Author Archive | greenal

My paper focused on the connection between Walt Whitman’s Civil War Poetry and the Vietnam War Poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa. Both poets wrote about war, however, their experience with war was extremely different. Komunyakaa often refers to Whitman as an influence on his poetry but not directly in conjunction to his war poetry. I thought […]

For my project I will be researching the numerous connections in the poetry of Walt Whitman and Yusef Komunyakaa with a focus on Whitman’s effect on Komunyakaa’s Vietnam War poetry found in Dien Cai Dau. The influence of Whitman on Komunyakaa is wide spread. Both poets have an interest in the interconnectedness of humans, as […]

In Rankine’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” there is an amazing mix of prose, poetry, images, and dialogue that feels similar to Lerner’s 10:04 in many ways. Unlike Lerner, there is no direct reference to Whitman yet there are still many instances of Whitman’s energies. The mention of New York City always seems to be […]

The first few lines of Juliana Spahr’s poem “Tradition” focuses mainly on hands. This immediately made me think of the “Poem Written After September 11/2001” which obsesses over the spaces surrounding our hands. However, there is a difference in that “Tradition” seems more focused on our physical hand as well as the action of handing […]

While reading Ben Lerner’s 10:04, I found that there were many aspects that were undeniably Whitmanian. The places in which it is possible to find Whitman’s influence are numerous.  Right off the bat, the narrator even states that he wishes to write in a way that makes him “a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid” […]

I’m really interested in the Walt Whitman who nursed the wounded and played a role in the Civil War. “Wound-Dresser” Whitman is particularly interesting for multiple reasons. The dynamism of gentleness that is a part of his poetry and prose about the Civil War is extremely intriguing. In excerpts of “Specimen Days” Whitman delivers ice […]

For my Extending the Conversation piece in class today I will be looking at Suzanne Gardiner’s poem “Memorials” which can be found on page 69 in the Visiting Walt book. I picked this poem for several reasons but mostly because it presents an interesting twist on the elegiac themes from the poems we read for […]

Michael Gold’s Ode to Walt Whitman is at its most basic an explanation of how Whitman’s dreams for America have yet to come to fruition. Gold uses several stylistic elements in order to evoke Whitman within his ode. Formally, the numbered segments within the poem reference many of Whitman’s longer poems. While Gold uses shorter lines […]

The section of “Song of Myself” that stands out to me in particular is the sixth section where Whitman discusses grass. From the title of “Leaves of Grass” it is obvious that grass has some significance to Whitman. Within this section Whitman tries to grasp “What is the grass?” spawning from a child’s question. Whitman […]