Whitman's Poetry

I have to say, I do really like Whitman’s poetry. Unlike the poetry of Emily Dickinson- who you may review I did not enjoy so much- Whitman is all about connecting. The issue with Whitman that Dickinson does not face is the question of whether of not his poetry is actually poetry.

            Poetry has controlled form. Poetry requires musical language. Poetry is narrative musical art. Poetry is somewhat indefinable, really. I don’t know that I can define it, although I think that poetry is at least recognizable.  Some “poetry” is questionable to me. While Emily Dickinson’s poetry show her great skill with language, it lacks what I believe is the poets innovation; though I did mention in my last blog that her poems were more interesting in her time. She just doesn’t have the poets heart as far as I am concerned. She barely shows me anything I could not have figured out on my own sitting in my own window. Some of what she rights barely even makes sense, especially in a way that is consistent with her style. She write on both a figurative and literal level, but her style is very explicit. Every now and then, she (arbitrarily) throws in a line which works only for rhymes sake or that adds something, but not to the meaning.

            Whitman, on the other hand, writes everything explicitly, with heart, has many layers of meaning, but not so many levels. At least in my humble opinion, that is. Song of myself is all about connection to everything and everything within everything. And how all of those things connect. Just reading the print tells you everything, no guessing involved. He draws the reader in, not only by stating that his atoms belong to the reader (in second person),; He also commands and questions the reader.

            Again the problem is whether or not Whitman is a poet. Well he is definitely a poet, based on the loose meaning of the word. All people have poetry in their souls (I sound like Whitman now…), at least most writers master the language so that they can write somewhat poetically. But are these poems? Maybe not. They feel an awful lot like musings. All of the sections are different lengths; there is no meter, or rhyme scheme. But does poetry need any of these things? No, but it does require some consideration of the music of language. No the issue of whether or not Whitman’s work is poetry is somewhat subjective. I can find the music in this work. The care put into his descriptions show a true love for that which he writes. He uses incredibly descriptive phrasing, in which the sounds of the words fit well with the aesthetic of the meaning. For instance:

“Bearing with Bandages, water and sponge,      Straight and Swift to my wounded I go. (The Wound Dresser 25-26)”

The word choice for the above lines are appropriate in creating the level melancholy suspense which one might experience in entering a hospital ward.

In song of myself, section 26, he says:

“Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in flakes of death,"

This line is in reference to a, what I think, is a requiem for someone violently killed.  The sounds of the words are tough on the reader, with many of the syllables ending in hard consonates, exhausting almost to even read.

Whitman uses repetition, both in the word he begins a sentence with and the construction of the entire sentence.

“I exist as I am, that is enough,         If no other in the world be aware I sit content,             And if each and all be aware I sit content. (Song of Myself 413-415)”

Almost all of the clauses in section 15 begin with “The”; some with “And”. Each “The” grants a higher and higher level of emphasis during the reading of the section.

Slight Rhyme:

 “Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,        Looking with side curved head curious what will come next, (song of myself, 77-78)”        “It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,          It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, (Song of myself, 112-113) 

  I think that both of the poems show a certain mastery of the language and sound. I wonder, if these poems were read aloud, how they would strike a person who didn’t understand English. I think read well the words and the spacing between lines (and the suspense it creates) would have effect

Whether or not either of these two pieces actually constitutes poetry makes very little difference to me, I suppose, because I like them. Whitman probably wouldn’t have cared either way.

 

