In Whitman’s piece “This Compost,” we see a different side of the famous writer. Where he often talks about the body and nature as something to celebrate – or connect with – here we see him wrestling with the idea of it. Where Whitman is normally excited about bodies and people, as in “Leaves of Grass” when he considers the leaves as the people who have passed, their stories growing out of the ground in blades of grass, we now see him startled. This piece, in juxtaposition with the others we have read and studied, works to broaden our understanding of Whitman. We have seen him in a place of authority, often telling his readers what to believe or think of what he writes on. But now, we are seeing a more stripped down version of the poet we thought we knew, and it makes for a very interesting read.
Whitman begins by writing, “Something startles me where I thought I was safest/ I withdraw from the still woods I loved/ I will not go now on the pastures to walk” (495). All of the things that Whitman has so aggressively loved and accounted for are not frightening him. He begins to question what he once believed to be true, writing, “O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken/ How can you be alive you growths of spring/ How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots/ orchards, grain?” (495). Whitman is possibly unraveling here – wondering if what he has thought of as truth has actually been such. This first stanza is perhaps working to raise our anxieties about what we have already read by Whitman. What if the grass is not extensions of people who have passed? What if there is no greater beauty in the nature around us? What if what we have believed is actually not truth at all?
Perhaps, Whitman does this on purpose, placing us right on the edge of our seats in anticipation for his second stanza. Where Whitman often presents nature and humanity as one entity, here we see him separating the two and giving a multitude of power to nature alone. He writes, “The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead” (496). He continues writing, “It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions/ It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless/ successions of diseas’d corpses” (496). From these lines, it is evident that he sees nature as something that is saving us from the “diseas’d corpses” that threaten our well-being. From death has come the beauty of nature that surrounds us. Whitman writes, “That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard/ that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them/ poison me/ That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease” (496). Because of the power of nature, we are safe.
It is always interesting to read many poems from one poet, as you are almost always going to come across them questioning their own selves. It makes them seem less of a celebrity and more of a normal human being like us. For me, reading Whitman and seeing him portraying his different life stages through his work has made him more digestible and relatable. We have seen him write confidently about his thoughts on nature and humans being one, and we have believed his writings. We now are seeing him second guess his once confident beliefs, and we recognize that. Many times we do the same thing – we think we know what is happening or what we believe and then we come back to second-guess ourselves. It doesn’t make us wrong, it just makes us human. Whitman was human and I’m grateful to see these little bits and pieces of him come out through his writing.
Abrie,
It’s interesting to view “This Compost” in this way. Many times in English classes, we tend to study a few poems or selections from poets and authors and then quickly move on to another author. It is interesting to view this poem through the context of Walt Whitman’s other work and compare and contrast the overall feel of his work. It intrigues and perplexes me when I read Whitman’s work and see the sporadic – and sometimes disjointed – nature of his writing. Of course, every author’s writing style changes over time, but Whitman’s style seems to completely shatter and reform in his post-war work. Perhaps we are seeing a more humanistic version of Whitman after the war or perhaps he was always a humanistic figure just trying to be something more.
I fully support your closing comment regarding Whitman’s Humanity. I agree that this side of Whitman was a bit of a stark contrast to the poems we had been reading in the first few weeks of class. For some reason, even though the imagery here is rooted in the larger story of death and destruction of the Civil war, this side of Whitman was easy to connect with and sympathize with. Instead of being an aggressive, powerful and controlling voice like he sometimes is in his earlier poems, this side of whitman is very passive and understandable. He’s not trying to change anyone’s mind or take control of a situation by writing his side of it, he is simply reflecting on Mother Earth as a force outside of his control.
Great post–and comments. I agree that we see something different in poems like this, poems that I often think of as “crisis” poems where Whitman comes against something difficult, bigger than him, frightening, etc. He grapples with it, tries to justify it, and lets that anxiety linger. These are moments when Whitman does seem more human and humble. It’s a version of that more intimate self that Molly writes about in her own post on these two seemingly diametrically opposed Whitmans.