weather conditions to the one today (i.e. cold with rain), I was still super excited to see everything. Even though I am a native Virginian, it takes about four and a half hours to get to Washington, D.C. and thus, I have only explored the city (minus trips to Dulles, traveling through or past, etc) once on a field trip in 7th grade. Sad, I know. So, I was extremely excited and and the whole ride up I was chomping at the bit to finally get out of the car and race around D.C. acting like Mrs. Whitman (Sorry, Brendan ;] ). I think pictures captured my favorite moment…you know, when I started tearing up and had to fight back a break down when his haversack was revealed to us. Even his hair or glasses didn’t have the same effect on my emotions as that old, crumbly leather bag. That bag saw things we can’t even imagine, it sat on the ground, on the ferry, on the wooden boards of hospitals. Who knows the kinds of dangerous, gangrenous bacteria that lived on it because of the hospital trips. Could that bag be the a main reason Whitman’s health declined so much? Would Whitman touch the bag, then touch his eyes, nose, or mouth with the same hand and, in that infinitesimal moment, compromise his wellbeing and health? It fascinates me to think “if only that bag could talk”. I wanted to hug and kiss our Library of Congress guide (her name has left me, I’m sad to say-Laurie Ann?) and just thank her for appreciating our enthusiasm and understanding our rabid adoration for this man who some Americans don’t even know about.

Flash forward ([shoutout] to a really great show!) to last night and my contemplation must have stirred something in Whitman. I had a dream where I sat with Whitman (in his last days, think the photo of him with his caretaker in a shipyard, I think it was) and we talked. I held his hand and told him that he left an imprint on my heart a hundred and half years from when he walked the earth. He told me it was simply coincidence that it all happened. He wanted something great to happen and feels like he achieved it with my experience. I don’t remember much more from that magical dream, but when I woke up I couldn’t believe it. I told my mom and she just frowned and said, “Oh, that’s weird…and kind of creepy,” while paying bills or something. I know no one else will appreciate this except for the people who traveled this Whitmanian journey with me. So there ’tis…I hope I meet him again in dreamland, maybe he’ll tell me he’s choosing Brendan over me, and if he does, I’ll just have to smile and hold his hand.

Meeting under similar weather conditions to the one today (i.e. cold with rain), I was still super excited to see everything. Even though I am a native Virginian, it takes about four and a half hours to get to Washington, D.C. and thus, I have only explored the city (minus trips to Dulles, traveling through or past, etc) once on a field trip in 7th grade. Sad, I know. So, I was extremely excited and and the whole ride up I was chomping at the bit to finally get out of the car and race around D.C. acting like Mrs. Whitman (Sorry, Brendan ;] ). I think pictures captured my favorite moment…you know, when I started tearing up and had to fight back a break down when his haversack was revealed to us. Even his hair or glasses didn’t have the same effect on my emotions as that old, crumbly leather bag. That bag saw things we can’t even imagine, it sat on the ground, on the ferry, on the wooden boards of hospitals. Who knows the kinds of dangerous, gangrenous bacteria that lived on it because of the hospital trips. Could that bag be the a main reason Whitman’s health declined so much? Would Whitman touch the bag, then touch his eyes, nose, or mouth with the same hand and, in that infinitesimal moment, compromise his wellbeing and health? It fascinates me to think “if only that bag could talk”. I wanted to hug and kiss our Library of Congress guide (her name has left me, I’m sad to say-Laurie Ann?) and just thank her for appreciating our enthusiasm and understanding our rabid adoration for this man who some Americans don’t even know about.

Flash forward ([shoutout] to a really great show!) to last night and my contemplation must have stirred something in Whitman. I had a dream where I sat with Whitman (in his last days, think the photo of him with his caretaker in a shipyard, I think it was) and we talked. I held his hand and told him that he left an imprint on my heart a hundred and half years from when he walked the earth. He told me it was simply coincidence that it all happened. He wanted something great to happen and feels like he achieved it with my experience. I don’t remember much more from that magical dream, but when I woke up I couldn’t believe it. I told my mom and she just frowned and said, “Oh, that’s weird…and kind of creepy,” while paying bills or something. I know no one else will appreciate this except for the people who traveled this Whitmanian journey with me. So there ’tis…I hope I meet him again in dreamland, maybe he’ll tell me he’s choosing Brendan over me, and if he does, I’ll just have to smile and hold his hand.

The field trip to DC, as I’m sure everyone would agree, was a fantastic experience for all of us. One of the things that I found the most interesting was going to places I’d already been, but wearing my Whitman goggles. A week or two before the field trip I had been in the National Equality March (something I think Whitman would have supported) which started in almost the same place as the tour and took a similar path. It was very interesting to wander those same streets and imagine Whitman wandering the streets while pigs wandered through the mud.

During this class I’ve found myself more and more able to imagine the people of the past as I stand in places with a lot of history. The field trip definitely was one of the reasons that this happened for me. Listening to Kim list to us in detail various differences between Whitman’s time and ours, like the view he had from his office of the Washington monument, transported me back to that time, I felt as if I could see the mud streets and wandering soldiers.

I had  similar reaction to Ford’s Theater. Listening to the presenter speak about the details of Lincoln’s death made me feel as if I had been there. If Peter Doyle was able to describe that night in as much detail as the presenter I can see why Whitman felt like he had been there that night.

I’m trying to upload the video of the Ford’s Theater presentation since some of you mysteriously don’t remember it even though we were all paying attention, but for some reason youtube hates me and won’t upload it. I’ll keep trying and see if I can get it up there.

The field trip to DC, as I’m sure everyone would agree, was a fantastic experience for all of us. One of the things that I found the most interesting was going to places I’d already been, but wearing my Whitman goggles. A week or two before the field trip I had been in the National Equality March (something I think Whitman would have supported) which started in almost the same place as the tour and took a similar path. It was very interesting to wander those same streets and imagine Whitman wandering the streets while pigs wandered through the mud.

During this class I’ve found myself more and more able to imagine the people of the past as I stand in places with a lot of history. The field trip definitely was one of the reasons that this happened for me. Listening to Kim list to us in detail various differences between Whitman’s time and ours, like the view he had from his office of the Washington monument, transported me back to that time, I felt as if I could see the mud streets and wandering soldiers.

I had  similar reaction to Ford’s Theater. Listening to the presenter speak about the details of Lincoln’s death made me feel as if I had been there. If Peter Doyle was able to describe that night in as much detail as the presenter I can see why Whitman felt like he had been there that night.

I’m trying to upload the video of the Ford’s Theater presentation since some of you mysteriously don’t remember it even though we were all paying attention, but for some reason youtube hates me and won’t upload it. I’ll keep trying and see if I can get it up there.

The field trip to DC, as I’m sure everyone would agree, was a fantastic experience for all of us. One of the things that I found the most interesting was going to places I’d already been, but wearing my Whitman goggles. A week or two before the field trip I had been in the National Equality March (something I think Whitman would have supported) which started in almost the same place as the tour and took a similar path. It was very interesting to wander those same streets and imagine Whitman wandering the streets while pigs wandered through the mud.

During this class I’ve found myself more and more able to imagine the people of the past as I stand in places with a lot of history. The field trip definitely was one of the reasons that this happened for me. Listening to Kim list to us in detail various differences between Whitman’s time and ours, like the view he had from his office of the Washington monument, transported me back to that time, I felt as if I could see the mud streets and wandering soldiers.

I had  similar reaction to Ford’s Theater. Listening to the presenter speak about the details of Lincoln’s death made me feel as if I had been there. If Peter Doyle was able to describe that night in as much detail as the presenter I can see why Whitman felt like he had been there that night.

I’m trying to upload the video of the Ford’s Theater presentation since some of you mysteriously don’t remember it even though we were all paying attention, but for some reason youtube hates me and won’t upload it. I’ll keep trying and see if I can get it up there.

