American Romanticism
Student-led Text-Objective Discussion 2008

Walt Whitman presentation

By Matt Richards

Facts about Whitman

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819.

Although Whitman wrote in other forms such as the essay and novel,

he is best known for his poetry and his collection Leaves of Grass.

Whitman was involved in the Transcendentalist and Realistic movement.  Those styles were often involved in his work.

Whitman is often looked at, along with Emily Dickinson, as a poet who foreshadowed the coming of the Modern Age of poetry.  He and Dickinson are often studied with the Modern poets.

Whitman died at the age of 72 on March 26, 1892.

The poems that I will be focusing on are “When Lilacs Last In The Door-Yard Bloom’d” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman.  I will also briefly taking about how poets like Allen Ginsberg and Carl Sandburg followed in footsteps many years after Whitman died.

The objectives that these poems mentioned above follow are:

Objective 1a part 1- “To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses” (White).

Objective 1a part 2- “A desire for anything besides ‘the here and now’ or ‘reality,’ the Romantic impulse, quest, or journey, involves crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream” (White).

To get the class in the Whitman frame of mind, I am going to read the first five sections of “When the Lilacs Last In The Door-Yard Bloom’d.”

For example in his poem “When the Lilacs Last In The Door-Yard Bloom’d,” he says, “O western orb, sailing the heaven! /Now I know what you must have meant, as a month since we walk’d,/As we walk’d up and down in the dark blue so mystic,/As we walk’d in silence in the transparent shadowy night” (Norton Anthology 1071).

Whitman is talking about the past.  This refers back to Objective 1a part1 because Whitman or his speaker is looking at the past with a nostalgic frame of mind.

Last week Kristin talked about the romantic elements in the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson was very big on using transcendentalist ideas that dealt with concepts like moving outside the realm of the body, but he also talks about desire, loss, and nostalgia.

Question 1:  Whitman is often compared with Emerson?  Why?  What are the differences between their styles?

Emerson writes in a way that can be compared to Jonathan Edwards, but it is different than Whitman because of the form that it is written in.

Question 2:  Emerson writes in prose and Whitman writes in the poetic style; how much does this change the view of the reader?  In other words, do we look at Whitman differently, even though he uses the same types of images or ideas as Emerson for the most part?  Is it fair to call Whitman a follower or apprentice of Emerson?

Whitman is showing his “desire for anything besides ‘the here and now’ or reality” (White).  This is representative of the Romantic style that Whitman is often famous for.  There is a lot more transcendent language that he uses in his poems (Objective 1a part 1&2).

Another example of Whitman’s use of transcendentalism is also from the poem “When the Lilacs Last In The Door-Yard Bloom’d.”  It says, “To the tally of my soul, / Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, /With pure, deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night” (Norton anthology 1076).  It is almost as if Whitman’s or his speaker’s soul is transcending its form and becoming the bird (Objective 1A part 2).

I am going to read the first two stanzas of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” so that the class can hear the romantic and transcendental elements that Whitman uses.

He uses transcendent, abstract terminology or description in many of his poems, especially “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”  For example he says, “I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution, /I too had receiv’d identity by my body, /That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I/Should be of my body” (Norton Anthology 1060).

He is saying in that quote that he could be out of his form, which is what gives him his identity.  Whitman also speaks in a very extreme way with the notion that his identity only exists in the form of his body and that maybe he can go outside of it.

Why do many writers, such as Emerson and Whitman, write in a transcendent based form?  What were they trying to get away from or discover about themselves?

In the periods that followed after Whitman’s death, two poets stand out in my mind as carrying on Whitman’s legacy.  The first period was in the 1910s and 20s with the rise of Carl Sandburg.  In the 50s and 60s, Allen Ginsberg picked up the torch and kept Whitman’s style alive.

What makes poets like Sandburg and Ginsberg comparable to Whitman?  How much do they differ from him?  Why do you think that is?