Emily, Emily, Emily. Everyone thinks of her as the solitary spinster, lowering candy to the children outside her window, and perhaps that's true. In fact, perhaps it's sadly true. Her poems embrace solitude and silence to a large extent, but there is an equally large emphasis on listening, and on a kind of nebulous twinning or companionship that is often ill-defined and surprising. Take 709, "Publication -- is the Auction," in which the speaker is suddenly a "We." Plural thoughts? Thought and the person? A better example, perhaps, is "What mystery pervades a well!" (1400) She seeks a companion everywhere, perhaps looking for her reflection in the well, Narcissus-like. Then there's the grass. Then she admires the companionship of the sedge and the sea. But she ends alone, because nature is paradoxically unknowable.
It's always hard for me to talk about Song of Myself -- at this point I have way too many notes in my copy to think of transferring anything coherent into here. This time around, I saw a lot of Emerson and Thoreau that I didn't notice before, but Whitman's creation of system is not nearly as interesting as his creation of persona(e). Language's ability to represent and bound character seems at stake.
Quick question about Calamus: conventional wisdom tells us that in this section of Leaves of Grass, Whitman puts forward his poems of adhesiveness, or love of comrades (his gay poems, right?). W's speaking voice calls these his most baffling but most revealing poems (sounds like a riddle...). I was wondering if there is any way to disprove or discount Bloom's idea that these poems are more autoerotic than homoerotic. His connection with comrades never amounts to more than a look or a kiss at parting. The Louisiana live-oak, despite being a model for manly love, remains resolutely aloof from attachment, in an arid sociality from which the poet shrinks. Isn't it a bit too easy for the poet to declare that simple adhesiveness defeats solipsism? Can the blank in our own eyes be removed by a little man-love?
Drum-Taps cannot be as jingoistic and prosaic at it seems (especially in the early poems in the section). My desire not to read them that way led me to consider them recitatives dividing up the longer, more ambivalent, lyrical pieces (which would therefore function as arias). The recitatives themselves change in tone throughout Drum-Taps, becoming more and more ambivalent toward the end, and especially the last few in which Whitman contemplates the result of the Union victory (although these retain their prosaic quality). Then again, Whitman tells us he is composing a march for the Union: the successful march should probably contain as little ambiguity as possible. As usual, voice becomes a very interesting problem; are we to consider these arias and recitatives the products of a single speaking voice modulated through time or as a synchronic "picture of the nation"?
There's also a lot of urban/rural stuff going on in Drum-Taps. Urbanity becomes the site of engagement with national crises while rural areas represent retreat or a more solipsistic removal (recall Emerson on the need for the poet not to consider himself part of a protected class).
I know Betsy is big on Ethiopia Saluting the Colors, so maybe this is one about which we can talk. She reads this poem as a meditation on the effects of the liberation of the slaves, claiming that Whitman's imagination representes the occasion as "blear," or indistinct. I read it more as a process of looking for a reason or telos rather than an imagined future. The moment seems already here; the question is why or how we got here. (Could we compare this one to Race of Veterans and Whitman's play on "race," which is a term used by wine experts to speak about the soil from which the wine comes?)
More later on Cradle and Lilacs and Dickinson -- significant stage change upcoming.
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Emily, Emily, Emily. Everyone thinks of her as the solitary spinster, lowering candy to the children outside her window, and perhaps that's true. In fact, perhaps it's sadly true. Her poems embrace solitude and silence to a large extent, but there is an equally large emphasis on listening, and on a kind of nebulous twinning or companionship that is often ill-defined and surprising. Take 709, "Publication -- is the Auction," in which the speaker is suddenly a "We." Plural thoughts? Thought and the person? A better example, perhaps, is "What mystery pervades a well!" (1400) She seeks a companion everywhere, perhaps looking for her reflection in the well, Narcissus-like. Then there's the grass. Then she admires the companionship of the sedge and the sea. But she ends alone, because nature is paradoxically unknowable.
OK. Off to NJ, more later.
It's always hard for me to talk about Song of Myself -- at this point I have way too many notes in my copy to think of transferring anything coherent into here. This time around, I saw a lot of Emerson and Thoreau that I didn't notice before, but Whitman's creation of system is not nearly as interesting as his creation of persona(e). Language's ability to represent and bound character seems at stake.
Quick question about Calamus: conventional wisdom tells us that in this section of Leaves of Grass, Whitman puts forward his poems of adhesiveness, or love of comrades (his gay poems, right?). W's speaking voice calls these his most baffling but most revealing poems (sounds like a riddle...). I was wondering if there is any way to disprove or discount Bloom's idea that these poems are more autoerotic than homoerotic. His connection with comrades never amounts to more than a look or a kiss at parting. The Louisiana live-oak, despite being a model for manly love, remains resolutely aloof from attachment, in an arid sociality from which the poet shrinks. Isn't it a bit too easy for the poet to declare that simple adhesiveness defeats solipsism? Can the blank in our own eyes be removed by a little man-love?
Drum-Taps cannot be as jingoistic and prosaic at it seems (especially in the early poems in the section). My desire not to read them that way led me to consider them recitatives dividing up the longer, more ambivalent, lyrical pieces (which would therefore function as arias). The recitatives themselves change in tone throughout Drum-Taps, becoming more and more ambivalent toward the end, and especially the last few in which Whitman contemplates the result of the Union victory (although these retain their prosaic quality). Then again, Whitman tells us he is composing a march for the Union: the successful march should probably contain as little ambiguity as possible. As usual, voice becomes a very interesting problem; are we to consider these arias and recitatives the products of a single speaking voice modulated through time or as a synchronic "picture of the nation"?
There's also a lot of urban/rural stuff going on in Drum-Taps. Urbanity becomes the site of engagement with national crises while rural areas represent retreat or a more solipsistic removal (recall Emerson on the need for the poet not to consider himself part of a protected class).
I know Betsy is big on Ethiopia Saluting the Colors, so maybe this is one about which we can talk. She reads this poem as a meditation on the effects of the liberation of the slaves, claiming that Whitman's imagination representes the occasion as "blear," or indistinct. I read it more as a process of looking for a reason or telos rather than an imagined future. The moment seems already here; the question is why or how we got here. (Could we compare this one to Race of Veterans and Whitman's play on "race," which is a term used by wine experts to speak about the soil from which the wine comes?)
More later on Cradle and Lilacs and Dickinson -- significant stage change upcoming.
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