Here is my video for Finding Whitman.  I hope that it works.

The reason I picked my poem is because it reminded my of 9-11.  Yes Whitman was of course not around for this and the poem was probably based on the love of friends and company and bringing a community together.  But when I read my poem I thought of 9-11 and how the country came together in such a horrible time.  Dr. Hoffman taught me that poems are up for interpretation and this is mine of this poem.

Working on maps with Pedro (on left) in The Brooklyn Historical Society Library

Welcome to Looking for Whitman.  In this project, I have assigned to research one of Whitman’s houses where he lived on 1824. Project consist of location maps, land conveyances, and owner information.

“Hours continuing long” is the eight poem of the twelve poem sequence Live Oak, with Moss, that Whitman wrote some time in the period between 1856 (second edition of the Leaves of Grass) and 1859, when the poems were ‘neatly copied’ in a notebook  by the abovementioned title. The sequence tells of the love affair that the poet had with another man and was never published; instead, Whitman tore it apart into individual poems, revised some of them and shuffled them and included them among the other poems of the 1860 Calamus cluster.

As for the reason why Whitman did this, the reasons are still in the vague area of speculations. There exist many theories concerning this issue, yet nothing can be claimed for sure. In any case, the poems were scattered around the Calamus cluster, which indicates that they were important for Whitman, but they were so jumbled, which further indicates that he had his reasons why he wanted to obscure the narrative behind the sequence. Without going further into the motives for this specific treatment of the poems, the fact remains that they were ‘hidden’ among the other Calamus poems for a long time – for nearly a century – until Fredson Bowers found a connection between the poems, while working n the Valentine Collection of Whitman’s manuscripts, now the property of the University of Virginia (then the property of Clifton Waller Barrett (Parker, Hershel) and reconstructed the sequence. He published his findings in Studies in Bibliography in 1953, and then in Whitman’s Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass (1860):A Parallel Text  in 1955. After that, the sequence was mainly neglected until 1990s.

“Hours continuing long” is, as I have already mentioned, the eight poem of the Live Oak, with Moss, which in 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass became Calamus nine. It is a bleak, dark poem which deals, among other things, with the aftermath of the love affair that ended badly.  The affair here mentioned, Alan Helms claims, was with one Fred Vaughn, a young man who lived with Whitman in early 1850s and their break up had a very strong influence on the poet.

Calamus 9 had a fairly strange destiny, even when compared with the already strange destinies of the other poems of the sequence. Firstly, it was not revised – the 1860 version of the poem that appeared in the Leaves is identical with the 1859 manuscript version. Whitman changed nothing for the purpose of publication, which is not case with most of the other poems of the sequence. On the other hand, he did not really need to, because the 1860 edition was the only one that contained the ”Hours continuing long”. After the third edition, Whitman decided to exclude the poem from all the subsequent editions, and the motives for such an act remained a mystery even today.

Even though the “Hours continuing long” have not been given the same kind of ‘publicity’ as some of the other poems of Whitman’s ,  I think it lends itself to interpretation, and I find it indicative of the linguistic, cultural and emotional issues that had a profound impact on Whitman’s poetics

Edward Carpenter was born in Hove, England and attended Brighton College. Although he would go on to Cambridge, Carpenter didn’t have a feeling for academics at a young age. Instead he discovered his attachment to nature and this relationship is one that lasted him the rest of his life. While attending University, Carpenter discovered his attraction to men and didn’t feel outwardly comfortable about his feelings right away.

Following his college years, and some time experimenting with men, Carpenter decided to become a Curate in the Anglican Church. Before long, he became unhappy with his life there. He seemed to find the Victorian era, in its entirety, a hypocrisy. His only way out of this fraudulent life he was living was through poetry. Carpenter received his first copy of Leaves of Grass in1868 and the rest is history.

Something in Whitman’s poetry moved him so much that Carpenter decided that he needed to educate the working class of the world. He picked up is life with the church and moved on to become a lecturer of astronomy and outspoken Socialist. After his father died and left him a considerable amount of money, he sought out a home in Milthrope and adapted a more natural lifestyle. This included, among other things, harvesting his own crops and vegetarianism. It was here in his life that he came to terms with his sexual orientation. Because of his new lifestyle away from the Victorian era, his creativity blossomed. One of his great works “Towards Democracy” was written during this time and was greatly influenced, as was the rest of his works, by Whitman.

Carpenter got the chance to visit Whitman in 1877 as well as in 1886 and chronicled these visits in his work, Days with Whitman. Carpenter wouldn’t have become who he was without Whitman giving him the strength to be radical and live how he wants to live. Whitman’s work was the driving factor in Carpenters decision to educate the lower class and that made all the difference in his life.

Whitman’s friend, Robert Ingersoll, was born in 1883 in Dresden, NY. He was the product of an intelligent, abolitionist family. He began studying law and during his time as a law clerk he opened his own practice with his brother, which they named “E.C. & R. G. Ingersoll”. When the Civil War broke out he took command of the 11^th Illinois Cavalry Regiment. He was captured during this time and subsequently released on the grounds of giving his word to never fight again, which was common practice at the time. Following the war, Ingersoll became Attorney General of Illinois. His views were very radical for the time period and he was very outspoken. This did not help his political career, but helped his life as an orator greatly. He was incredibly affluent and his lectures ranged in many different genres, however he was very passionate about the ideas humanitarianism and free thought. Needless to say, his ideas appealed to Whitman. He considered Ingersoll to be the greatest orator of all time. Ingersoll was so admired by him that he was chosen to give the eulogy at his funeral, which must have been an incredible honor.

All three of these men shared a common bond; they all seem to be ahead of their time. Each one was filled with ideas that seemed radical for the late nineteenth century. Regardless of the time, they still put themselves out there in a way no one had done before. They paved the way for leaders to come. It’s obvious that great minds connect to one another, and these friendships and admirations illustrate that fact.

Edward Carpenter was born in Hove, England and attended Brighton College. Although he would go on to Cambridge, Carpenter didn’t have a feeling for academics at a young age. Instead he discovered his attachment to nature and this relationship is one that lasted him the rest of his life. While attending University, Carpenter discovered his attraction to men and didn’t feel outwardly comfortable about his feelings right away.

Following his college years, and some time experimenting with men, Carpenter decided to become a Curate in the Anglican Church. Before long, he became unhappy with his life there. He seemed to find the Victorian era, in its entirety, a hypocrisy. His only way out of this fraudulent life he was living was through poetry. Carpenter received his first copy of Leaves of Grass in1868 and the rest is history.

Something in Whitman’s poetry moved him so much that Carpenter decided that he needed to educate the working class of the world. He picked up is life with the church and moved on to become a lecturer of astronomy and outspoken Socialist. After his father died and left him a considerable amount of money, he sought out a home in Milthrope and adapted a more natural lifestyle. This included, among other things, harvesting his own crops and vegetarianism. It was here in his life that he came to terms with his sexual orientation. Because of his new lifestyle away from the Victorian era, his creativity blossomed. One of his great works “Towards Democracy” was written during this time and was greatly influenced, as was the rest of his works, by Whitman.

Carpenter got the chance to visit Whitman in 1877 as well as in 1886 and chronicled these visits in his work, Days with Whitman. Carpenter wouldn’t have become who he was without Whitman giving him the strength to be radical and live how he wants to live. Whitman’s work was the driving factor in Carpenters decision to educate the lower class and that made all the difference in his life.