Emily Dickinson

I can’t exactly figure out why I dislike Emily Dickinson’s poetry so much. I found that as I was reading it that I was constantly bothered by it. It may have been the fact that the old image of her as a crazy recluse kept creeping into my mind as I read. At some point during every poem I read I would get distracted and moan to myself “Go outside, Emily!”
The introduction provides us with the information that although Emily greatly admired Emerson’s writing, she never journeyed next door to meet him when he was in town lecturing. The Norton Anthology explains that she had preferred to keep the Emerson of her imagination instead of meeting the real person. This is exactly how I understand the woman while I read her stuff.
The poems all seemed to me to be, as they are normally characterized, very observant. But nothing within them felt really intimate, in regard to her or the subject of poem. The introduction called her daring, but I struggled to find any audacity within her poetry. Mainly I felt that Dickinson is very impersonal in her poems, does not show any real connection with the concepts she writes about and that her writing, while it sounds lovely, isn’t meant to make a whole lot of sense to anyone but her.
Of the one’s we read, I probably disliked the following the most:
1. #124: line 1: “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”
I understand that it is the convention of poetry to use a lot of the passive voice, mainly for rhyme, suspense and emphasis on a subject, but it really got to me in this poem. I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. The main subject seems to be the members of the resurrection, at least in the first stanza. The second still leaves me wondering what Dickinson is getting at. I think what she is saying is that once the resurrection occurs, all of physical time as we know it will enter into this arc which will also draw in the earth and the skies. I take the final three lines to mean that while the aforementioned is happening, the hierarchy on earth will be shed and worthless. Nevertheless, I had to read this nonsense five times to make the connections between the two stanzas, since the subject shifts from the either the dwelling of the members of the resurrection or the members themselves, depending on how you read it, and the events that will happen during the resurrection.
2. #146. First line: “All over grown by cunning moss,”
I don’t get this one either. When Dickson refers to “This Bird” is she talking about Charlotte Bronte or herself? She may have intended to be ambiguous there, I give her that. But the final stanza is garb to me. Is Bronte the Nightingale? Well then I guess “This Bird” in the second stanza is Bronte as well. But then what does she mean by “Yet not in all the nests I meet”? Is Dickinson trying to express that she has gone looking for Bronte without being able to find her? Didn’t she just say that the bird was in Yorkshire? Or was the line about Yorkshire just an observation? Or is Dickinson the bird, and Bronte the more distinguished Nightingale? I have no idea.
I don’t want to think that my problem is that I just don’t get poetry. I just don’t care for hers. I think an issue that I have is that I felt that most of her poetry is about concepts, but not about anything specific. Also, I think that I decided that her musings were awfully trite, but I recognize after some consideration that her work probably wasn’t as trite during her time.

Margaret Fuller and the great Lawsuit

            The assigned section from Margaret Fuller’s The great Lawsuit: Man Versus Men, Woman versus women One if the reasons I liked Margaret Fuller (besides my affinity toward anything Feminist in nature) was her boldness. The audacity with which she spoke was very moving once, especially considering her time, and also leads me to wonder how much she would have been taken seriously for her time. Would she have been considered radically unhinged by the male population, which led to her being published? Even so, the introduction explains that she was widely read by women, so at least we know that some people gained from her writing. Nonetheless, I have to wonder if the risks she took in writing led to scorn by the ruling males.

            The Great lawsuit starts off very positively for men, granting the redeeming quality that once they actually face some sort of hardship, they are able to understand that women face hardship, possibly even worse than their own. Though her language confused me some, I believe that her second argument (after discussing the changes brought on by the French Revolution) was that although equality is great and all, if there is no justice in general, it hardly seems very rewarding to fight for equality. Basically, I think I can safely sum up the first paragraph to mean that:

1. Men, once suffered a bit, can actually see the greater suffering of women.

2. Once women get a taste of equality, they may (depending on the situation of the society), think that that sucks too.

-Note: I hope that the second part isn’t fully the case because it may lead to the dissuasion of fighting for equal rights.

            Then Fuller starts getting bold and just saying what is what. First, she talks about other ways the ruling people have been oppressive. I wonder now if the notion of the patriarchy was in existence yet. I believe current feminist bell hooks defines patriarchy as the white supremacist capitalistic patriarchy, meaning that the prior-mentioned are the people who define and control culture. But I digress. I was saying earlier that I admire, just as much as her profoundness, Fuller’s boldness. She makes very strong statements. I like how she defines America as being the nation to develop a template for a just society, like how Europe had already been meant to “promote” the mental culture of man. I like that, unlike me, when she uses the statement “all men are created equal” she doesn’t think that the word men is gender specific. I like that she uses and reiterates that statement, explicating that that term means that if “external freedom” is achieved for a nation, it must be everyone in that nation.

            Fuller fights against the fact that men at this time take advantage of their wives. She degrades men in the same manner in which women have often been degraded, except the evidence she points to about men is much more dishonorable than women’s tendency to be “gossipy”. She points out men living off the “industrious earnings” of their wives. She points out men taking their wives’ children away from them after she tries to leave him to bring her back.

