Walt Whitman Every Week

[Ole Miss]

Tina, Whitman was a genius with words. His ability to express deep personal thoughts with few words has always amazed me. I have never been able to decipher how he was able to reach so deeply into the human psyche, then while doing some personal reading I wonder if I may have found his inspiration.

In Plato's, Symposium, Agathon stated:
"Love is young and also tender;...In the first place he is a poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art), and he is also the source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he were not himself a poet."*

Was Love was the key for Whitman's uncanny ability to convey human compassion and thoughts? I wonder.
Regards
David
PS This is one of my favorite threads!

Source
Symposium
by Plato
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

I didn't have a chance on Sunday to put this in.

http://emergingcivilwar.com/2021/03/28/weekly-whitman-fire-in-the-sky/

"The Meteor of 1860" by Frederic Church


My favorite time of the Civil War is the beginning. Hopes were high, and the sky was filled with flashing portents. Walt Whitman writes about one of them in "Year of Meteors 1859-60." The "great comet" in the poem that appeared unexpectedly in the northern sky is readily recognized as the Great Comet of 1860, which follows the path Whitman described and was seen by most of the world. The other phenomenon he describes, however, has not been so readily identified.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

https://emergingcivilwar.com/2021/03/21/weekly-whitman-beat-beat-drums/

Union drummer boy

Beat! beat! drums!


Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums — so shrill you bugles blow.


Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities — over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers' bargains by day — no brokers or speculators — would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums — you bugles wilder blow.


Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley — stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid — mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums — so loud you bugles blow.

 

[TnFed]

Boy looks so young.

 

[bayouace]

Are you trying to give us old Jarheads some culture?
Nicely done.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

Are you trying to give us old Jarheads some culture?
Nicely done.

Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

Actually, I also need to give credit to @John Hartwell and @Ole Miss for teaching me to like Whitman. At first I didn't understand him and hadn't liked him back in high school (when we rode dinosaurs up hill both ways).

Both John and Ole Miss, very gently urged me, when I started this thread a few months ago, to look at his poetry again and well.... Whitman has really grown on me! Or maybe I grew up over the years!

 

[Ole Miss]

Whitman was truly a gifted individual who wrote from the heart so movingly. I am somewhat old fashioned in that I like poetry that rhymes. I grew up with Shakespeare, Poe, Blake, Kipling, Tennyson and Emily Dickenson and like rhymed poems.
Regards
David
PS
Emily wrote this poem prior to the Civil War but could have expressed soldier's views

To fight aloud, is very brave -
But gallanter, I know
Who charge within the bosom
The Calvalry of Wo -

Who win, and nations do not see -
Who fall - and none observe -
Whose dying eyes, no Country
Regards with patriot love -

We trust, in plumed procession
For such, the Angels go -
Rank after Rank, with even feet -
And Uniforms of snow.

 

[Zella]

Actually, I also need to give credit to @John Hartwell and @Ole Miss for teaching me to like Whitman. At first I didn't understand him and hadn't liked him back in high school (when we rode dinosaurs up hill both ways).

Both John and Ole Miss, very gently urged me, when I started this thread a few months ago, to look at his poetry again and well.... Whitman has really grown on me! Or maybe I grew up over the years!

I think he can be hard to understand. One of my professors once told me, "Never teach Whitman!" and the only time I ever took a class where his poetry was looked at in depth instead of in passing, we all were kind of stumped by it. Not that we disliked it as a class, but we all had a hard time really understanding what he was trying to say. The result was a pretty unproductive class discussion. Actually, I think it was the catalyst for the "Never teach Whitman!" outburst.

Though I have forever stolen his "I am large, I contain multitudes" line from that experience for any time I contradict myself and am called on it. LOL

I've really learned a lot from this thread, and I wish I had had more Civil War knowledge when I sat through the class where we covered Whitman. I feel like he's one of those writers who has a lot of name recognition but actually gets read very little, which is a shame.

 

[Fairfield]

I've just ordered a copy of John Matteson's A Place Worse Than Hell--my kind of history: a social history--on the Battle of Fredericksburg and the impact that it had on 5 individuals. One was Walt Whitman. He had gone south to find his brother who was injured in the battle and the experience of seeing war close up had a great impact on him and turned his life (and poetry) into an unanticipated direction.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

NONE of Whitman's poetry was ever taught to us in regards to the Civil War so it was never put in context for us - such callow kids at the time of Vietnam and his poetry could certainly have been applied for that.

