Shout Outs to Whitman (In Mass Culture)

I'm a terrible procrastinator, and yet I'm doing this assignment on the first day it was officially assigned. Something must be wrong.

-ONE
        This first example comes from a blog called "Poetry & Popular Culture" by a guy named Mike Chasar. In his blog, Mike posted a clip from a show called Breaking Bad in which one of the characters recites my favorite Whitman poem, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer":

         According to a good friend of mine, Breaking Bad and The Wire are pretty much the greatest TV shows ever, so one of these days, as I promised him, I will illegally download them, and watch. I didn't want to write about that example in this post though, since I didn't want to jack TWO posts from Mike, and I preferred to write about a different example he brought up of Whitman.
        He shows a strip from a newspaper comic called "Pearls Before Swine" by Stephan Pastis in which the characters reference Walt Whitman and Twitter:

      Click on the image! It will make it bigger! I swear!

        Mike's blog post is called "On the Twittification of Walt Whitman," which contains the image of the strip, as well as a few lines from Song of Myself that Mike "twittified":

I cLebr8 myself,
& wot I assume U shaL assume,
4 evry atom belonging 2 me az gud belongs 2 U. 

        Leaves of Grass actually is tweeted on the daily on the Twitter account @TweetsOfGrass (Shoutouts to Hanley, since I found that Twitter account after peeping who he follows on the Twitta earlier in the semester).

        From the times I've read this comic strip, a lot of them include arguments between the characters regarding what's right or wrong, with the Rat character usually playing the cool calm douchebag who supports what most people would probably find 'wrong'. Rat says Whitman should have been limited to 140 characters, as people are on Twitter, which comments on society's love of short quotes, summaries, and highlights as opposed to diving straight into the source and bathing in the full context.

        When read "twittified," Whitman's poetry, as well as the poetry and texts of many other people, could be misinterpreted and simplified to those not familiar with the source text. When Whitman lists occupations or other things in his poetry, the connection between the things on his list might be lost. Also Whitman might ride a theme, from something like a runaway slave to politicians to natural descriptions, and those lines in which he rides his themes take up much more than 140 characters... Much would be lost on the reader.

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-TWO

        Saul Williams is a poet, who sometimes raps, and sometimes sings. Half of his music annoys me and half of his music I love. No, actually I'm pretty sure I love MUCH less than half of his music... And now I sound like one of those people who reviewed Whitman :( 

        Anyway, for every song of his that I dislike, I just go back and play some of his really good stuff like "List of Demands (Reparations)" or "Wine." Good shit!

        For this example, I went to his nice collaboration with DJ Krust in the song version of his poem "Coded Language":

        At around the 2:55 mark, Williams goes into list form, not unlike Whitman, and names poets, singers, songwriters, entertainers, and activists who he feels made and impact in cultural consciousness (at around 3:09, you will hear him give the shoutout to the big homie Walt Whitman, as well as Allen Ginsberg just a few seconds after).

        I also found this interview with Saul in which the "list writing" is noticed by both Saul and the interviewer:

DJ MATT WERNER: In exploring these different esoteric religious and spiritual traditions, I found there seems to be some parallels between your poetry and that of William Butler Yeats like with his poem The Second Coming and also Walt Whitman as well, in the listing in some of your tracks like Release and Coded Language, those seem to very much have that Whitmanian quality to them.
**Note from Miguel: If you want to hear the other song mentiond, "Release," it's actually from a Blackalicious song which Saul is featured on, off of the album Blazing Arrow, which is one of the best albums ever ;]

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well Whitman is definitely very influential, and I’ve definitely read some Yeats as well. And these older poets have definitely opened a door for me to, [Saul gives a long exhale] I guess, to step beyond. And they have like me I think there is this thing that’s being so deeply entrenched in this Christian society and seeing something deep within it and something well beyond it as well, and wanting to explore and using words to do that and realizing that the writing itself and the reading of the writing in my case often is a form of ritual.

Cool. But to focus on what I feel is the main point of the song "Coded Language," near the end of the song, Saul says:

We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called gender, race, sexual preference,
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to
Uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World,
Any utterance un-aimed will be disclaimed - two rappers slain.