Whitman’s friend, Robert Ingersoll, was born in 1883 in Dresden, NY. He was the product of an intelligent, abolitionist family. He began studying law and during his time as a law clerk he opened his own practice with his brother, which they named “E.C. & R. G. Ingersoll”. When the Civil War broke out he took command of the 11^th Illinois Cavalry Regiment. He was captured during this time and subsequently released on the grounds of giving his word to never fight again, which was common practice at the time. Following the war, Ingersoll became Attorney General of Illinois. His views were very radical for the time period and he was very outspoken. This did not help his political career, but helped his life as an orator greatly. He was incredibly affluent and his lectures ranged in many different genres, however he was very passionate about the ideas humanitarianism and free thought. Needless to say, his ideas appealed to Whitman. He considered Ingersoll to be the greatest orator of all time. Ingersoll was so admired by him that he was chosen to give the eulogy at his funeral, which must have been an incredible honor.

All three of these men shared a common bond; they all seem to be ahead of their time. Each one was filled with ideas that seemed radical for the late nineteenth century. Regardless of the time, they still put themselves out there in a way no one had done before. They paved the way for leaders to come. It’s obvious that great minds connect to one another, and these friendships and admirations illustrate that fact.

Since I did my final project on a revolutionary, Jose Marti, the memory of standing behind the wall on Sunken Road that the Confederate soldiers used has been on my mind a lot. Just imagining thousands of young soldiers lying dead was a very powerful image and really brought Whitman’s post-battle descriptions home to me. And it would not have been those whom we consider “the good guys” lying on the ground in front of Sunken Road. It was a deathtrap for Union soldiers. For me, that contributed to  an already very powerful image that can easily be applied to a revolution and, in light of my recent research and writing, made the weight of Jose Marti’s ideas apparent.

During his life, Marti was calling his fellow countrymen to revolt against Spanish rule over Cuba. Even though Spain was weak compared to the other major European powers at that time, they far outstripped the military strength of the Cuban forces. When he said that he wanted his people to fight with him, Marti knew that he was potentially putting them in the same situation as the Union soldiers were in at Fredericksburg. They were the people who we consider the ‘good guys.’ They were fighting against colonial tyranny. It just casts war in a whole new light to go to a battlefield.

Since I did my final project on a revolutionary, Jose Marti, the memory of standing behind the wall on Sunken Road that the Confederate soldiers used has been on my mind a lot. Just imagining thousands of young soldiers lying dead was a very powerful image and really brought Whitman’s post-battle descriptions home to me. And it would not have been those whom we consider “the good guys” lying on the ground in front of Sunken Road. It was a deathtrap for Union soldiers. For me, that contributed to  an already very powerful image that can easily be applied to a revolution and, in light of my recent research and writing, made the weight of Jose Marti’s ideas apparent.

During his life, Marti was calling his fellow countrymen to revolt against Spanish rule over Cuba. Even though Spain was weak compared to the other major European powers at that time, they far outstripped the military strength of the Cuban forces. When he said that he wanted his people to fight with him, Marti knew that he was potentially putting them in the same situation as the Union soldiers were in at Fredericksburg. They were the people who we consider the ‘good guys.’ They were fighting against colonial tyranny. It just casts war in a whole new light to go to a battlefield.

Since I did my final project on a revolutionary, Jose Marti, the memory of standing behind the wall on Sunken Road that the Confederate soldiers used has been on my mind a lot. Just imagining thousands of young soldiers lying dead was a very powerful image and really brought Whitman’s post-battle descriptions home to me. And it would not have been those whom we consider “the good guys” lying on the ground in front of Sunken Road. It was a deathtrap for Union soldiers. For me, that contributed to  an already very powerful image that can easily be applied to a revolution and, in light of my recent research and writing, made the weight of Jose Marti’s ideas apparent.

During his life, Marti was calling his fellow countrymen to revolt against Spanish rule over Cuba. Even though Spain was weak compared to the other major European powers at that time, they far outstripped the military strength of the Cuban forces. When he said that he wanted his people to fight with him, Marti knew that he was potentially putting them in the same situation as the Union soldiers were in at Fredericksburg. They were the people who we consider the ‘good guys.’ They were fighting against colonial tyranny. It just casts war in a whole new light to go to a battlefield.

Ben Brishcar

Digital Whitman

Scanlon/Earnheart/Groom

10/9/09

A Kosmos of Voices

            When I was given the option of a nonstandard project for the final for this class, my brain started boggling with options.  Immediately the traditional seminar paper was out the window and my head started going towards the many other options.  Now like many papers and possibly more projects, this one went through many different variations before incarnation in the attached link.

            It started with the far to quixotic undertaking of doing a video in which different people would read one to two words of a section of “Song of Myself” and then splice all the video together into one epic montage.  This was, needless to say, to big of a task and never got off the ground.  The roots where there though for this project.  The next version came with my looking over of my blog posts for most of the semester and realizing that so much of my focus has been on Whitman’s narrative voice that to do a project and leave this issue of voice out of it, would be doing myself a disservice.

            The question arising out of this then, was where to go with Whitman’s voice.  The answer then, came from some of my studies in performance.  Things always sound different when they are read out loud.  Also, with this being a project that focused highly on the idea of ‘voice’ it seemed to call for some sort of audio enhancement.  Now, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do with the audio, but to many ideas of what to do with the video.  For a while I was throwing around the idea of taping the readers and trying to get their videos to sink up, in much the same way as my first conception of the project.  The fear I had with this, though, was that there would be to much chaos from back and forth cuts, that I would lose the meaning of the voice in all the images.  From there it went to the idea of some sort of slide show, either of pictures of Whitman or of the text of the poem.  Where both of these ideas got dropped was that I really wanted this to be an audio experience and did not want people distracted by the images.

            I finally settled on one iconic image of Whitman to run throughout the entire piece.  The reason I left any visual at all was because I wanted this piece to go up through YouTube and have it accessible to more than just our blog.  My feeling on the spirit of this class and the entire idea of a nontraditional project is that it should transcend the boundaries of the semester and stay up as a resource for others to use.  In other words, I was not just building something for a grade, I was building something people will hopefully want to use in the future.

            As far as the video itself functions, it was designed as an experimental look at voice.  The idea was to combine a group of readers, each one embodying a different narrative voice found within Whitman’s poetry.  These seven different voices were then going to bounce off each other to highlight similarities and differences within one section of poem.  The readings were kept to two specific sequential sections of “Song of Myself”, namely sections 44 and 45; by using two sections instead of picking and choosing between multiple sections of Whitman, two things where accomplished.  First, it eliminates much of the debate along the lines of ‘of course I found all these voices, I went out and dug through his full body of work,’ and second and more important of the two, it kept all of these separate voices still within one section of Whitman.  I was already splitting up his voice, but by giving all the readings within one section, I was keeping it all congealed into one Whitman.

            As far as cast list goes for this project, the seven voices I presented were: the Prophetic Whitman, voiced by Professor Gray Richards; Whitman the Good Grey Poet, voiced by Professor Claudia Emerson; the Womanly Whitman, voiced by Professor Mara Scanlon; the Natural Whitman, voiced by Dean Cedric Rucker; Whitman as Witness, voiced by Professor Ana Chichester; the Nurse Whitman, voiced by Taylor Williams, and the Sexual Whitman, voiced by Katie O’Connor.

            To help better put this project into focus, here is how I defined each voice when looking through the poem.  The Prophetic Whitman was the voice that was talking whenever Whitman is casting things beyond himself and reaching for things far beyond the grasp of what normal people could know, this is as close to a metaphysical Whitman as is seen in these sections of “Song of Myself”.  Whitman, the Good Grey Poet, is the type of voice one would expect Whitman to pick up while sitting in a rocking chair and talking to someone; this is the more introspective Whitman, where as the prophet reaches out, the Good Grey Poet reaches in.  The Nurse Whitman is the Whitman that reaches out to his readers or his audience.  The title comes from the image of Whitman sitting next to the men he was nursing during and after the Civil War, hearing their stories and talking directly to them.  The Womanly Whitman is the Whitman in touch with the more motherly feminine side of himself.  The Natural Whitman is the Whitman of the dirt and the soil, the one who goes back to the earth for his imagery.   Walt Whitman as Witness is the Whitman that steps back a bit and looks at what is going on; this voice does not have the all encompassing aspects of the Prophet Whitman, as it is not a voice of announcement, but rather a voice of being separate and reflective.  The Sexual Whitman really needs no explaining, in that if one is to deny the inherent thrusting force of intimacy in Whitman’s poetry, then one is doing a terrible misreading.