            Then again, I like that Fuller is a feminist speaker who represents most women, in that she doesn’t have to be a man-hater to make her arguments. She not only fights fot the dignity of women being represented by society, but for the goodness of men (gender-specific) to be acknowledged by society (mainly women). She says she believes that it is improbable that the only way for women’s rights to be publicly considered is for a woman to be publicly representing these rights. She believes that men are both influenced enough by women and inherently caring enough to consider women’s rights on their own. The issue then, must be an outside influence, which stymies men’s fighting for gender equality.

Emerson: Self-Reliance and The American Scholar

On of the main issues I came across in reading Emerson was that I found contradictory directions in the introductions of Self-Reliance and The American Scholar. In the first paragraph of The American Scholar, Emerson states that:
-“the gods in the beginning divided Man into me, that he might be more helpful to himself.”
-“there is One Man, -present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty.”
He regards this knowledge as a great wisdom, expressing that instead of living in a right state in which the main foundation of men is an one intact unit, we live within a degenerate state in which all of the abilities have been too far divided. As for the position of the scholar, Emerson explains that in an ideally unified state, in which men recognize that all men comprise one Man, the scholar represents the noble action of Man Thinking. He contrasts this model with the degenerate version in which the scholar is merely a “thinker”, or “the parrot of other men’s thinking”.
The deduction for these first few paragraphs of The American Scholar is that it is vital for performance within a society and self-actualization that we consider all men part of a wider entity which is Man.
Self-Reliance not only appeared to contradict this perspective, but also to negate its value. As I read the essay, I anticipated passages prescribing that we work to completely depend on ourselves, especially in regard to physical and material necessities. The following statements confusingly (in my opinion) appear on the first page in relation to what a person feels, believes and thinks:
1. “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, -that is genius”.
2. “Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense: for always the inmost becomes the outmost.”
Neither of these statements made a whole lot of sense to me, both in regard to introducing the concepts of self-reliance or in having any individual self-contained meaning. While the rest of the document contains many fantastic pieces of wisdom, I finally realized that Emerson is not discussing the importance of Self-reliance as far as health and security or self-sufficiency within the realm of physical needs. The purpose of Self-Reliance­ is to promote knowing your own mind and being true to that mind. Said self-reliance related to relying on your own mind. In other words, the lesson of Self-reliance borrows from Platonic teachings and from two recognizable quotes:
The ancient Greek proverb “Know thyself” which once accomplished should be followed by the principle of “to thine own self be true.”
Once I reread some of the sections in both texts, I found the connection between what I had misjudged to be adverse works. Self-trust is vital in both. In The American Scholar Emerson states that:
“In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, -free and brave.”
In Self-Reliance he states that man should be weary of conforming and to “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
The American Scholar was written in 1937, while Self-Reliance was written in 1941. Since clarifying the purpose of both, the relationship between the counsel within both works has become clearer as well. My assumption is that while the mastery of self-reliance (in Emerson’s sense) should be observed over an individual’s lifetime, and can take a life’s full journey to achieve, the advice from Self-reliance­ actually precedes the advice of The American Scholar. Ultimately, I believe that trusting one’s self is both the initial and ultimate necessity of one’s life according to Emerson, and that distrust in one’s self impedes a person from ever accomplishing anything.

Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

While reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow I felt inclined myself to wonder what the purpose, for Irving was of this tale. I tried to imagine (quite wrongly I suppose) what the message of the story is. I struggled on the following levels.
First I found myself conflicted because not only does Irving fail to explain the outcome for Ichabod, but he also fills the reader’s brain with options which all have different implications as far as any sort of moral. I contemplated that the point of the story was to point out how easily fear can be instilled in humans. That we never feel completely safe and could easily be convinced that we aren’t alone in the wilderness. I.E. Ichabod believed he was being followed, later chased, after Brom Bones taunts his with his manly, yet frightening tale. This made me wonder then if this is really the tale of the headless horseman or if the monster is just disillusioning human paranoia.
My second issue in finding a lesson was that I found that none of the characters deserved any respect. Ichabod Crane is a voracious, freeloading womanizer. Brom Bones is your basic arrogant tool. Katrina is not so much a character but a means to both men’s rapacious ends. Because of my distaste for each person, I couldn’t root for any, nor could filter out a lesson based on any of the character’s behaviors and respective outcomes in the story.
I finally found some resolve in the postscript.
The final sort of "lesson" derived from the story according to the story-teller of the post script of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow begins with the following:"That there is no situation in life but has it's advantages and pleasures, provided that we will but take a joke as we find it."This means that as long as we have a sense of humor, some pleasure or advantage can be derived from any experience. This appropriately appears to be a joke in itself, considering the fate of the legend’s protagonist. It also serves to show that the story-teller implies that legends, particularly this one, are taken too seriously, both in the credibility assigned to them and in regard to the fact that, being legends, they do not involve the person being entertained by them.
The story-teller continues:
"That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers, is likely to have rough riding of it:" which he concludes with the final portion: "Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress, is a certain step to high preferment in state."I found the second part confusing, wondering again if he is just telling the “cautious old gentleman” and the reader to basically shut up, stop worrying and just enjoy the story. On the other hand, it could just be intended irony that the story-teller is reducing the lesson of Ichabod’s experience to advising school-teachers to date on their own level.
It is amusing, however, despite my confusion, that the story-teller equates the risk and/or imprudence of riding with an ill-tempered phantom with pursuing women out of your league. I think that again that the intention is to be humorous, implying that even after all the stupid, sinful and death-inviting behavior of Ichabod, basically the dumbest thing he could do was try to date Katrina.
This final thought leads me to believe that the glib story-teller might just be Brom Bones.

Phillis Wheatly

The poetry of Phyllis Wheatley was very amusing. Not that I mean to oppugn her beautiful poems, all of which are masterpieces, but reading her work after finishing the exhausting tales of Douglas and Equiano, I felt a bit like some of her eloquent lines were maybe a little…forced. I entered into her section already with the knowledge that despite the many prohibitions a slave would have faced, one could still achieve sophisticated, even scholarly English speech and that a person forced into slavery might be able to be shockingly positive. But Wheatley’s enthusiasm in regard to her own personal enslavement felt like a stretch. From the first line, “Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land” I didn’t buy it. Wheatley’s poems seem so contrived to me that they both failed in serving their intended purposes and impeded my enjoyment.
The first poem, On being brought from Africa to America had two supposed functions, I believe. The first is to prove to wary white people that black people can be faithful and refined. The second function is to comfort slaves oppressed by white slave-owners through the insistence that black people too can be faithful and refined, and therefore, fit in.
The first of these goals was not met, in my opinion, because: many slaves during the first few hundred years in America converted and I don’t believe the majority of white people respected them much more because of it.
The second goal, to appeal to slaves feeling lost, isn’t even probable because:
-how many slaves could even read at the time?
-Slaves were just as much forced into Christianity as they were forced into slavery. In the case of black people, religion just looks like another form of oppression.
Finally, I take the last four lines of On being brought from Africa to America to mean: “there are some people who hate blacks, and think blacks are diabolic. But as a consolation, they are wrong because blacks too can be saved (which I know because it happened to me…)”. Really when broken down, it doesn’t feel very comforting. If the same people who force blacks to convert also think their color makes them diabolical, how is the fact that a black person can convert going to make a difference, Wheatley? Also, she is basing all of this information on her own experience. She was brought to America, taught to believe Christianity and therefore is refined.
This brings me to my main problem with the poem, which is that Wheatley equates refinement with Christianity; only through Conversion can one be appropriate to participate in a respectful society. If refinement and Christianity are the same, the majority of slaves would have been “refined” because they would have already faced conversion. Her belief here doesn’t account then for how many slaves dealt with abuse despite being Christians. But if slaves hadn’t been dealing with such abuse, there would be no need for the poem, with respect to soothing blacks or whites. If Wheatley was writing from her own self-attained conviction, however, which she had investigated and come with on her own without the persuasion of the master’s world-views, there might have been a more powerful message to match the strong language.
I don’t believe that a person would have held the Christianity=Refinement=Acceptance-belief unless it was impressed upon her. I think that Wheatley’s masters, though probably well-intentioned, influenced her so much that her work isn’t interesting on a creative level. I imagine that had she not been heavily influenced by her masters, and written from a more natural standpoint, her poetry would have been much more interesting. Then again, if she had not been trained, her work wouldn’t have been as marketable to those who could read. No educated (i.e. white upper-class male) would have wanted to read the terrible truth about being forced away from family to be a servant. The educated people were the same people responsible for arranging society the way it was; they would want to see people thriving their way. Instead this poem is interesting on a more sociological level. I look to these works to experience an assimilated slave’s endeavor to participate in the Americanized Anglican-inspired tradition of the ancient art form of poetry.
Still, the lesson, which is still a valuable one for this time in history, is that a person, torn from her home and brought to a country to face horrible discrimination (both racial and gender), can still show incredible potential in one of the highest forms of art. This lesson and the inherent beauty of her phrasing, does make her work very satisfying to read today.

