Much of the course has focused on the reverberations that Whitman’s work has made throughout American literary tradition unto today. In Langston Hughes’ essay “The Ceaseless Rings of Walt Whitman” he states that Whitman remains relevant, “because the vast sweep of democracy is still incomplete even in America today, because revolutionaries seeking to break old […]
Author Archive | Elie
10 times Ben Lerner’s “10:04” was Totally Relatable
10 times Ben Learner’s “10:04” was Totally Relatable *Amidst a bunch of very unrelatable life experiences that may or may not have occurred in the very confusing timeline of 10:04 – appearing in order of appearance* When Ben Lerner hated Alex’s boyfriend and a petty Ben did his part to expose his obnoxious personality. […]
Queer Whitman in our 21st Century Lens
I often find myself asking the question of why no one of Whitman time seemed to grasp the fact that Whitman was queer or cared at all if they did know for that matter. Whitman was queer and wrote about it very explicitly in his many works which was a very taboo, uncommon, and largely […]
Two Sides of the American Coin: Whitman and Ortiz
Yesterday marked Christopher Columbus Day across the US. It is a deeply problematic day and Americans across the country have been moving to instead celebrate Indigenous people’s day, commemorating those that were a part of this land long before and after the genocide and horror inflicted upon them by colonization. This is an interesting coincidence […]
Community on the corner of 9th and Christian.
What first struck me about Ross Gay’s ‘To the fig tree on 9th and Christian’ was the fact that there is physically no actual fig tree on the corner of 9th and Christian street in Philadelphia. The second, was that the entire, sprawling poem is all one sentence. Possibly the longest sentence I’ve ever read […]
21st Century Mirages
Whitman’s ‘Mirages’ is an interesting and confusing poem as it is purposefully very misleading to the audience. It gives the reader the idea that the entire poem is false because is its title being ‘Mirages,’ a comforting figment of the imagination; something totally made up. However, he then prefaces it by noting that the poem […]
Now Finalé to the Shore’ Validating Structure in ‘So Long’
Whitman’s final poem in Leaves of Grass, So Long, is an interesting one often regarded as chaotic and unstructured, mimicking the end of a life. Whitman manifested himself so intensely and personified himself so much in his editions of Leaves of Grass that in this final poem, the death of his book translated to his […]
Optimism in ‘Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice’
Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice published in 1865 was one of the major poems in the Drum-Taps cluster of poems documenting the Civil War in America. This moment in American history was devastating and paradigm shifting, a realization and idea that Whitman delves into in many of the poems in this cluster. Many […]
Whitman Among American Myth
Whitman opens the preface of Leaves of Grass with the line “America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of casts or old religions.” (5) cites remembrance as a key factor in the poetic nature of the newly formed United States and […]