Walking The Fine Line of “disgracefull”
Throughout his writing of “Song of Myself”, Walt Whitman focuses on creating a new standard for social progression. Going against the flow instead of with it, this is Whitman’s belief throughout his life. During his writing career, Walt Whitman focuses on creating a new standard for writing while pushing the limits with what is socially acceptable. In “Song of Myself”, he brings up obscene subjects such as sex and democracy to challenge other writers to write about the same topics. The belief of many people is that writers and poets are people that are proper, writing only about nature and non-debatable topics. Contrary to popular belief Whitman was quite opposite of this, writing poetry that was considered profane by some.
Whitman’s goal is to be different, creating
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This quote is describing Whitman’s soul and that they connect with each other in the most vulnerable state, when they are naked. The main idea could’ve been conveyed in a more conservative manner, but Whitman chooses to aggressively push the subject of sexuality to describe simple things. Another example of Whitman’s fascination of sexual writing is in the eleventh section. “Twenty-eight men bathe by the shore…Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome”(Whitman 200). As if saying this wasn’t enough, Whitman goes on to tell us that the speaker is fanatisizing about being on the beach with the men, becoming “the twenty-ninth bather”(208). Whitman not only wants his work to be focused on sexuality limits, but also the democratic limits. In order to spread the idea of equality, which was not a social concern during the period that this poem was written, Whitman writes about African Americans in the 13th section. The speaker in the poem refers to the worker as “The negro”, which indicates that racism is thriving at this point
Very few people will contest that Walt Whitman may be one of the most important and influential writers in American literary history and conceivably the single most influential poet. However many have claimed that Whitman’s writing is so free form as evident in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself that it has no style. The poetic structures he employs are unconventional but reflect his very democratic ideals towards America. Although Whitman’s writing does not include a structure that can be easily outlined, masterfully his writing conforms itself to no style, other then its own universal and unrestricted technique. Even though Whitman’s work does not lend itself to the conventional form of poetry in the way his contemporaries such as Longfellow and Whittier do, it holds a deliberate structure, despite its sprawling style of free association.
The Heath Anthology of American Literature repeatedly refers to Walt Whitman and his poetry in terms of being American, yet as I read Song of Myself, my thoughts are continually drawn to the philosophies and religions of the Far East. Like the Tao Te Ching ideas are expressed in enigmatic verse and each stanza is a Zen koan waiting to be meditated on and puzzled out. Even Emerson called Whitman's poetry "a remarkable mixture of the Bhagvat Gita and the New York Herald" ("The Whitman Project"). Song of Myself contains multitudes of passages that express Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist thought.
Stanza 33 of “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman is a beautiful poem. In the poem, Whitman describes a multitude of examples of people he considers heroes.
The homosexual themes displayed in Walt Whitman’s works, especially in his most famous collection of poems Leaves of Grass, raise the question of his own sexuality. Many of his poems depicted affection and sexuality in a simple, personal manner, causing nineteenth century Americans to view them as pornographic and obscene. Based on this poetry, Whitman is usually assumed to be homosexual, or at least bisexual. However, this assumption does not account for major influences of his writing such as the shift from transcendentalism to realism and the American Civil War. After considering these factors, it can be concluded that Whitman’s poems were not intended to set apart a few homosexual men, but to bring all men and women together. Walt Whitman’s poems of spiritual love and physical togetherness of both genders emphasized exalted friendships and are indicative of his omnisexuality, or lack of a complete sexual preference, rather than his alleged homosexuality.
Much of the "Song of Myself" consists of a cacophony of Whitman's different selves vying for attention. It follows that Whitman's sexual self would likewise find itself a voice. A number of passages strongly resonate with Whitman's sexuality in their strongly pleasurable sensualities. The thoroughly intimate encounter with another individual in section five particularly expresses Whitman as a being of desire and libido. Whitman begins his synthesis of the soul and body through sexuality by establishing a relative equality between the two.
*Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 3rd ed. Ed, Paul Lauter. Boston,NewYork: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Explication Through a multitude of literary devices and techniques, Walt Whitman's poem, "Song of Myself," is one of his most famous contributions to American literature. He uses simile and metaphor, paradox, rhythm, and free verse style, to convey his struggle between the relation of the body and soul, the physical and the spiritual being. He continues to disobey all social restrictions of the romantic time period. From the beginning, Whitman begins by stating, "What I shall assume, you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you," proposing that the reader listen to him, for he possesses all of the answers to life. The setting is somewhat naturalistic, and offers an image of the speaker, relaxing, possibly sprawled out across a blanket, philosophizing about life, while in the middle of a peaceful meadow. As the poem later shifts in tone, and setting, Whitman starts to think about the answers to life he has come up with, based upon the past, and decides that the reader should hear him out, one final time, as his ideas have changed. This brings us to #44 of "Song of Myself." In section #44 of, "Song of Myself," Whitman's first stanza begins: "It's time to explain myself…let us stand up. What is known I strip away…I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown. The clock indicates the moment…but what does eternity indicate? Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs…its buckets are rising forever and ever, they pour and they pour and they exhale away." Whitman is simply stating that he wants to tell the purpose of his madness. The madness that Whitman expresses is that of power and self-confidence. Whitman has written this based upon his experiences in life. Through these experiences, he has grown to know certain things about life and tries to pass them down to the reader. Throughout the beginning of the poem, Whitman takes the reader by the hand and demands that he follows Whitman and his ideas, because based on his own life Whitman holds the answers to the reader's questions. But now, he asks the reader to erase everything that he has previously said - forget the past. Why don't we try something new? We have to focus on the present, not on the past, but also to focus on what we are going to experience in the future, what can we expect?
Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" is a vision of the American spirit, a vision of Whitman himself. It is his cry for democracy, giving each of us a voice through his poetry. Each of us has a voice and desires, and this is Whitman's representation of our voices, the voice of America. America, the great melting pot, was founded for freedom and democracy, and this poem is his way of re-instilling these lost American ideals. In this passage from "Song of Myself" Whitman speaks through his fellow man and speaks for his fellow man when his voice is not socially acceptable to be heard.
Walt Whitman is arguably America’s most influential poet in history. Born Walter Whitman in May 31st, 1819 to Walter Whitman and Louisa van Velsor, he was immediately nicknamed ‘Walt’ to distinguish him from his father. He came to life in West Hills on the famous Long Island, the second of nine children that grew up in Brooklyn. He came to be fondly known as ‘the Bard of Democracy’, mainly because that was a main message in his work. He is also celebrated as ‘the father of the free verse’. He was a liberal thinker and was vehemently against slavery, although later on he was against the abolitionists because, according to him, they were anti-democracy. He managed to marry transcendentalism with realism in his works. His occupation was a printer school teacher and editor.
Although Whitman uses a great deal of structural ways to stress his ideas, he also uses many other ways of delivering his ideas. First of all, Whitman portrays himself as a public spokesman of the masses. The tone of the poem is a very loud, informative tone that grabs ones attention. The emphasis placed on the word “all” adds to the characterization of Whitman as a powerful speaker. Furthermore, Whitman takes part in his own poem. Participating in his own poem, Whitman moreover illustrates the connection between everything in life. Lastly, Whitman, most of all, celebrates universal brotherhood and democracy.
The most prominent and controversial themes in Walt Whitman’s works is that of sex and human sexuality. Many of his poems, especially Song of Myself and The Body Electric contain imagery that is sexually explicit and, at certain times, simply erotic. The most prominent and sexual example can be seen in the fifth section of Song of Myself in with Whitman elaborately describes a sex scene between the speaker and an unknown second party. This section includes:
His discussion of desire and pleasure were simply unheard of for the time and the readers as a whole were not sure how to react to this new sense of openness. It could be said that the reason that Walt Whitman was so open all of his life, was because of the way he was raised and the way that his family was. “In June 1816, when he was twenty-seven, he married Louisa Van Velsor, vigorous, big-boned and florid, and brought her from her parents’ farm at Cold Springs to the new house” (Kaplan, 1980, p. 59). One example of this would be one of Whitman’s most risque poems. The following line from A Woman Waits for Me gives a brief glimpse into how far Whitman took his poetry. “Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking” (Whitman, A Woman Waits for Me). It is poems like this and the person experiences expressed through them that creates an image for the reader of any of Whitman’s poems. If he had something to say or a feeling that he wanted to express, then he was going to share
Society shapes human beings into what they think is perfection. People in today’s society follow the world’s rituals as they continue to conform to fit in to the latest trends. Today, implants, plastic surgery, and weight loss treatments are the reason people have money set aside in their savings accounts. The pressure of others claims to be the main reason people change their hair, skin, and size, and often forget about their own special characteristics. There is a reason Walt Whitman, writes “I Celebrate Myself, and Sing Myself,” to show the importance of loving yourself and cherishing your own personal qualities as a human being. He speaks of himself, hoping to grab his readers’ attention. Throughout the poem, “I Celebrate Myself, and Sing
The poem has set a certain theme and tone but no definite rhyme. In this poem, the poet explores into a thought of the self, the all-encompassing "I," sexuality, democracy, the human body, and what it means to live in the modern world. He addresses that the human body is sacred and every individual human is divine. Hence, Whitman was known for writing poems about individualism, democracy, nature, and war.
Walt Whitman was a very influential poet in his time era. He was very in tune with the world, his surroundings and people which makes him a humanist of his time. The poem Song of Myself has very mystical and profound ideas in this poem in my opinion. It is the type of poem when you read once and read over and over again you will always find something new about it for years to come because it 's so intriguing. Whitman was somebody who was very struck by his experience in the civil war and his thoughts about the world which transferred into his writing. Some of the ideas he puts forth are truly monumental. He tended for the wounded and saw a lot of horrible misery