Let's Have An Orgy

So I must admit that I received a fair amount of my information from reading Iona’s blog.  However, I didn’t want to copy her so I also found an article in the New York Times that helped me formulate my own opinion regarding the Oneida Community and how it relates to Leaves of Grass.  I could be interpreting the situation incorrectly, but it seems to me that the Oneida Community was one giant orgy of sorts that implemented such concepts regarding... well, communal everything so to speak.  They were attempting to creating their own “Garden of Eden” where the only rule seemed to be that you are not above anyone else, and no one else is above you.  They practiced “complex marriage” which essentially meant that everyone in the community was married to everyone else, therefore eliminating concepts such as jealousy and greed because if you wanted someone you were more than entitled to have them for a night or two.

I believe that Whitman would be able to get behind the whole “Hey I’m a free spirit” let’s have a giant orgy kind of thing, but overall I do not believe his philosophies adequately coincide with Oneidas.  One thing in particular Whitman would have difficulty accepting, would be the notion of a communal “leader” who assigns the rest of the community work and gives them “purpose” in the newfound Garden of Eden they have created.  This is the opposite of placing precedence upon a lifestyle that embraces loafing, and in a way contradicts their free-spirited sexual way of life which is the only thing a free and flowing savage such as Whitman, would possibly support.

This is my unfortunately boring reading... sorry, if only I sounded like David Attenborough.

Yoda Speak


“The Greatest Unrest of Which We Are Part” is my favorite Specimen Days entry yet!  Although short in stature, the few sentences he does write are saturated with intuitive content regarding the compelling forces of “man and the universe” and “creation's incessant unrest.”  He describes them as being part of an ultimate “never-achieved poem” for there seems to be no answer or conclusion for the universal topics he speaks of.  It seems to share some relatable qualities with that of “Song of Myself” seeing as he discusses themes regarding human entropy and cosmic conflicts or “pulls” yet never seems to reach a finite conclusion, thus making it somewhat of an unfinished poem.  All of this he addresses within the first two sentences, and then quite beautifully ends it with the rhetorical question of “what is humanity... but emotion?”  One may view this as though we are all just meandering bodies of condensed emotions, that we know not how to maneuver.


In regards to how this relates to the picture of Yoda and the meaning of my title, I am simply referring to the title of his entry and the wisdom he manages to disperse in such a short amount of time.  My comparison (quite obviously far fetched) none the less shows that Whitman possesses a vast amount of knowledge, and if anyone would be able to distinguish the meaning of some kind of universal “force” it would certainly be him.

Crises Among Conduct

If I’m going to be honest with both myself and whoever decides to read this, in my opinion “The Village Blacksmith” is not an impressionable poem.  Don’t get me wrong I’m a huge fan of Wadsworth, (in poems such as “My Lost Youth” “The Rainy Day” and “A Psalm of Life”) but this poem about the blacksmith never really struck a chord.  I can appreciate his meter, his manipulation and juxtaposition of words, but when I look upon the poem as a whole, I find it somewhat easy to consign to oblivion. 

However, when I look upon Whitman’s work as a whole he strikes not just one but multiple chords within me that I cannot dismiss even if I so wish to.  I find it difficult to compare his work to the work of his contemporaries, because there is a certain stability (and somewhat similar style) in much of their work, that makes it negatively incomparable with that of Whitman’s.  Yet if I had to choose, the two poems I enjoyed the most were “I vex me not with brooding on the years” by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and “The Hunters of Men” by John Greenleaf Whittier.  Both poems (although riddled with rhythmic meter and defined metaphors) bring forth thought provoking concepts that stretch beyond the means of the possible surface level interpretations one may draw.  This is the same thing Whitman does in making the reader connect on a deeper level, yet I feel as though he is substantially more successful in doing so by delving into the chaotic yet categorical realm of free verse.

Man's Final Lesson

One thing in particular that attracts me to Specimen Days, is the personal journalese quality with which Whitman writes.  It is true that in Leaves of Grass Whitman asks the reader to get to know him on an intimate level, but at times I feel as though  I am able to more naturally connect with Whitman through reading his journals.

For instance, the entry that struck me deeply this week was “Death of a Hero” for a multitude of reasons.  Whitman speaks of a young soldier who risks his life for another only to get shot in the knee cap, and is consequently sentenced to face amputation and eventual death.  He writes about the soldier using language easy to articulate, yet manages to place the dying soldier in a brilliant and heroic light.  However, what is most interesting about this entry is the line he includes at the very end from the soldier himself who says, “to-day the doctor says I must die -- all is over with me -- ah, so young to die...dear brother Thomas, I have been brave but wicked -- pray for me.”   Quite fascinating, the contradiction the soldier himself proclaims, wicked yet heroic, and forced to face the end before his life has even truly began.

Death is a terrifying inevitability that sooner or later we all must come to accept, but acceptance does not equate with comprehension.  Whitman undoubtedly understands that he knows not what the prospect of death implies, but somehow he has acquired a certain level of acceptance like the soldier has in acknowledging his end.

I might be straying away from the cardinal theme of this entry, yet I cannot help but mention a certain song this all reminds me of.  The song is titled “Nothing Less” by Living Legends, and in one of the last verses an artist says, “One last breath and everything could be pleasant, life through death, man’s final lesson.”  Personally, I feel as though this relates directly to both the soldier and Whitman, and appropriately sums up the meaning of this particular journal.  For both Whitman in his existence, and the soldier in his demise, seem to realize that death is the ultimate lesson of man, and as an inexorable consequence it is the redeeming trial that mankind must face in a dignified light.