        In these lines, I feel we find the reason why Williams named the people he named in his list. He asks that those involved in music and sound to "acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking world"... I love that. And Saul gives props to artists and entertainers who he feels did this in their lifetime when he's going down his list.

        This reminds me of a thought from Iona's post "Reviewing Reviews of Whitman." Following a related branch of thought, she imagines that one day our society might ask certain qualities of our poets:

Perhaps one day our 'cultural assumptions' will simply amount to a plea that our poets be honest, democratic people who write honest, democratic poems. Is that wishful thinking? Have I become infected with Whitman-esque happiness? Is that necessarily a bad thing? ;)

        Just like Iona might have become infected with "Whitman-esque happiness," it seems Saul has too found himself affected by the poetry of the great artists he names... His plea is that poets speak and uplift democratically on behalf of "the entire fucking world." 

Bonus clip of Saul Williams performing the poem, without that DJ Krust music behind it.

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-THREE

        This is my favorite. Because it is funny. And if I've learned anything in life, it is that a sense of humor is the most valuable thing in this world. So I love the people who made this video.
        I know for this project we were supposed to find things in popular culture, but obviously this clip isn't very popular, only grabbing 461 views in nearly 4 years. It was intended for mass culture though, so yea- A sketch comedy clip based on a visit to Walt Whitman's tomb:

Watch the clip before reading on :D

  

        From this video, I learned a lot about Whitman. I learned he was a prize-fighter who fought a mule, which explains the nickname Walt "the mule fighter" Whitman. I learned that he wrote hilarious movie reviews for Playboy Magazine. I also learned that he was also a mediocre poet.

        This video makes fun of the classic biographies of famous people in history who did extraordinary things and it paints Walt Whitman as a Teddy Roosevelt-type figure, when really, Whitman just wrote poetry. He did travel around the nation and do his share of exploring, but Whitman will definitely just be remembered for his poetry and the direction of his artistic spirit. Though the tour-guide livens up Whitman's biography, the tourists don't want to hear that. They just want to know about Whitman the poet, and maybe hear a few poems.

Checking Out Reviews That Checked You Out

On three reviews of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass...
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[Anonymous]. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." Christian Spiritualist (1856): [unknown]

        I clicked on this review because I saw it was from a publication called the Christian Spiritualist. I expected the reviewer to say something like what the writer from The Saturday Review suggested, and tell us to throw Leaves of Grass "behind the fire"... But that didn't happen. With the Christian label, I expected the writer, in 1856, to write from the perspective of a conservative church leader as a representative of whatever Christian values the publication stood for. Instead, the reviewer was very open to the poetry, and pretty much in love with Walt Whitman. He starts off quoting someone who is dissing the modern state of poetry, then disses modern poetry a bit himself, before saying that Whitman is possibly ushering in renaissance in poetry. He catches how Whitman aims to capture a sense of unity and brotherly love between all peoples in his words. He mentions that for Whitman, "his sympathy is with man." The reviewer keeps mentioning that Whitman is a bit foul-mouthed, censoring quoted passages and warning readers that along with his strong recommendation also comes a strong warning that Whitman paints some "graphic pictures."
        My favorite description of his towards Whitman is that he is a "drunken Hercules" among "dainty dancers," both giving Whitman props for his powerful words, while also saying he has a reckless tongue. It gives me the sense that the reviewer really didn't give a damn about Whitman using his 'foul' language. He thought the art Whitman made was great. It kinda made me feel like the way the media will hype something up in the news, even though no one gives a shit about it. It's like he was warning the public about Whitman's 'foul' just because he had to, not because he felt the majority of readers would really care or be offended. Maybe that's how the open-minded the American public was at that time, or maybe the Christian Spiritualist just had a very open-minded readership.
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[Anonymous]. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." The Critic 15 (1 April 1856): 170-1.

         Dayyym. Haters gonna hate. This dude straight up hates Walt Whitman. Like, HATES him.
        
"We do not, then, fear this Walt Whitman, who gives us slang in the place of melody, and rowdyism in the place of regularity. The depth of his indecencies will be the grave of his fame, or ought to be if all proper feeling is not extinct."

