Archive | Uncategorized

Mark Doty’s “Letter to Walt Whitman” is one of the many pieces of literature composed as a response to Whitman himself. Many writers speak to Whitman in their works, and have for decades, but what stood out most to me in Doty’s address to Whitman was the direct and intimate tone he utilizes. Doty even […]

We find “Scented Herbage of My Breast” in the Calamus section of Leaves of Grass where we once again come in contact with the momentary Whitman, who appears in each poem to take a seat in the middle of a nature walk and report his musings. I admittedly had never heard the word “Calamus,” so […]

Martin Espada’s poem, “How We Could have Lived or Died this Way” really struck me as anti-Whitmanian. Although Espada seems to call upon Whitman in terms of form, his content challenges Whitman’s ideal vision of America and gives readers the harsh reality of today. In terms of form, I noticed Espada using similar catalogue stanzas, […]

With Ode to Walt Whitman, Neruda draws on the image of Walt Whitman as the prophet-bard to evoke the kind of liberating tradition with which Whitman the celebrant of an ideal democracy is often associated. He calls Whitman “the bard,” “nocturnal healer” who “dug up not only/ earth/ into light” but “unearthed/a man/ and the […]

“Ode to Walt Whitman” seems to be a sort of conversation the poet is having with himself. Lorca at once has affection for the boy trying on a wedding dress and rails against the “[f]aggots of the world, murderers of doves!” Federico Garcia Lorca was born in Spain in 1898, his country was predominantly Catholic […]

Something that stood out to me in our readings is the prominence of Walt Whitman’s hands, especially in “Salut au Monde” and Neruda’s “Ode to Walt Whitman”. Whitman begins Salut au Monde with “O take my hand Walt Whitman!” and continues to reference his hands throughout with his salutes, and concludes his poem with a salute […]

“Salut au Monde” introduces a novel Whitman in his illumination of societal confines. In general, Whitman describes America as all-encompassing, as it contains both the positive and the negative; in doing so, he gravitates towards this consistent message of man being capable of transcendence. Lines such as “I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on…fastened together with wrist-chains and ankle-chains” […]

The ocean as a fixture of nature is so important to this poem because it reflects a kind of helplessness and vulnerability that we don’t necessarily expect from Whitman’s work.  Whereas most references to nature in Whitman’s poetry allow for empowerment or at least harmonious coexistence between the human and nature, “As I Ebb’d with […]

Okay, so I spoke a little in class about how Walt Whitman’s work and his overall energies connect strongly to Kanye West’s. With that said, I think this conversation extends well beyond our Kanye case study, as proclaiming one’s own artistic authority has become a verbal paradigm in modern lyrical arts. Throughout history, some of […]

Blog 3 Reading Whitman’s prose in Democratic Vistas feels kind of odd– a bit like glimpsing the “man behind the curtain” and realizing his magic is not in some kind of heroic ability but rather in the fantasy of his vision. There is no tone of sweeping inclusiveness here, no ecstatic rapture at the common […]