            As far as what I’ve discovered from this project is honestly difficult to say.  This experiment was not a failure, as I feel that I have learned much about Whitman’s voice, and I feel that those that watch my video can take away much about Whitman’s voice.  However, upon repeated listening to the audio file, I find that by pulling his voice apart, although I can hear more of the distinct voices differently, I also hear the singular multifaceted voice of Whitman that much more.  It seems counter intuitive but the farther apart the pieces where, the more it sounded like one voice.  One of the first questions I asked myself when I approached what was to become the final version of the project, was would looking at the voices in the piece separately lead to a better understanding of the contradictions and comparisons within the one overarching voice, or would it just be a matter of staring at the Kosmos, so to speak.  I think in this case, what I’ve found is that Whitman’s voice exists because of the contradictions there in and the separate pieces contribute to one larger organism that would not exist without them.

Works Cited

Black, Stephen A. “Radical Utterances from the Soul’s Abysms: Toward a new Sense of Whitman.” PMLQ 88.1 (1973): 100-11. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.

Hutchinson, George B. “Whitman’s Confidence Game: The “Good Gray Poet” and the Civil War.” South Central Review 7 (1990): 20-35. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.

Jay, Gregory. “Catching up with Whitman: A Review Essay.” South Atlantic Review 57.1 (1992): 89-102. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.

Killingsworth, Myrth J. “Whitman and Motherhood: A Historical View.” American Literature 54.1 (1982): 28-43. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.

Stovall, Floyd. “Main Drifts in Whitman’s Poetry.” American Literature 4.1 (1932): 3-21. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2009

Thesis: Whitman adopts techniques from the classic hero’s epic and manages to convey the existential experience as well as the journey of the monomythic cycle. His long poem follows the form described in Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces and Whitman seems to see his narrator’s personal journey as a monomythic experience within the existential realm of his mind (The Hero With A Thousand Faces 66).

Scope: Specifically focusing on Song of Myself, existentialism, and Campbell’s monomyth.

Research:

Belasco, Susan. Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays. Nebraska: University of

            Nebraska Press, 2007.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. California: New World Library

            Press, 2008.

Campbell, Joseph. Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation.

            California: New Library World Press, 2004.

Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books, 1988.

Greenspan, Ezra. Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition.

            New York, NY: Routledge, 2005.

Moon, Michael. Disseminating Whitman: Revision and Corporeality in Leaves of Grass.

            Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Richter, Eva and Balin Song. Translating the Concept of ‘Identity’ Translation and Cultural

            Change: Studies in History. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins; 2005.

            (xvi, 193 pp.)

Sowder, Michael. Whitman’s Ecstatic Union: Conversion and Ideology in Leaves of

            Grass. New York, NY: Routledge, 2005.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: W.W. Norton Publishing Co., 2002.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1993.

Methodology: Existentialist analysis based on Joseph Campbell’s monomyth frame.

Plan:

Thesis: Whitman adopts techniques from the classic hero’s epic and manages to convey the existential experience as well as the journey of the monomythic cycle. His long poem follows the form described in Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces and Whitman seems to see his narrator’s personal journey as a monomythic experience within the existential realm of his mind (The Hero With A Thousand Faces 66).

Scope: Specifically focusing on Song of Myself, existentialism, and Campbell’s monomyth.

Research:

Belasco, Susan. Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays. Nebraska: University of

            Nebraska Press, 2007.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. California: New World Library

            Press, 2008.

Campbell, Joseph. Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation.

            California: New Library World Press, 2004.

Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books, 1988.

Greenspan, Ezra. Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition.

            New York, NY: Routledge, 2005.

Moon, Michael. Disseminating Whitman: Revision and Corporeality in Leaves of Grass.

            Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Richter, Eva and Balin Song. Translating the Concept of ‘Identity’ Translation and Cultural

            Change: Studies in History. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins; 2005.

            (xvi, 193 pp.)

Sowder, Michael. Whitman’s Ecstatic Union: Conversion and Ideology in Leaves of

            Grass. New York, NY: Routledge, 2005.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: W.W. Norton Publishing Co., 2002.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1993.

Methodology: Existentialist analysis based on Joseph Campbell’s monomyth frame.

Plan:

William Douglas O’Connor was born in Boston, Massachusetts, January 2, 1833.  In the beginning he was into painting until he was compelled to leave his passion, he turned to something that he could focus on and makes a career.  Even before the age of twenty he landed a job as associate editor of the Boston “Commonwealth”.  In 1852 he became the editor of the Philadelphia “Saturday Evening Post”.  Once he became the editor in 1852 it was all uphill from there.  He was the editor in Philadelphia from 1852-1860, in 1861 became corresponding clerk of the light-house board in Washington.  He then became Chief Clerk in 1873 and 1874 librarian of the treasury department.  He finally became assistant general superintendent of the life-saving service, of the annual reports which he was the author in 1878. 

Walt Whitman and William O’Connor met for the first time in 1860.  This was the same year that Whitman’s third edition of Leaves of Grass was published and the same year that O’Connor’s only novel, Harrington: A Story of True Love was published.  They would not meet again until two years later in Washington.  This was when Whitman traveled to Washington to look for his brother George in military hospitals; he had been wounded there in the Battle of Fredericksburg. 

O’Connor invited Whitman into his home and they quickly became friends and O’Connor an enthusiastic of Whitman’s poetry.  For five months Whitman lived with O’Connor and his family and after that for another ten years he was a regular guest in the O’Connor home.  During that time O’Connor helped Whitman get a job as a clerk in the Indian Affairs Bureau of the Department of Interior (1865).  It was not long before the Secretary of the Interior James Harlan fired Whitman due to moral character of Leaves of Grass.  O’Connor found this was his first major opportunity to defend Whitman.

O’Connor then risked his own career when he did two things; regained Whitman a governmental position and assail the forces of censorship in defense of Leaves of Grass.  To do this he needed to go to his friend Assistant Attorney General James Speed.  Here O’Connor said that he would not interfere and Speed chooses to hire Whitman who held that job until 1874.  Whitman only left his position in 1874 due to his health.  The second thing that O’Connor did was to publish a 46-page pamphlet, The Good Grey Poet: A Vindication in 1866, which criticized Harlan and other Whitman critics. 

O’Connor favored liberal and noble causes.  Whitman and O’Connor often debated efficacy of external, socially-imposed reform as opposed to internal, personally motivated reform.  This did cause a problem in 1872 when Whitman walked out on a debate on Charles Sumner’s war policies and Reconstruction.  This was one in which O’Connor supported and Whitman opposed.  Whitman left and Ellen M. Tarr O’Connor (William’s wife), defended him.  O’Connor held such resentment towards both Whitman and his wife that he left her.  He would visit his daughter and send his wife his government check he did not live with her again until the near end of his life and this was because he needed her to take care of him.  This was the end of their close friendship.  They did have a reunion in 1882 and after that O’Connor allowed Whitman’s friend Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke to reprint Good Grey Poet in his biography of Whitman.  O’Connor also gave Bucke an introductory 25-page letter which praised Whitman and his poetry.

