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 […]
Final Project Proposal: Photo Essay
“No man has been photographed more than I have” (Walt Whitman). According to Ed Folsom in his article, Photographs and Photographers, Walt Whitman was “the most photographed writer of the nineteenth century,” with over 130 portraits taken during his lifetime. Photography, then, was a crucial and integral piece of Whitman’s life, capturing his journey from […]
The Beats and Whitman
The United States during the 1960’s was a time of massive change for the country. The President being shot and the war overseas are just a couple of the issues being dealt with by Americans, and people were overwhelmed with the then current status of the country, and out of this came several movements; no […]
Reflections on the Making of Modern Manhatta
During the summer of 2019 I completed a short film for the final project in my Sight and Sound Filmmaking course at NYU. The projects needed to be in black and white, but could incorporate sound if we wanted. Inspired by the magnificence of the city of Manhattan, much like Walt Whitman was, I thought […]
Who is Walt Whitman? – A Critical Look at the Good Gray Poet in Popular and Academic Culture
Over the course of the semester, we have seen Walt Whitman through various lenses from academic culture. We have viewed Whitman through the lense of African Americans, Native Americans, Queer poets, and women, all with their varying degrees of disdain and praise for the controversial poet. We have also studied Whitman’s influence over popular culture […]
What Would Whitman Think?
Whitman has had a lasting impression on the American culture because of the way he imagined America; he saw it as a triumphant place of innovation, diversity, and natural beauty. We have journeyed with Whitman as he wrote throughout his life and rewrote and added to the manifesto that is Leaves of Grass. We have […]
Climate Change and Human Connectivity in Lerner’s 10:04
Walt Whitman has influenced many writers that have come after him. His style of writing, emphasis on human connection and the natural world and eagerness to relate to many different groups of people has translated into the modern world of literature, prose and poetry. Walt Whitman didn’t fit into the confinements of his time, and […]
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. […]
Echoes of Walt: Manhattan and The Good Gray Poet in Ben Lerner’s 10:04
From the cataloging that Whitman uses in order to carve a deeper meaning beneath his words, to the invasive beauty the city of Manhattan breathes into his work, it is no wonder that Ben Lerner in his book, 10:04, was drawn towards replicating the work of Walt. Just like Whitman does in poems like “City […]
10:04 and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
In his book 10:04, Ben Lerner takes a new approach to the novel with an extremely “metaphysical” plot where Lerner adapts a storyline from a short story in which the narrator is writing a novel about a person writing a novel. There are multiple levels of the story, where Lerner will seamlessly transition between which […]