        What I get from the above quote is that this reviewer feels Whitman's slang and rowdiness are attempts at Whitman trying to make a name for himself.
        I'll be the first one to tell you that I hate when "artists" use pure sensationalism just to get the attention and devotion of some stupid would-be fans (and you can ask anyone who knows me, I don't mind dishing out hate to things I consider fake, or people I consider to be straight-up suckas, for I stay sucka-free). But when an artist has sensational aspects in the art with a message that still runs deep, I don't mind (not that I found LoG sensational, just in thinking about artists from today who might be considered controversial). This reviewer however doesn't seem to find sincerity in Whitman's poetry and message. The idea of Whitman using 'vulgar' language, including a 'vulgar' photo of himself, and Whitman's overall hippy-ness seem to have made an impression on the reviewer that no amount of meaning, sincerity, or poetic virtue could override. The reviewer seems to want to hate Whitman's work for those things, and won't let it go. He even says Whitman writes so poorly, that he must have been just learning how to write. That's hate.
        This guy is the dude who represents the prudishness of the nation. This guy is the one who is a xenophobe. A neophobe. He reminds me of some dudes on Fox News that talk shit about things they already wanted to hate. The criticism of Leaves of Grass is so one-dimensional, talking about how "unoriginal" Whitman is for writing about unity in humanity (simply because he wasn't the first one ever to write about it), or just talking about his vulgarity. It seems to be a simple-minded review from a simple individual. I usually don't like it when people disregard negative criticism, because a lot of critics can have something good to say... but this reviewer is just a hater for hate's sake.

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[Norton, Charles Eliot]. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." Putnam's Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art 6 (September 1855): 321-3.

        Norton doesn't say a WHOLE lot about the poem... He includes a lot of quotes from the poem. What he does say about the poem though, I found interesting. He finds that some of the language is laughable or comical, probably as it must have been abnormal to see such language in poetry at that time, but he recognizes the power in Whitman's writing nonetheless. This pretty much sums up how the reviewer feels about LoG:

It's "not to be read aloud to a mixed audience, but the introduction of terms, never before heard or seen, and of slang expressions, often renders an otherwise striking passage altogether laughable."

        Again, language is a factor here, and though the writer finds Whitman is talented at using words, he finds his word choices to be somewhat poor.
        The reviewer tries to be fair in including an excerpt from Whitman's own intro, highlighting that Whitman strives for simplicity, and wants to give a direct reflection of his poetry as it appears in his mind when first conceived. The reviewer ends the article with a kind of jab at Whitman's reference to himself as a "Kosmos," basically saying "yo... I don't know what this fool talking about saying he's a Kosmos, but I'm pretty sure this foo crazy."

This pretty much sums up how Norton feels about Whitman:

Song(s) For Occupations

This poem... My favorite lines are without a doubt the ones that close the poem:

When the psalm sings instead of the singer,

When the script preaches instead of the preacher,

When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting          desk,

When the sacred vessels or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate          as effectually as the young silversmiths or bakers, or the masons in their          overalls,

When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince,

When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter,

When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions,

I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and
         women. 

