More Notes on Walt Whitman

Biographical Information (from Hart):

• Born and raised in the New York area

• The Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, Greek and Hindu poets, and Dante all influenced his later writing -- in rhythm or thought

• Worked in newspapers and magazines

• Went to New Orleans -- had a love affair

• Changed from "dandy" to "rough"

• Mingled with "common people"

• Divided between faith in democratic equality and belief in the individual rebel against society (romanticism vs. realism?)

• Pursued emotional freedom through love and social freedom through democracy

• A broader definition of "Homosexual" = democratic love for man

• Abnormal sensitivity and extreme sensuousness = primary forces in his poetry

• Influenced by the Transcendentalists -- individual not merely eccentric but an impersonal seer at one with Nature

• Leaves of Grass (1855) -- "it was to show how man might achieve for himself the greatest possible freedom within the limits of natural law, for the mind and body through democracy, for the heart through love, and for the soul through religion"

• Simple style devoid of the ordinary usages of rhyme, meter, or ornament, and distinguished by a natural organic growth

• Distinctive features are the:

  • Use of repetition

  • Use of parallelism

  • Use of rhetorical mannerisms

  • Employment of the phrase instead of the foot as a unit of rhythm

• To create forms later called "Free Verse"

  • Irregular rhythmic cadence

  • Recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional meter

  • Cadence, not meter (feet)

The Various Sections of Leaves of Grass:

1.) Live Oak, with Moss

• A sequence of 12 poems

• "A direct and coherent sexual-poetic narrative of poems"

• "Adhesiveness" -- manly love; comradeship; homosexual love

2.) Children of Adam [i.e., Adam and Eve]

• A sequence of 16 poems

• First appeared in the 1860 edition

• The poems are concerned with physical love, identifying the sexual impulse with the spiritual force of the universe

• Celebrates "Amativeness" -- heterosexual love; the passion of woman love

3.) Calamus

• A sequence of poems meant to compliment the "Children of Adam" sequence

• First appeared in the 1860 edition

• Theme of the spiritual love of man for man

• Political in nature

• Frequently considered a reflection of the poet's homosexuality

• Contains "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing"

• "Adhesiveness" -- manly love; comradeship; homosexual love

4.) Inscriptions

5.) Song of Myself

• Made up half the 1855 edition

• A poem of 52 sections

• Begins with "I" / ends with "You"

6.) Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

• 1856

• A stand-alone poem

7.) Sea Drift

• Contains "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

8.) By the Roadside

• Contains "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"

9.) Drum Taps

• Added in 1865

• Contains descriptive scenes at the front and in Washington hospitals during the Civil War

10.) Memories of President Lincoln

• Contains "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"

11.) Autumn Rivulets

• Contains "There Was a Child Went Forth"

12.) Passage to India

13.) The Sleepers

14.) Whispers of Heavenly Death

• Contains "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

15.) Noon to Starry Night

16.) Good-Bye My Fancy

17.) Democratic Vistas