Judith Sargaent Murray on the Equality of the Sexes

Judith Sergeant Murray On the Equality of the SexesOne of the reasons that I enjoyed Judith Sergeant Murray was her alternative method of writing about subject of sexism. Not that her thoughts are all that different from the more modern stuff, it’s just that she has a way of laying down information that makes it all seem very sensible. She makes it feel like what it should be, common sense.
Feminist writing, especially prior to third wave feminism, always exhibits the frustration I experience when I am attacked with profeminist skepticism or criticism. This frustration is very present in Murray’s work as well, as she becomes increasingly more passionate. My frustration is mainly due to the (what I consider) evident issues of society and history. I just don’t get where the confusion lies about the unequal nature of female treatment in many elements of society. I think many feminists or profeminists can feel like they are beating their heads against a wall having to actually explain what should be obvious to people. Not that all feminist matters are obvious, one of the awful natures of oppression is its sneakiness. It’s just that often enough the person inquiring about profeminist reasoning is already decidedly against the study.
Murray begins her essay by questioning the nature of nature- would nature be biased in how it assigns intellect-then emphasizes the unlikelihood of this supposed great disparity of intellect in men and women. Her tone throughout the essay shows the same level of exhaustion that other writers display, wondering if the patriarchy is just blind.
She obviously is trying to use the male-imagined stereotypes about women to her advantage in the essay. She discusses the four types of intellect: Imagination, Reason, Memory and Judgment. With each of these types of Intellect she uses what mean say as evidence of women’s capability against men.
She begins with women’s talent with imagination. I smiled to myself when she said that she barred the contemptuous smile, but not for the reasons that she barred it. She discusses how women so beautifully decorate themselves. She also brings up women’s ability “to slander”, which also tickled me. The problem is that although many people value imagination, because the manners of fashion and gossip are considered trivial or negative, they don’t get any credit as being creative. The problem, as Murray continually points out is that women do not have the education to guide their intellect, which only leaves negative possibilities for them.
Murray disregards reason, basically blaming women’s lack of reason on men, who have denied them. Not other arguments there.
Memory is easily settled for Murray as well, who decides that old women are a likely approached as old men for their memories, which are just testaments of their experiences.
Judgment is the aspect which incites the most passion from Murray, who uses the argument that study shows that two year old females develop judgment better the males. She says that after that the experience of the child will evince the superiority. Murray points out that basically, since there is no worse fate than being a learned lady, a female will have nothing to do but to use her imagination; contemplating fashion and scandal, and possibly doing even worse things for her strength of character.
I like how Murray again uses common sense, no B.S. talk when she counters the argument of “Your domestic employments are sufficient”. Her obvious, forced reply makes me laugh, considering how backward the aforementioned argument is. Her response is a question, allowing the questioned to have to say something; Is it not crazy for someone with all of the faculties of a human being to have to confine their imagination to pie fillings?
Part II just makes me think about how a person in Murray’s time would have contemplated the role of women; this is 1790. I can’t imagine being a feminist during this period, yet I can’t imagine not being one either. For the protofeminist of 1790, I think, how could you deal with this blatant degradation? Murray describes women adorned with bows, denied any education apart from shopping and homemaking, and treated like inferiors. I wonder how a person would deal with facing actual scrutiny for opposing the patriarchy without going crazy. Then again, I also wonder how a woman could not care about the subjugation of women, unless they were sadly brainwashed in some manner.