Peter Doyle is said to have been born on June 3, 1843, in Limerick City, Ireland.  There was a lot of mystery that surrounded the birth date of Doyle.  He used to claim that it was one date and his death certificate claimed another, however when Dr. S. C. O’ Mahony of the Limerick Regional Archives found Doyle’s baptism records.  Doyle’s family moved to America in 1852 around the age of 8.  He emigrated here with his mother and his brothers, John, James, and Edward.  This we know for their names can be found on a passenger list for the vessel William Patten.  It was said that his father and one other brother had come to America earlier that year.  Sadly it is thought that his sisters Elizabeth and Mary were tragic victims of the Great Hunger the hit Ireland late 1840’s.  Their names are never shown on any vessel passenger lists.  The Doyle’s spent the first few years in America living in Alexandria, Virginia.    Doyle’s family then moved to Richmond, Virginia when the Depression started. 

When the War broke out Doyle entered the military.  Doyle is shown to have enlisted April 25, 1861 with the Richmond Fayette Artillery.  Here he serves with them for seventeen months and was discharged on November 7, 1862.  Doyle was discharged from the military but not before being wounded.  Doyle was trying to head north, as he tried to cross Federal lines he was captured by Union forces, becoming a prisoner of war.  He was captured on April 8, 1863 and put in Carroll Prison in Washington, DC and was held until May 11, 1863. 

Doyle then gets his first job with the Washington Navy yard as a Smith’s helper in December 1863.  He held this job from December 1863 until June 1865.  During this time he lived with his brother Francis Michael and his wife.  It was also during this time that Peter Doyle took on a second job as a horsecar conductor with the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company.  This is where Doyle met Whitman.  They were an unlikey match both they had a connection.  It is said that Doyle was drawn to Whitman at once.  Doyle stated that, “We were familiar at once—I put my hand on his knee—we understood.  Whitman did not get out at the end of the trip—in fact he went all the way back with me.  Doyle thinks the year is 1866.  From that time on we were the biggest sort of friends.”  It is said though that the year Whitman and Doyle met was actually early 1865.

Whitman and Doyle would be very close until Whitman moves to Camden, New Jersey in 1873 due to his first stroke.  Their romantic friendship that they shared was celebrated in Whitman’s “Calamus” poems and embodied the “love of comrades”.  The thirty-year friendship between Whitman and Doyle had produced a legacy of loving letters from the older Whitman to his younger companion. 

Talcott Williams was born in Abeih, Turkey in 1849.  He was the son of Congregational Missionaries.  He and his family moved to America where Williams became an American journalist and educator.  Williams graduated from Amherst college in Massachusetts.  Williams worked for the Philadelphia Press for thirty years.  It is thought that Williams and Whitman became friends in 1882.  This is thought due to a letter from Whitman to William O’Connor.  Williams helped Whitman in a variety of ways over several years.  Williams was one of several people who helped buy Whitman his horse and carriage in September 1885.

Years of the Modern

Mirages

More experiences and sights, stranger, than you'd think for;
Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset,
Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in
plain sight,
Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts,
(Account for it or not--credit or not--it is all true,
And my mate there could tell you the like--we have often confab'd
about it,)
People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be,
Farms and dooryards of home, paths border'd with box, lilacs in corners,
Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons,
Glum funerals, the crape-veil'd mother and the daughters,
Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,
Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,
Now and then mark'd faces of sorrow or joy,
(I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)
Show'd to me--just to the right in the sky-edge,
Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.

The Bolton Group was formed in 1886 by Tom France, who wanted to create a local branch of the Social Democratic Federation in his home town, Bolton, England. The original group had thirty members and met at Tom France’s house. In the early 1890’s the Bolton socialists rented a place in Back Cheapside and opened the town’s first Socialist Club. They served beer, established a library, and held regular meetings, often with well know guest speakers. In 1898 the local branches of the Independent Labor Party and the Social Democratic Party were combined to create the Bolton Socialist Party. In 1905 Tom France and others set up a Bolton Social Hall Ltd, which helped them raise money to buy a house, which is still the location of the Socialist Club today. After the first World War the Bolton Socialist Party began to fade away, losing members to the communist party and the Labor Party, however the Party was never formally disbanded.

Whitman and the Bolton Group

The Bolton group were  devoted followers of Whitman and set up the Whitman Fellowship, and often referred to themselves as his disciples. Whitman never visited Britain, but he did develop close ties with Bolton through correspondences with J. W. Wallace and John Johnston. Both men visited Walt Whitman in America, and Johnston published the diaries he kept of his experiences as Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890- 1891.

The Bolton Group Today:

While the heyday of the Bolton group has long since past the Bolton group continues to act as forum for the discussion of today’s political problems in relation to socialism. They sponsor weekly events as well as a newsletter through which they help to continue the growth socialist political activism. They also continue on with the legacy of their founders by continuing to promote the work of Walt Whitman. Every year on the last Saturday in May close to Walt Whitman’s birthday members of the Bolton group as well as admirers of Whitman’s poetry come together to walk through the streets of Bolton in celebration of Whitman. This walk consists of members following a circular route along the streets of Bolton during which they stop to recite Whitman’s poetry and drink from the “loving cup”. The “loving cup” is a three-handled cup that was presented to the Bolton group by Whitmanites of the United States in a show of camaraderie. While the original cup is no longer used as it was donated to the Bolton Museum a new “loving cup” has been commissioned to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the walk.

Eugene V. Debs, a prominent socialist, union leader, and once presidential candidate for the American Socialist party (receiving his nomination in jail), acknowledged Whitman as an influence upon his political ideology. To illuminate Debs’ connection to Whitman, it is best to start with their mutual friend, Horace Traubel, who “is best known as the author of a nine-volume biography of Whitman’s final four years” (Folsom). He transcribed many conversations he had with Whitman, which often focused on politics and, specifically, socialism.

Traubel was born in Camden in 1858 to a father who was a printer by trade and a fan of Leaves of Grass. Traubel shared his father’s appreciation for Whitman’s poetry, and when the poet moved to Camden in 1873, the young man befriended him, and they developed a close friendship over the next twenty years. Throughout their friendship, Traubel “often tried to convince his mentor that America’s democratic promise could only be realized through socialism” (Garman 90). Whitman warned Traubel, however, that his socialism was too radical; the two never agreed politically, and although Whitman’s socialism “was a pliable as the poet himself,” Traubel contributed to perpetuating a much more radical posthumous socialist legacy for Whitman than the poet had supported in his lifetime. (Folsom). In 1890, Traubel founded a monthly called The Conservator, which was devoted to reporting Progressive reform organizations, and to keeping Whitman’s works alive. “In virtually every issue there would be essays on Whitman, reviews of books about Whitman, digests of comments relating to Whitman, advertisements for books by and about Whitman. Often, Whitman would be presented as a kind of proto-Ethical Culture thinker” (Folsom). Traubel often attempted to “connect his idol (Whitman) to Eugene V Debs’ Socialist party” in the publication (Garman 92). Accordingly, Debs often wrote for The Conservator, acknowledging Whitman as one of his primary influences (Bussell).

Born and raised in the Midwest, “his fight against capitalism was inspired as much by Tom Paine, Walt Whitman and Wendell Phillips as it was by Karl Marx” (Platt). Debs was imprisoned for his activism several times throughout his life, arrested for his involvement in the Pullman Strike, and later convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking out against World War I (Robertson). He was later pardoned by President Harding, and died in a sanitarium.

Debs’ letters were later collected and published; his own words about Whitman’s influence upon his politics speak for themselves:

2-13-1908 EVD, Terre Haute, to Stephen [Reynolds]. I have been East. Agree with your letter about organizing; have an article about that in a recent Appeal. We have to do more than talk Socialism– must get our machine in shape for political action. Will get a list of Indiana workers for you from Comrade Wayland. Will try to carry out your suggestion that Appeal discuss organization weekly. Being in West Virginia reminded me of John Brown. You are doing an immortal service which Old Walt [Whitman] would applaud. TLS 2p E (http://www.indianahistory.org/)

Works Cited

Bussel, Alan. “In Defense of Freedom: Horace L. Traubel and the Conservator.”