        These lines remind me of Karl Marx's writings on how the products and services that workers provide are so often detached from the actual labor involved in bringing said products and services about. Whitman dishes out praise for the workers of the world in his poem, and I can't help but appreciate this poem a lot for that. The last line shows that he wishes to give all praise to the men and women who work to create the world we live in (as opposed to just praising the fruits of our labor). The poem is very inclusive like Song of Myself, aiming to give voice to the voiceless, though Walt focuses on labor here. Our jobs, the work we do, and the products and services we bring are the main stars.
        There's plenty of reasons I appreciate this poem. Here's one reason, and it is the one closest to home for me: I just started school again last semester after taking a break to save up money (so that I could live out here again in the Bay and afford some more school, since my parents were only able to save about $7 for my college fund growing up). During my break I moved back home to Santa Rosa and worked at a Walmart (oh gawd) as a cart-pusher (oh gawd) and saved up every penny I could (oh yeahhh *said in the Kool-Aid Man voice*). I will say that Walmart is the only place that even called me for an interview, so I'll give them credit for that. Now that I've given them that credit, I will say with certainty that it is the worst job I will ever have in my life. And I will treat all cart-pushers I meet from here on out with utmost respect, especially ones at Walmarts.
        Why? I know at other retail and grocery stores it is different, but at Walmart, cart-pushers will be outside for their whole shift, and if your shift is 8 hours long, expect to walk about 12 miles that day in whatever weather the day feels like bringing to you, all while having lots of people inside and outside the store look at you like you're some low-class, lazy, up-to-no-good punk (apparently the perception some people have of cartpushers). But the WORST part of the job?: The detachment... 
        All people see when they walk inside the store is rows of carts for them to shop with. They'd receive my services inside the store every time they'd grab a cart, but never make any contact with me, since I'd be outside fetching more carts. After they finish shopping, a lot of them would take their cart out to the parking lot, put their shit in their car, and ditch the cart right next to where they parked their SUV. A lot of times it will be filled with trash. I saw plenty of McDonalds trash and used diapers in those carts. Never in their minds do they realize that those carts don't magically transport themselves back into the store after they finish using them... THAT was the worst part for me. The detachment.
        I'll stop talking about this job now, because I could write a whole book about all the things that sucked about it. Only way I could have a worse job is if I were a fruit-picker or something. Even I'd be guilty of not thinking about the labor that goes into getting fruits and veggies from the ground and into stores.
        Anyway... I have strong opinions about how labor is viewed, not only here, but around the world. For that reason, I appreciate this poem a lot. I've moved on from that crappy job, moved back to the Bay last September with my Walmart money, enrolled in classes, and found a much better job a few months ago, which means I'll have steady income, which means I'll be able to stay in school :):):)
Very grateful.

1855>1856
First change I notice? The poem now has the title "Poem of The Daily Work of The Workmen and Workwomen of These States." I wonder what the poem is gonna be about??? The changes from the 1855 version are similar to the ones made to Song of Myself... Less ellipses, more commas and dashes. He also added a few lines to the closing part of the poem, which I guess he wanted to beef up a little.


>1860
Here the poem is placed in the Chants Democratic cluster. Still not sure what this whole "cluster" thing is about. Near the beginning of the poem he adds phrases like "Men and Women!," "American Masses!," and "Workmen and Workwomen!" to the beginning of a few stanzas... I guess just to show a little more clearly who the poem is directed to. Walt once again does his fancy-talk thing, like when he changed "July" in Song of Myself into "the seventh month" in later versions, with his talk of December, which he now refers to as "the twelfth month" in this version of Song For Occupations. A bigger change though is that Whitman's talk and mention of the Utahan, Kansian, Arkansian, free Cuban, Mexican native, Flatfoot, negro from Africa, Iroquois, Esquimaux, Chinese, Bedowee, and Tabounschik is now gone. To me, this change is straight-up weird. Walt seemed so comfortable in speaking of different colors and ethnicity before, but not he spread the white-out on top of all of that. I honestly don't know why. Maybe at the time there was so much tension between the white majority population already that he preferred to leave other races out for now and just focus on the internal tension first? That's kind of a wild guess, because I really don't know why he removed that part of the poem.


>1867
The poem now has a title structure common to odes: To Workingmen
Now Walt removes the “polite or whitefaced….married or single…citizens of old states of citizens of new states….” talk that happens before the part where he removed his other removed part about the Utahans and Cubans and Mexicans and negroes and Flatfoots. At this point I just see it as him trimming some fat off the poem, but it's still weird as to why he felt he needed to take that part out.
Then he makes a change that upset me. He moves the closing lines of his poem (the ones I posted above as my favorite) towards the beginning of the poem. Why Walt??? Why?!? I liked them there at the end. They delivered your poem's purpose with force and beauty!
Anyway, he moves those lines, and has a few new lines at the end to wrap up the poem. Heartbreaking.


>1872
The poem is now called Carol of Occupations. Obviously, Christmas was just around the corner when this edition was published. Or something like that. The poem's first line is now the title.