Whitman's Womb

Birth & Origin

-Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems (pg. 2).

-Always the procreant urge of the world (pg. 2).

-And that all the men ever born are also my brothers...and the women my sisters and lovers (pg. 4).

-Or I guess the grass is itself a child...the produced babe of the vegetation (pg. 4).

-It may be you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps (pg. 4).

-Has any one supposed it lucky to be born (pg. 5).

-I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe...and am not contained between my hat and boots (pg. 5).

-For me children and the begetters of children (pg. 5).

-What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to babes (pg. 6).

-The one-year wife is recovering and happy, a week ago she bore her first child (pg. 10).

-The nine months’ gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are advancing (pg. 10).

-Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy (pg. 16).

-And of the threads that connect the stars -- and of wombs (pg. 17).

-Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly (pg. 26).

-Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows (pg. 34).

-Births have brought us richness and variety,

And other births will bring us richness and variety (pg. 37).

-Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid...nothing could overlay it (pg. 38).

Out of these many motifs regarding the concept of birth and origin, I shall be focusing on the following four:

1. Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems (pg. 2).

This appears in the text in the very beginning of the poem when he is asking the reader to join him in his growth.  Before saying this, he asks if the reader has “reckoned a thousand acres much” or “reckoned the earth much.” Whitman is in a sense asking the reader to thus “reckon” or take his poem into deep consideration because, in doing so the reader shall have an understanding of all poems.

2. Or I guess the grass is itself a child...the produced babe of the vegetation (pg. 4).

This one is sort of self-explanatory.  In the poem Whitman has just had the discussion with the child about the grass, and this is one of his seven interpretations of what the grass could possibly be.  By saying the grass is a child itself, he is using a kind of circular reasoning; the grass knows nothing yet is all, the child knows nothing yet in his absence of knowledge there is a discrete layer of wisdom to be found.

3. Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly (pg. 26).

Leading up to this particular sentence in the poem, Whitman is speaking of his travels and describes multiple (real or possibly unreal) instances, and towards the end of his purposefully meandering this line arrives.  I believe it touches upon the same type of circular reasoning I mentioned above, the child and the mother are one, and the crescent child (just like the crescent moon) is growing literally while the mother grows metaphorically as they carry each other along in the world.

4. Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid...nothing could overlay it (pg. 38).

In this part of the poem it seems like Whitman is talking about his own creation, and how it came to be that he views the world in such a fluid manner.  The lines themselves imply that he was a part of life before he was able to breathe, and even in the womb his embryo was in constant motion and never fell pray to stagnation or consumption.

By using motifs that revolve around birth, growth and the origin of things, Whitman is able to more than adequately articulate and fluidly combine his themes regarding nature, the poet and the self.  Birth is the beginning of life, and quite frankly it is the uniting factor in all of nature and mankind.  Consciousness or the lack there of, is what often separates man from nature, but through his metaphors concerning comprehension prior to consciousness, one may draw the parallel he is making between life and death, stagnation and elasticity.  Whitman seems to be feeding off the idea that there is a kind of life before birth, and in an even larger context he may be implying that quite often there are times in which the origin of something may be a secondary happening, and therefore may represent an insufficient understanding of an ultimate beginning.  

In regards to Whitman’s aspirations, it becomes clear that he is concerned with the beginning of things just as much as their end, and he believes that to truly understand anything one must understand where the creation of their thoughts began.  That is to say, Whitman became conscious of his thoughts in the womb, because his subconscious was too powerful to fall victim to submission.  However, in reality Whitman is simply implying that stagnation can mark your destination if you so allow it to, but continuous growth and the pursuit of knowing may grant you the ability to be reborn and rediscovered each and every day.

Translucent America

Just as leaves may constitute a metaphorical connective element in Whitman’s poem, Barnum creates a physical connective concept such as the “American Museum” that essentially “epitomizes its era.”  The museum was an institution built to present a large scale interpretation of American culture during times of civil unrest, and succeeded in “[foundering] on the social tensions [that arose] from gender, ethnic, class, and racial difference” which relates quite similarly to the core of some of Whitman’s themes.  Both Barnum and Whitman seem to be playing upon the notion of what really constitutes or “makes up” American life, or in Whitman’s case, life in general.

In comparing Whitman’s creation to that of Barnum’s, there is a crucial element one must note if they wish to understand the purpose in constructing an image of man or, “The American Man.”  It all relates back to an abstract interpretation of the title Leaves of Grass.  One may view it in a cliche manner in which the leaves are essentially components of the  “Tree of Life.”  Initially this concept fascinates me, so upon further research I found that, “The crude sap which is taken up from the ground is converted by the leaves into a substance which goes to build up every part of the tree and causes it to grow larger from year to year; so that instead of the tree making the leaves... the leaves really make the tree.”  How perfectly this plays into Whitman’s implications of leaves and grass, in an almost quasi-literal sense.  Not only do the leaves (which represent man and his actions or in Barnum’s case represent interpretations of man we can physically see etc.) cause the tree to flourish, but when they die they fall upon the grass which symbolizes reality, or the common underlying factor we may all reach if not in life, then surely in our demise.