1974. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED096678&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED096678

“Eugene V Debs Papers, 1881-1940.” Indianahistory.org. 2004.

http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/SC0493.html#CATALOGING

Folsom, Ed. “With Whitman in Camden.” University of Iowa. 1996.

http://www.wlbentley.com/wwic/WWICfore.html

Platt, Pam. “Eugene V. Debs: The Hoosier Socialist. Courier Journal. November

2009. http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091129/COLUMNISTS10/911290315/Pam-Platt-%7C-Eugene-V.-Debs–The-Hoosier-Socialist

Robertson, Michael. “The Gospel According to Horace: Horace Traubel And The

Walt Whitman Fellowship.” Mickel Street Review v 16. http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/archives/Issue%2016/documents.htm

Eugene V. Debs, a prominent socialist, union leader, and once presidential candidate for the American Socialist party (receiving his nomination in jail), acknowledged Whitman as an influence upon his political ideology. To illuminate Debs’ connection to Whitman, it is best to start with their mutual friend, Horace Traubel, who “is best known as the author of a nine-volume biography of Whitman’s final four years” (Folsom). He transcribed many conversations he had with Whitman, which often focused on politics and, specifically, socialism.

Traubel was born in Camden in 1858 to a father who was a printer by trade and a fan of Leaves of Grass. Traubel shared his father’s appreciation for Whitman’s poetry, and when the poet moved to Camden in 1873, the young man befriended him, and they developed a close friendship over the next twenty years. Throughout their friendship, Traubel “often tried to convince his mentor that America’s democratic promise could only be realized through socialism” (Garman 90). Whitman warned Traubel, however, that his socialism was too radical; the two never agreed politically, and although Whitman’s socialism “was a pliable as the poet himself,” Traubel contributed to perpetuating a much more radical posthumous socialist legacy for Whitman than the poet had supported in his lifetime. (Folsom). In 1890, Traubel founded a monthly called The Conservator, which was devoted to reporting Progressive reform organizations, and to keeping Whitman’s works alive. “In virtually every issue there would be essays on Whitman, reviews of books about Whitman, digests of comments relating to Whitman, advertisements for books by and about Whitman. Often, Whitman would be presented as a kind of proto-Ethical Culture thinker” (Folsom). Traubel often attempted to “connect his idol (Whitman) to Eugene V Debs’ Socialist party” in the publication (Garman 92). Accordingly, Debs often wrote for The Conservator, acknowledging Whitman as one of his primary influences (Bussell).

Born and raised in the Midwest, “his fight against capitalism was inspired as much by Tom Paine, Walt Whitman and Wendell Phillips as it was by Karl Marx” (Platt). Debs was imprisoned for his activism several times throughout his life, arrested for his involvement in the Pullman Strike, and later convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking out against World War I (Robertson). He was later pardoned by President Harding, and died in a sanitarium.

Debs’ letters were later collected and published; his own words about Whitman’s influence upon his politics speak for themselves:

2-13-1908 EVD, Terre Haute, to Stephen [Reynolds]. I have been East. Agree with your letter about organizing; have an article about that in a recent Appeal. We have to do more than talk Socialism– must get our machine in shape for political action. Will get a list of Indiana workers for you from Comrade Wayland. Will try to carry out your suggestion that Appeal discuss organization weekly. Being in West Virginia reminded me of John Brown. You are doing an immortal service which Old Walt [Whitman] would applaud. TLS 2p E  http://www.indianahistory.org/)

Works Cited

Bussel, Alan. “In Defense of Freedom: Horace L. Traubel and the Conservator.”

1974. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED096678&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED096678

“Eugene V Debs Papers, 1881-1940.” Indianahistory.org. 2004.

http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/SC0493.html#CATALOGING

Folsom, Ed. “With Whitman in Camden.” University of Iowa. 1996.

http://www.wlbentley.com/wwic/WWICfore.html

Platt, Pam. “Eugene V. Debs: The Hoosier Socialist. Courier Journal. November

2009. http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091129/COLUMNISTS10/911290315/Pam-Platt-%7C-Eugene-V.-Debs–The-Hoosier-Socialist

Robertson, Michael. “The Gospel According to Horace: Horace Traubel And The

Walt Whitman Fellowship.” Mickel Street Review v 16. http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/archives/Issue%2016/documents.htm

Hope you like it!

Hope you like it!

1
A SONG of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?
those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground
and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you.

Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds
out of your friends’ mouths?
No, the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words,
(In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s,
well-shaped, natural, gay,
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of
shame.)

Air, soil, water, fire-those are words,
I myself am a word with them-my qualities interpenetrate with
theirs-my name is nothing to them,
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would
air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?

A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,
sayings, meanings,
The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,
are sayings and meanings also.

The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth,
The masters know the earth’s words and use them more than audible
words.

Amelioration is one of the earth’s words,
The earth neither lags nor hastens,
It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the
jump,
It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as
much as perfections show.

The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,
The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal’d
either,
They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print,
They are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly,
Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter,
I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you?
To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I?

(Accouche! accouchez!
Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?
Will you squat and stifle there?)

The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.

The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself,
possesses still underneath,
Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the
wail of slaves,
Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young
people, accents of bargainers,
Underneath these possessing words that never fall.

To her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never
fail,
The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail and reflection
does not fall,
Also the day and night do not fall, and the voyage we pursue does
not fall.

Of the interminable sisters,
Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,
Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger
sisters,
The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.

With her ample back towards every beholder,
With the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of age,
Sits she whom I too love like the rest, sits undisturb’d,
Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her
eyes glance back from it,
Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none,
Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.

Seen at hand or seen at a distance,
Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,
Duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion,
Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances
of those who are with them,
From the countenances of children or women or the manly countenance,
From the open countenances of animals or from inanimate things,
From the landscape or waters or from the exquisite apparition of the
sky,
From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them,
Every day in public appearing without fall, but never twice with the
same companions.

Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and
sixty-five resistlessly round the sun;
Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and
sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they.

Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading,
Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, forever withstanding, passing,
carrying,
The soul’s realization and determination still inheriting,
The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,
No balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking,
Swift, glad, content, unbereav’d, nothing losing,
Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account,
The divine ship sails the divine sea.

2
Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and
liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the
past and present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another-not one,
Not one can grow for another-not one.

The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him-it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress
not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or
the indication of his own.

3
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall
be complete,
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains
jagged and broken.

I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those
of the earth,
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the
theory of the earth,
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of
the earth.

I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which
responds love,
It is that which contains itself, which never invites and never
refuses.

I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,
All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the
earth,
Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the
earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot
touch.

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,
It is always to leave the best untold.

When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot,
My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,
My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
I become a dumb man.

The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow, all or any is best,
It is not what you anticipated, it is cheaper, easier, nearer,
Things are not dismiss’d from the places they held before,
The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before,
Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as
before,
But the soul is also real, it too is positive and direct,
No reasoning, no proof has establish’d it,
Undeniable growth has establish’d it.

4
These to echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls,
(If they did not echo the phrases of souls what were they then?
If they had not reference to you in especial what were they then?)

I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells
the best,
I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

Say on, sayers! sing on, singers!
Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!
Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost,
It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use,
When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall
appear.

I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall,
I swear to you they will understand you and justify you,
The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses
all and is faithful to all,
He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you
are not an iota less than they,
You shall be fully glorified in them.