>1881/1891
Poem now called the Song of Occupations... as we know it today. The poem's first line is now this title. Also, he moved the final lines back to where they were in the first three editions! :)
You done good Walt.
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The poem shifts from very near the beginning of LoG (1855, 1856, 1860) to somewhere in the middle in the rest of the versions. I wonder if the poem held more importance to him in the earlier editions to place it near the beginning, or it is just because he had much more material in later versions that he stuck it in the middle on later versions. Later on, it is placed in between other odes that Whitman wrote, and perhaps he liked how Song of Myself and Song For Occupations resonated with his beliefs that he chose to write more poetry to appreciate the world around him. I'm not really sure myself, but I really would like to see what other people think in their blogs.

I love The Simpsons. I love Banksy (who directed this intro). It contains some exaggeration, but it gives a peek into the labor in creating the show.

*I may have gotten confused going through all these versions... My bad if I mixed up any in my reference to them... yep.

Versions of Grass

1855>1860
        First thing’s first… ‘Proto-Leaf’ is now the first poem in 1860. Very cool poem title by the way, Walt. The first leave of grass is kinda like Song of Myself, in that Walt  says he is the poet for all, for the nation, no matter who you may be. A difference is that he isn’t talking so much about us all being one entity as much… It’s still all about unity, but there seems to be more individuality here. Walt also focuses a lot on the ‘Soul,’ and capitalizes the word too, much like I did just now.
        When I started reading the newer version of Song of Myself, I started trippin a little because the words were basically the same, but there was something different… Something was off. Then I realized Walt removed the ellipses and replaced them with boring old commas. Commas are cool, but ellipses are… Well, it’s hard to describe the impact ellipses have on me, but I like the pause they bring. For whatever reason, to me, they almost automatically make anything romantic. If Walt Whitman was talking to a dude, I think he’d have more success asking for “A few light kisses…. a few embraces” rather than asking for “A few light kisses, a few embraces” at the end of the night. The hyphens he uses are close to ellipses for me, but the ones he replaces with commas… no. He lost poetical romanticism points on that one, in my opinion. It’s his poem, so I must let him do whatever he likes, but I had to hate on that part a bit.

The greatest joke ever, WITHOUT ellipses:

The greatest joke ever, WITH ellipses (Obviously better):

        I looked for a few other key words and searched for them just to see a side of Whitman’s meticulousness. He changed his phrasing of “it is the Fourth of July” (pg. 11 in our book) to “it is the Fourth of the Seventh Month”…Apparently Whitman thought ‘July’ was too dull of language to use to describe that month. My opinion of this change?: Cmon son!!!
        “Behavior lawless as snowflakes… words simple as grass… uncombed head and laughter and naivete;” becomes “Behavior lawless as snowflakes, words simple as grass, uncombed head, laughter and naivete;” (pg 32)
        Why? Maybe the he thought the commas made the language flow off the tongue more easily? Maybe he wanted his poem to look more like a poem? The new punctuation certainly does that, I suppose.
Oh, and in 1860, Whitman had a shit-ton more poems than in the 1855 version.

Blue Book>1860
        First thing’s first… did you see the new picture Walt has in his book? He takes on the appearance of a common man in the 1855 edition, but in 1860, he looks all bougie.
        Walt’s meticulousness comes out again. Who writes notes all over their PUBLISHED book??? And it was the 2nd/3rd edition too… Walt scribbles out words and sometimes sentences when things don’t look right to him. Maybe Walt needs to learn about leaving things alone. If Walt lived until he was 1000 years old, he may still have new editions of Leaves of Grass coming out next year. He might be helped by treating his writing like it was music, and have all the beauty and expression lay there on the tape, whether you may find imperfections in it later, or not. The 1967 version ends up keeping a lot in common with the 1960 version, even though Whitman scribbled out lots of sections in his blue book. Going through a text search of a few key points in the poem I wanted to check, he did change one of my favorite lines in the poem… He removes the line “Dash me with amorous wet…. I can repay you.”
        WTF MAN?!? That was one of my favorite lines! I even read it out loud for our project…. But alas, this is how Walt ends up repaying me… Sometimes, you need to put pen to pad, and then let it be.

