Walt Whitman Yawp Poem and Henry David Thoreau – Flashcards

Self reliance, simplicity, allusion of progress

He wants the simplicity; He wants people to find themselves in their own ways

The whistle and racket of the Fitchburg Railroad

He is willing to go to great efforts to make himself the common element connecting these people.

The poem will help us anyway, and Whitman will wait to let us catch up.

Leaves of Grass

By the shore/by the sea

Yawp

• Thoreau lives in the woods because he thinks people live lives of quiet desperation • He wants people to find themselves in their own ways (his purpose of going into the woods wasn't for others to follow him) • He appreciates art • Related Quiz Questions o Thoreau makes an extensive list of everything he brings with him. What is missing? A pen/pencil/writing utensil

-Born in Concord in 1817 -Studied at Harvard -worked as a schoolmaster, but quit when he was forced to inflict corporal punishment on his students -worked as a handyman in Emerson's home -spent 2 years alone on Emerson's property at Walden Pond in a cabin he built himself

-Born in Long Island in 1819 to a working class family -left school at 11 and worked for newspapers in Brooklyn and Manhattan until he was 16 -At 17 he returned to Long Island and worked as a teacher -At 21 he moved back to New York City working for various newspapers and beginning to consider a career as a writer -In 1855, at 36, Whitman self publishes about 800 copies of Leaves of Grass -the book receives mixed reviews int he British and American press and sells poorly -Emerson privately praises the book, writing to Whitman, "I find it the most extraordinary piece of whit and wisdom that America has yet contributed" -Whitman put the living, breathing, sexual body at the center of much of his poetry

• Had brief, episodic, journalistic moments which explain his writing style o "Song of Myself" was a rejection of poetic norms and included a unique poetic persona (not just Whitman, but also a narrative 3rd person) • Roguish, working-class drunkard, possibly gay • Includes values of unity and wholeness in writing • Sees life as a journey • Thinks death isn't something to be afraid of • Wrote Leaves of Grass

pg 1330 -"Song of Myself" was originally titled "Poem of Walt Whitman, An American" -the poem's shifting title suggests something of what Whitman was about in this piece -most famous of Whitman's works and was one of the original 12 pieces in the first edition of "Leaves of Grass" -free blank verse (no rhyme) -composed more of vignettes than lists: he uses small, precisely drawn scenes to do his work here -he uses symbols and sly commentary to get at important issues -As Walt Whitman, the specific individual, melts away into the abstract "Myself," the poem explores the possibilities for communion between individuals. -Starting from the premise that "what I assume you shall assume" Whitman tries to prove that he both encompasses and is indistinguishable from the universe. (he suggest that we are all individuals but we have commonalities that "bridge"; we are all existing together) -An American epic that starts in the middle of the poet's life and loosely follows a quest pattern - In its catalogues of American life and its constant search for the boundaries of the self "Song of Myself" has much in common with classical epic. This epic sense of purpose is coupled with repose and passive perception. Since for Whitman the birthplace of poetry is in the self, the best way to learn about poetry is to relax and watch the workings of one's own mind. -The bunches of grass in the child's hands become a symbol of the regeneration in nature but also signifies a common material that links different people all over the United States together: grass, the ultimate symbol of democracy, grows everywhere. (transcendentalism) -In the wake of the Civil War the grass reminds Whitman of graves: grass feeds on the bodies of the dead. Everyone must die eventually, and so the natural roots of democracy are therefore in mortality, whether due to natural causes or to the bloodshed of internecine warfare. ("the smallest sprout of grass shows that there is really no deathAnd if ever there was it led forward life") -"the twenty-ninth bather" a woman watches twenty-eight young men bathing in the ocean. She fantasizes about joining them unseen, and describes their semi-nude bodies in some detail -The invisible twenty-ninth bather offers a model of being much like that of Emerson's "transparent eyeball": to truly experience the world one must be fully in it and of it, yet distinct enough from it to have some perspective, and invisible so as not to interfere with it unduly. (the woman is the invisible 29th bather) This paradoxical set of conditions describes perfectly the poetic stance Whitman tries to assume. The lavish eroticism of this section reinforces this idea: sexual contact allows two people to become one yet not one—it offers a moment of transcendence. As the female spectator introduced in the beginning of the section fades away, and Whitman's voice takes over, the eroticism (sexual desire) becomes homoeroticism. Again this is not so much the expression of a sexual preference as it is the longing for communion with every living being and a connection that makes use of both the body and the soul (although Whitman is certainly using the homoerotic sincerely, and in other ways too, particularly for shock value). -establishes that he can have a sympathetic experience when he encounters others ("I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person"; American Identity as ONE) he tries to find a way to retransmit that experience without falsifying or diminishing it -Instead he takes a philosophically more rigorous stance: "What is known I strip away." Again Whitman's position is similar to that of Emerson, who says of himself, "I am the unsettler." Whitman, however, is a poet, and he must reassemble after unsettling: he must "let it out then." "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." "Song of Myself" thus ends with a sound—a yawp -Whitman's yawp is the release of the "kosmos" within him, a sound at the borderline between saying everything and saying nothing. -More than anything, the yawp is an invitation to the next Walt Whitman, to read into the yawp, to have a sympathetic experience, to absorb it as part of a new multitude. -"If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles": body becomes part of the Earth -"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.": life continues after death