WW Video in Camden reading

Abstract: Throughout the semester, I used the FlipCams to film the sun rising over the Potomac, walking to and from school, to work, on my way back from brother’s house in Westmoreland, just life. Some of the footage is from my own camera that does small, short videos. There are three pictures I used from google images and one from Facebook; the Korean conflict memorial (from Facebook), a photo of a soldier in Vietnam, a photo of a Middle-eastern man holding an automatic gun, the infamous photo of the little girl running who had napalm on her back, and picture of Whitman’s frontispiece. I used a few videos from Youtube which I converted using vixy.net. The videos include the mob scene (which is spliced into three different spots of the cinepoem), the bomb blowing up at 4:43, the homeless person digging for food at 4:45, footage of Bloody Sunday (London) at 4:49, the three children laughing at 4:53, footage of Devil’s Marbleyard in the Blue Ridge Parkway (which I have been there, but I did not shoot it) at 4:57. I selected to use one band, The Verve, and already had the music, so I just took it from my iTunes library and added it into my iMovie production. The song at  the beginning of the cinepoem is Lucky Man and the song ending the poem is Bittersweet Symphony.

Works Cited

“37 Years Later, Girl in Vietnam War Photo Spreads Hope.” Web. 10 Dec 2009. <boards.library.trutv.com/ showthread.php?t=294622>.

“children laughing.” Youtube. Web. 10 Dec 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4h8f38IaZU>.

“Bloody Sunday, 30.1.1972.” Youtube. Web. 10 Dec 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuBaAzH7Kkw&feature=related>.

“Fred Phelps supporters attacked by mob.” Youtube. Web. 10 Dec 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrFVjg79_iM>.

“view from Devils Marbleyard in the early morning.” Youtube. Web. 10 Dec 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5sG9pOju0M>.

Whitman, Commercialism, and the Digital Age;

What does this mean for Whitman?

Today’s culture is centered on technology; literature and education are fighting to stay current. Gone are the days when families watched the sunset or sat on the porch after dinner to watch nature happen as their night’s entertainment. Also, gone is the age in which college classes are almost strictly taught by stuffy professors in front of simple blackboards, and with students writing not typing. Our seminar on Walt Whitman is a testament to the new age of education and that it is effective. Therefore, college has maintained its purpose and is still gradually changing for the future of collegiate education. Literature has amazingly survived as well, despite the odds of television, the internet, and radio; wait, not only has literature survived, it has evolved. The vessel of literature may have changed, the new technology has created another layer to analyze, but the message and meaning is still current and powerful.

The media world and literature have merged, most noticeably, in a commercial sense. Combining poetry to advertising, such as Langston Hughes’ poem A Dream Deferred used in a 2008 Nike advertising campaign, or creating movies based on renowned novels, like Pride and Prejudice in 2005, provide a transition of literature to the twenty-first century.

Walt Whitman is recognized as the culmination of patriotism, the voice of America and its culture. Through the different versions of Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman shed his skins and it is easy to see him evolve through with the augmentations he made in each edition of Leaves of Grass. However, when he died in 1892, it would seem that the changes in tone and voice died with him. Walt was dead, and Leaves of Grass would carry on, but it could not vary in tone anymore. However, this proves to be a shortsighted claim when the medium of Whitman is changing from wood pulp to computer chips, when the words on the paper turn into commercials seen by pixels through the computer chips. The changing of the medium has brought criticism and mixed emotions about the smooth (or failed) translation of Whitman’s message that is being reintroduced to a more 21^st century-friendly medium. This evolution runs the risk of the works loosing pieces of their integrity, meaning, and being dehumanized.

In the summer of 2009, the denim company, Levi’s, took on an advertising campaign that features Whitman’s poems America and Pioneers! O Pioneers! “Whitman is an involuntary spokes-celebrity here” and the lack of control he has over peoples perception of his works (for instance, having them paired with video clips he did not choose) creates palpable tension. (Stevenson) The counterargument is the idea of simply getting Whitman to the masses, the route or direction does not matter. However, the most pertinent question is “who is using who”? Is Levi’s using Walt Whitman or is Walt Whitman using Levi’s?

When answering the first part of the question, Levi’s is using Walt Whitman, especially in the commercial that uses a supposed recording of Walt Whitman reading four lines from America. Yet, the message of the commercial is one that’s distinctly anti-capitalism. Ironically, capitalism rests on advertising and commercialism to keep the capitalist-cycle going round. From the first 15 seconds to 18 seconds of the commercial, it portrays a CEO look-alike being chauffeured in a slick town car, then he is behind a dark desk in front of a large, one-paned window that shows a cityscape with skyscraper-type architecture. Both times we see the CEO, he seems disgruntled and worried; this dark play on America’s uncomfortable state is troubling. With the market down and the war on terrorism a black hole, Whitman pops through the speakers and reminds us that there is a light at the end of the tunnel; there is beauty in us despite our plight. Thus, at the end of the commercial, the viewer is left with the sounds and sights of the ad. After 58 seconds of provocative, beautiful, and patriotic scenes, the last two seconds show a red Levi’s emblem while a definite gunshot is heard after fireworks are shown booming and lighting the screen.

When the viewer thinks back to the commercial, after almost a minute of Whitman’s reading accompanied with beautiful cinematography, Levi’s motive is to get the viewer to feel inspired enough to buy their specific brand of jeans (again, that capitalist pull, quite anti-Whitman). The demographic that Levi’s caters to are ages 18-34, most people beyond or younger than this may not feel the pull which the commercialized cinepoem seeks to enforce. The scenes of the commercial show people of all ages, from all walks of life, running, jumping, laughing, and watching other people; it is powerful in showing human nature and the unpredictable way of life. In Levi’s print campaign, they are using a tagline “specific to the economy, including ‘Will work for better times’.” (Clifford B1) Obviously, if the audience does feel the pull, then the capitalist game comes full circle and the people feel good because if they are buying something for “better times”, then the better times will be here soon. Right? The completion of that cycle, no matter how “American” capitalism seems, is not the America that Whitman was advocating or would be proud of.

Granted, Whitman’s own feelings towards commercialism are scattered and unclear. Whitman “himself had permanently mixed feelings on the subject of sales” and whether he should censor himself or make more “socially appropriate” moves in his own commercialism. (Earnhart 192) The lack of direction is unsettling. Whitman was very aware and keen of the business aspect of the written word; after all, he wrote his own raving reviews to help sell Leaves of Grass. However, because the advertising world has changed so drastically since Whitman’s time, it is hard to determine if any action using his works is justified. The answer to that question lies in the context of what company would use Whitman and to what means.

Having the Whitman seminar in a digital, evolving capacity is parallel to the way Levi’s, Starbucks, and other companies have digitalized and reintroduced Whitman. In the classroom, and classroom blog spanning four different college campuses, it combines traditional, meaningful verbal discourse and analysis with a new digitalized way of learning. This would be comparable to watching a cinepoem of a selected reading from Leaves of Grass instead a traditional reading and analysis of the same reading featured in the cinepoem. The traditional reading can provide a more personal experience and relationship with Whitman. The traditional classroom experience is somewhat stagnant, rarely do field trips happen outside of high school, but part of the multi-sensory class experience includes travel, correspondence with other students studying the same concept. The way the classroom experience leaves you with multiple understandings and levels of analysis, a cinepoem can alter, enhance, and even delude your perception of the poem. If a poem is being used only in the setting of a classroom to enhance the experience of the students, it still alters the original perception the student had of the poem. Thus, even if there is no commercial motivation in creating a cinepoem, the only original perception of a work of literature can be from the readers actively reading it for themselves. Anything other than that is tainting the original meaning of the work for the reader; which is never the intent of the author; especially when after their death, their work is used in something they never intended. Even in an innocent cinepoem, a reader’s perception of what Whitman was trying to convey could be drastically different from what they viewed in the cinepoem.