Q. What did the caterpillar say the the Walt Whitman?
A. Man... you've changed.

YouTubing Whitman

        Back in the day I used to edit Anime Music Videos (AMVs) and throw them up on YouTube. I liked to cut up the clips and match them to some dope songs, usually of the Underground Hip-Hop variety, but not always. Problem was I never watched too much anime and as a result, most of my videos used the same 3 or 4 anime shows, and I kinda lost inspiration to keep making videos eventually. Still, I got a nice little number of online fans from it. It has been a while since I edited anything, but I decided to edit a video for this assignment, and I also slid a song I made underneath my recital of the Whitman lines I chose.
        Editing this took me way too long, and reminded me of why I don't really edit anymore :P

-The video footage is from a show called Samurai Champloo. It is directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, who is probably my favorite director ever.

My username on YouTube is suckafish80. It comes from a combination of the stupidest idea for a username I could think of ('suckafish'... a fish that is also a sucka) and being a fan of Jerry Rice as a kid (#80).

Whitman and His Peers

        Apart from The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Youngfellow, the two other poems I read were Fredericksburg by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and An Incident by Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Aside from Whitman, the other three poets try to keep a rhyme scheme. Whitman abandons rhyme for the most part. Still, I see some sort of connection from all three poems to Whitman’s Song of Myself. The Village Blacksmith is about… a village blacksmith (duhhhh), and half of the poem just describes his work and routine, which is not unlike the way in which Whitman describes many of the everyday people he writes about in his poem. An Incident has some formal similarities to Song of Myself in that the writer ponders the thought of how magnificent it would be to be the eagle in her romantic description of it. She humbles herself at the thought, saying that she would not soar as beautifully as the eagle. This resembles Whitman’s description of nature, which usually finds himself standing in awe of nature while simultaneously envisioning himself as one with nature. Fredericksburg is a bit different in the connection I find with Whitman. It describes the battlefield of Fredericksburg. I think the writer is in a time a couple of years after the battles of the Civil War took place there, and he is imagining the battles that took place on those fields just a few years back. Immediately, I think of how the war inspired artists. In the case of poetry, the author of Fredericksburg was inspired to write a poetic snapshot of a battle, and Whitman’s poem was also a response to the war, though he takes it on in a different manner.
        All four of the poets use romantic elements to discuss their subjects, though their subjects vary (Whitman has connections to all the subjects as his poem is long and expansive). From reading the other poems, I see connections to nature, war, and the working man in the three different poems, and it works to show what was on the minds of artists at the time, and why it would seem natural for Whitman to include connections to all three aspects of life at the time in his poetry as well.

Motif: The Sea...

 What dogs do after reading Song of Myself.

I am enamored of growing outdoors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods
pg. 9
-Walt clearly has a romantic view of those who work in the outdoors in the direct presence of nature, and even seems to be a little jealous. Here, he uses the word ‘ocean’ and not ‘sea,’ but I thought it was close enough, and that this line was important to show since it’s an early romanticism of nature, which is something he does throughout the poem.
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Vivas to those who have failed, and to those war-vessels sank in the sea, and those themselves who sank in the sea
pg. 13
-I believe that Whitman’s romantic view of nature is rooted equally in the beauty of nature as well as the danger of nature, or at least the vulnerability a human encounters while in nature. The word ‘sea’ seems to have a more exotic danger attached to it than the word ‘ocean,’ and Whitman likes to remind us of both the danger and beauty of the sea.
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You sea! I resign myself to you also....I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling me;
We must have a turn together….I undress…. Hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft….rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet…I can repay you.