 

[Fairfield]

NONE of Whitman's poetry was ever taught to us in regards to the Civil War so it was never put in context for us - such callow kids at the time of Vietnam and his poetry could certainly have been applied for that.

How did they teach "Oh Captain! My Captain!" without the Civil War"

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

How did they teach "Oh Captain! My Captain!" without the Civil War"

I might not have been listening that day! But it certainly didn't make any impression on me. I've learned so much from my own thread, week by week and having conversations with John and Ole Miss. I LOVE Emily Dickinson too and have her complete collection so I read her poems often. She has one, but I can't quite remember the name of it, @Ole Miss will know it. It's about a "boy on the Potomac got shot today." I think that's the only *direct* one she does about the Civil War.

I think what makes Whitman and Dickinson so very unique for their time period with their poetry is the total lack of florid prose that others did about the war.

 

[Fairfield]

I might not have been listening that day! But it certainly didn't make any impression on me. I've learned so much from my own thread, week by week and having conversations with John and Ole Miss. I LOVE Emily Dickinson too and have her complete collection so I read her poems often. She has one, but I can't quite remember the name of it, @Ole Miss will know it. It's about a "boy on the Potomac got shot today." I think that's the only *direct* one she does about the Civil War.

I think what makes Whitman and Dickinson so very unique for their time period with their poetry is the total lack of florid prose that others did about the war.

Your tastes are far more sophisticated than mine! I must admit to a fondness for Thomas Campbell ("Glenara, Glenara, now read me my dream") and James Russell Lowell ("Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne").

 

[Zella]

Is it "When I was small, a woman died?" Tina? I really enjoy Dickinson but had never read it before!

https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/whiteheat/when-i-was-small-a-woman-died-f518-a-j569/

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

Is it "When I was small, a woman died?" Tina? I really enjoy Dickinson but had never read it before!

https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/whiteheat/when-i-was-small-a-woman-died-f518-a-j569/

Yes, this is it! I didn't realize she wrote it about a distant cousin and the first to die in Amherst, Mass. I was at Balls Bluff so this brings it home even more for me! I've been loving this thread for all the stuff I've learned.

 

[A. Roy]

I greatly appreciate this thread. My wife accuses me of not liking poetry, but I deny it. Just that there's only ever time for so much. But to take a little of that time for Whitman, and now Dickinson, seems worth it.

Roy B.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

https://emergingcivilwar.com/2021/04/04/weekly-whitman-certain-civilians/#more-199966

Pfaffs Beer Cellar, NYC

Go to the link to read the poem - it's an interesting one!

No one is sure exactly who the "certain civilian" mentioned in the title of this poem might be, but my guess is that it was some young man who hung out at Pfaff's Cellar on Broadway, near Bleeker Street. According to a New York correspondent from the Boston Saturday Express, this celebratory description of the bohemian scene at Pfaff's depicts the bar as a sanctuary in an otherwise chaotic city. "This is the capital of BOHEMIA; this little room is the rallying-place of the subjects of King Devilmaycare; this is the anvil from which fly the brightest scintillations of the hour; this is the womb of the best things that society has heard for many-a-day; this is the trysting-place of the most careless, witty, and jovial spirits of New York,—journalists, artists, and poets."[1] It clearly shows the impact the war had on Whitman, born of the same as the war was born. Whitman's maturity as a writer began with politics and then his involvement in recruiting activities in both Brooklyn and New York City.

 

[John Hartwell]

Many of us (yes, I include myself), found Whitman at first hard to understand ... to follow. I was the "certain civilian" of the title, longing, perhaps, for the comfortable rhyming, the simplicity, and sing-song scan of children's verse.

Whitman is rarely so bold and confrontational as in this poem.

"Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?​

Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand--nor am I now;"​

In keeping with his perpetual theme of Independence, Whitman asserts that the reader, the "you" in the poem, might just go satisfy himself with something commonplace, dull, and easily understood. "For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me." (Fortunately, he was mistaken in that last line). Whitman takes a stand and declares his right to be the kind of poet he wants to be. In this poem, he answers only to himself.

As to the bohemian crowd at Pfaff's, here's a thread about another of its denizens:
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/fi...-to-die-in-the-civil-war.156680/#post-2023798

 

[John Hartwell]

Next Thursday, April 15th,the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association will host a

For more information, and registration, go to:

https://www.waltwhitman.org/zoom-upcoming-and-past-events/
​

When Whitman gave his "Death of Lincoln" Lecture in 1887, these were his speaking notes:

[LoC]​