In conclusion, the digital classroom is valuable for creating a multi-sensory experience and provides layers for the students to delve into. On the other hand, a cinepoem reflects too much of what the director interprets and not the untainted message the poet was trying to convey in their work. If Whitman had been able to create his own cinepoems, or another type of multi-sensory experience, it is hard to believe that there would be a better way to interpret his poems other than his original text. Calamus and Drum-taps are both very personal works that almost feel invasive when imagining the images he describes and uses. Oddly enough, the invasive feeling means Whitman succeeded; how readers of his works come to care for him, his first person point-of-view creates a relationship with the reader that makes he or she feel like they could have been Whitman. All the feelings and emotions from the text of Leaves of Grass, without the help of a cinepoem or technology, still creates a plethora of emotion in the reader. Cinepoems are creating another layer for literature, but it is not yet obvious how long that will last. It is safe to say that the test of a truly good poem is when it can stand on its own for 150 years. Lucky for Whitman, it’s been almost 160 years since 1855’s fresh Leaves of Grass.

Works Cited

Clifford, Stephanie. “In New Campaigns, Spots Take On a Rosier Hue .” New York Times 12 Oct 2009, Tues: B1. Print.

Earnhart, Brady. “The Good Gray Poet and the Quaker Oats Man: Speaker as Spokescharacter in Leaves of Grass.” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 24. (2007): 179-200. Web. 8 Dec 2009. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/wwqr/pdf/anc.00305.pdf>.

Stevenson, Seth. “Walt Whitman Thinks You Need New Jeans.” Slate (2009): n. pag. Web. 8 Dec 2009. <http://www.slate.com/id/2233597/>.

Wignot, Jamila, Prod. Walt Whitman. Dir. Mark Zwonitzer.” Perf. Chris, Cooper. PBS.org: 2008, Web. 8 Dec 2009. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/whitman/program/>.

“The Sleepers”

“D

“Song of Myself”

“The Sleepers”

“D

“Song of Myself”

Continuities

By Walt Whitman

1819-1892

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form–no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space–ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold–the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

Walt Whitman Jr. is inarguably the most famous member of his family. However, certain primary source documents show that the rest of the Whitman clan was as colorful and intriguing as America’s most celebrated poet. Walt Whitman’s immediate family consisted of parents Walter Sr. and Louisa (nee Van Velsor); younger sisters Mary and Hannah, elder brother Jesse; younger brothers Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Edward. This post will focus on the relationships between Walt and the three youngest of his four younger brothers.

George Washington Whitman was born on November 28, 1829 and died in 1901. The earliest significant fact that exists about him is that in 1838 and the age of eight he worked at Walt’s short-lived newspaper The Long Islander as an assistant. Besides this brief job, not much else is known about George’s early life. However, we do know that George served as a soldier for the Union Army during the American Civil War, and that he was the only Whitman to do so. He enlisted in April 1861 and after only one hundred days into service he was promoted to sergeant major.  On September 30, 1864, George was captured in Virginia and incarcerated in several prisons in the state (About Whitman).

During George’s prison sentence, Walt worked to free his brother in the best way he knew how: writing. He wrote various letters to the press pleading for his younger brother’s release. One such plea was printed in the December 27, 1864 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle, along with an exposé about the treatment of the war captives. The letter was effective, and George was released, returning to his military duties after a brief furlough back home in Brooklyn. He ended his distinguished career as a lieutenant colonel (Gohdes, 144).

Many letters and correspondences from George’s time in the army have survived, most of which he addressed to his mother Louisa, to whom both Walt and he were very close. However, we do know that he wrote at least one letter to his famous brother:

Dear Brother.

I returned to the Regt last night (I have been away on Court Martial you know) and found your letter of July 5^th and Mothers, and Hannahs, that you sent me at the same time. Poor Hann I feel quite worried about her and have just written to her saying that Mother and I will come on to see her in the cours of three or four weeks. Walt I suppose you know that we are going to be Mustered out of service, we are making out the Muster Rolls now, and we expect to be in New York in about 10 days. I have been over to Washing ton two or three times since I saw you, but it was always in the afternoon (after C.M. hours) so that I could not get up to your place in time to see you. Walt come over and see us,  the stage leaves Willards twice every day, and brings you right to Camp, so jump in and come over. 4   I have written to Mother to day to let her know that I am coming home, and telling her to get ready for a trip to Vermont. I am sleepy so good night Walt.

G.W.W.

Thomas Jefferson Whitman, more commonly called “Jeff”, was born in the summer of 1833 and died in 1890.  Fourteen years Walt’s junior, he was closer to his famous brother than any of their other siblings, fondly referred to by the poet as “a real brother” and “understander” (Pollack, 107). At age fifteen he traveled with Walt to New Orleans to work as an office boy for the Crescent, a newspaper for which his elder brother wrote. It was during the journey to Louisiana that the two brothers would bond. However, their time in New Orleans was short-lived; Jeff was often sick with dysentery, an infectious diarrhea, and it was this illness, along with homesickness as well as a clash between Walt and the editors of the Crescent (particularly over his opposition to slavery) that compelled the two Whitmans to return north (About Whitman).

In 1855, after marrying Martha Mitchell, nicknamed “Mattie”, Jeff and Walt started to grow apart, and the elder brother felt that he was no longer very important to the younger (Pollack, 108). However, Jeff continued to support his brother both financially and emotionally. The former capacity became even more possible in 1867 when he became the chief engineer of a waterworks business in St. Louis. But more importantly, Jeff wrote to Walt frequently and for all his life. Many correspondences between the brothers exist. Their last known exchange occurred via telegram on May 31, 1889, Walt’s seventieth birthday; however, the last known letter is dated July 14, 1888:

My dear Walt

I was very very glad to get a letter from you yesterday. 1   I have been quite worried about you, wondering how things were going  I am more than glad to hear that you are holding your own

I am up here on a question of the disposal of the sewage of the city  Davis and Flad 2   are associated with me and we have been confabing about a week—Yesterday they went away—leaving me here to make surveys etc

I am going down to Chicago in the morning to meet some people—will be back here on Wednesday

I hope dear Walt that you are gaining again—I was very sorry that I could not get back to Camden—but I had to go with my Committee to Louisville

Yours affectionately Jeff

Edward, the youngest Whitman sibling, born in 1835, holds the distinction not having been named after a family member or an esteemed political figure. But what really marked him as an outsider was his mental retardation. Described by historians as “feeble-minded and crippled”, Edward suffered from an early bout of scarlet fever suspected to have impaired his mental and physical capabilities (Gohdes, 183). However, the degree of his retardation still perplexes historians. Letters written by families explain that the adult Edward showed some agency by going to church alone, completing errands, and transmitting messages (Pollack, 200). He and his famous brother were not particularly close, though Walt did help pay for his medical expenses once he started to make money from his writing. He also feared that their father Walter Sr.’s alcoholism might have, in some way, contributed to the disability (Pollack, 22). However, Walt did write to his brother occasionally:

Dear Ed:

It is pretty sad days just now for me here—our dear brother Jeff has died last Tuesday at St Louis, Missouri of typhoid pneumonia. Jessie went on first train soon as she heard he was sick, but poor Jeff was dead when she arrived—George has gone on—(must have got there this morning)—Hannah is poorly at Burlington, Vermont, but gets about the house. Very cold here. I am still about (not much about for I can only move by help) but have the grip badly, & bladder trouble. I often think of you and hope you have comfortable times—I have heard you have a good kind attendant who has been there some time in the asylum—I wish he would stop here at 328 Mickle & see me a few minutes when he is in Camden. My best respects to Mr and Mrs. Currie—My love to you—

Walt Whitman

Edward died in the asylum in 1902.

Works Cited

Gohdes, Clarence and Rollo G. Silver, eds. Faint clews & indirections; manuscripts of Walt Whitman and his family. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1949.

Pollak, Vivian R. The Erotic Whitman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Price, Kenneth M. and Ed Folsom. “About Walt Whitman”. Modern American Poetry. December 8, 2009 <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/whitman/bio.htm>.