Sea of stretched ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of brine of life! Sea of unshielded and always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you… I too am of one phase and of all phases.
pg. 15
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I included this whole section since the sea is the focus, and because Whitman gets a little sexy with the sea too. As Whitman gives descriptions of the many different souls in the United States throughout Song of Myself, here he explains his love for the sea and writes about its many phases and states; the beauty and danger it represents. He ends this section saying that just as the sea has many different states of being, so too does Whitman, and everyone else.
One of my favorite lines in the whole poem is “I believe you refuse to go back without feeling me,”… It’s just a beautiful line to me that paints a great picture.
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Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
pg. 18
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We sail through the arctic sea….it is plenty light enough
pg. 26
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Delicate sniffs of the sea breeze….smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore….
pg. 30
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Inland and by the seacoast and boundary lines…and we pass the boundary lines.
pg. 31
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Is he from the Mississippi country? Or from Iowa, Oregon or California? Or from the mountains? Or prairie life or bush-life? Or from the sea?
pg. 32
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The panorama of the sea….but the sea itself?
pg. 35
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-An image of the sea? Or experience of the sea itself? It seems Whitman here is saying that it is not only important to write, paint, photograph, or talk about events and nature, but that it’s also important that we go out and put ourselves in the position to be a part of the events of our own history and to experience nature directly.
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To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me and shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.
pg. 40
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          Whitman romanticizes the sea while also giving the sea its props for being a badass because the power and danger it brings. Still, Whitman gives even more credit to those who face the dangerous beauty head on. The sea presents humans with a completely different environment than any other setting because humans are naturally land-dwellers. We are, for the most part, born on land, raised on land, and it is where we spend most of our lives. Not only is the sea a beautiful part of nature, but it is also a territory in which one could say we do not naturally belong in. Regardless of our not belonging, Whitman encourages us to touch the sea and experience it, beyond simply writing about it or looking at it.

        It is through experience that we really learn what something or someone is, and to an outsider, anything foreign will always create an attraction as well as present some danger. Whitman shows us the beauty we can find when we go outside our typical boundaries. In the literal sense, he is writing about living on land, and diving into the water. In a metaphorical way though, he may be telling us to explore the lives of others... People of other genders, other colors, other species, other occupations, etc.

        Also, Whitman shows that the sea has many forms, like humans and humanity ('I too am of one phase and of all phases'). At times it will rage and destroy, and at times it will dazzle you with its beauty. Sometimes it will sooth and caress, and sometimes, it will just be. Just as it has many shapes and phases, it is one entity. This is the same way Whitman sees humanity. The sea, through its many forms, it is just one large ocean body, connecting all the greater lands to one another, while connecting us as well.

Ay yo, WTF you got in yo mouth??

A Closet Full of Agony... and Other Sentiments

Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels....I myself become the wounded person,
My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
pg.27

        The first line in this selection grabs me right away. Throughout "Song of Myself," Whitman either describes things that aren't himself or changes perspectives in his writing about 1,763,014 times, and this line gives us an idea of what that process of changing perspectives is like for him. From these lines, I gather that, for Whitman, shifting his viewpoint from person to person to inanimate object to animal is... easy. At least, it is easy in terms of getting in the mode for writing from different perspectives. He compares it to how one might change their clothes, which is... easy. The part which requires work and concentration though is in the observation of life of those whose shoes he is occupying at any given moment. In this part of the poem, he is speaking on the pain and suffering certain people go through, and telling their story. He mentions Agony at this point because he just finished telling the story of a runaway slave who is caught by his 'owners.' He lets the painful anger that he himself has endured enter his heart, which he channels as he enters the mindset of another individual, remains patient ("as I lean on a cane"...) and "observes" the life of another in his empathetic imagination.
        Whitman displays empathy for those who suffer many times in his poem, and in the same way, he can even give us a picture of those whose life warrants no complaints. He can go on describing what lives may be like for unfortunate soldiers, farmers, politicians, prostitutes, musicians, and even personify the sea. The reason why I chose to write about this line is because for me, empathy is of utmost importance in my own personal life. I feel that empathy is what causes me to be curious instead of judgmental whenever I deal with people or read/hear about someone's life. I also feel that being empathetic would lead to much more peace and understanding between individuals, groups, and nations. Some say there's two sides to every story, but often, there are much more than two. Sometimes, I think we could take some advice from Walt by putting ourselves in someone else's shoes, being patient, and taking some time to observe.

Walt Whitman, leaning on his cane, as depicted in the comic-book The Amazing Spider-Man.

jk it's actually a character named Kingpin from said comic.