A walk through the cemetery with Walt

This post is my response to the Whitman assignment Christine posted on her blog, found here.

I think this a well-written and clear assignment. Christine treats the poem, the subject and her students with respect. Perhaps respect seems like an odd word choice but I think that it is very fitting. Christine has isolated a small but key part of “Song of Myself” that reflects on a visit to a cemetery. It might be tempting to bring up the scary or Goth images of a cemetery but like Whitman she treats this setting with respect. Whitman has found beauty and romance in “uncut hair of graves” and the assignment uses a similar approach to bring the student into an early part of the poem.

The first part of the assignment asks the students to write freely in their journals about their immediate response to the poem. This is a great way to get students started on an essay. When I did this part of the assignment I found that I was able to address several things that were on my mind after reading the fourteen or so assigned lines of the poem. I always struggle with how and where to begin an essay so having this step outlined for me in the writing process was very helpful. Having a chance to work this through in a journal entry will make starting an essay much easier.

JOURNAL ENTRY:

Reflections on a short passage from Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1855)

This is a tricky passage for me to focus on because to find it chosen for me out all the possibilities in this work, took my breath away. For as long as I can remember I have been intrigued by cemeteries … the living, the dead, the art, the silence, the pageantry, the emptiness, and on and on. So much can be found and experienced in a cemetery. I have many favorite cemeteries and like to visit them regularly. I also explore and photograph cemeteries when I’m in a new place. When I was a child I would beg my parents to drive through the cemetery on the way home from church. But enough about me, what about the poem?

I can see the child in the first line running around the cemetery, not really understanding where he is; for him it is just another place to play and explore. Hands full of grass from a grave he wonders “What is the grass?” Perhaps he has never seen grass and doesn’t know the word for it but to an adult who has a different understanding of this place the innocent question seems to be asking for so much more than a botany lesson. The images Whitman gives us are lovely (“handkerchief of the Lord”), beautiful (“a scented gift”), mysterious (“hieroglyphic”) and romantic. This is not the cemetery of horror films and hauntings. A cemetery, for Whitman, is not a sad or frightening place.

Whitman knows that a cemetery (or dead) is where we all end up; “Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff”, all “the same”, all received the same. The grass grows around them, between them, and over them. The same grass grows “among black folks as among white”. Death can’t be cheated and death does not discriminate. Throughout his poem Whitman gathers groups of people together and he does it here in this cemetery. Whitman represents us all as one in the cities and in the end. I think it’s fascinating that he puts us together in death before he puts us together in life.

My three to five page essay for this assignment would focus on the topic in my last paragraph. I would like to take a closer look at the lists of people and occupations we find several times in Whitman’s poem.

Using New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery to Explore 1855 New York and Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

I’ll be the first to admit that working with these maps is a little challenging and nothing like a quick visit to Google Earth. To get a closer look at each map you will need to use the zoom option on the NYPLDG page; once you’ve done this you’ll find that you are able to move around the neighborhood and explore. The first image in this collection offers a reference guide to these maps. Using this as a guide, create a pictorial tour of the neighborhood on any one map in the collection. Find images of the types of businesses and buildings that occupied a city block. Given the types of buildings in the neighborhood, was it filled with workers or was it more residential? Who occupied these spaces? What did they look like, how did they live? Did one socio-economic group or several populate this neighborhood? Again, find images to support your answers to these questions.

Link your findings back to Whitman’s poem. Create a document that combines your findings with Whitman’s poem.

Working with Whitman's "Song of Myself"

What makes Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” an American poem?

Over the next several class meetings we will try to answer this question. As preparation, visit the Whitman archive and read the 1855 text of “Song of Myself”. The poem begins just above page 14 and ends with page 56. You are not required to print out all of the pages but we will be dividing the poem into sections that you will be required to bring to class. Below find which seven pages you need to bring to our next class meeting. Spend some time reading your assigned pages out loud; be prepared to read the entire poem with a small group of your classmates.

Students A, B, C, D print pages 14-20

Students E, F, G, H print pages 21-27

Students I, J, K, L print pages 28-34

Students M, N, O, P print pages 35-41

Students Q, R, S, T print pages 42-48

Students U, V, W, X print pages 49-56

If you’re nervous about reading aloud maybe John Doherty will inspire you.

Now that you’ve read to poem silently and out loud to yourself, it’s time you had a chance to hear it read to you. You’ll form into five groups to allow for a complete reading of “Song of Myself”. Take 45 minutes to read the poem and begin discussing your experiences reading the poem alone (silently or aloud) and reading it as a group. We’ll meet back here and discuss as a class. We’ll continue this discussion when we meet again.

In the meantime, take a look at 1855 street maps of New York, Paris, and London. Explore them and consider people living in those places at that time; how did they move about the city, interact with others, how likely were they to encounter someone outside of their class or community? Do these maps raise any other questions about life in the United States versus life in Europe in 1855? Be prepared to discuss these questions and how Whitman’s poem illustrates these differences.

Lastly, do a little exploring yourself. On pages 21 and 22 Whitman list several types of people and working he has seen in America, find an image of one them and their European counterpart. Write a short response (2-3 paragraphs) your 1855 American has to "Song of Myself" and questions his or her European counterpart has about the poem. The questions can be in the form of a lengthy conversation between these two people or they can simply be a list of questions. If you present this as a conversation you do not have to write the response of the 1855 American.

What Makes "Song of Myself" an American Poem?

Could it be that Whitman was writing about New York in 1855? How different was New York from Paris or London at the same time? One way to study this question is to look at the city street maps of these places.

New York of 1855 has the look of a well planned and new city; its streets and blocks are orderly and linear. The streets of New York stand in stark contrast to the meandering, unfolding, and twisting streets of Paris and London. The people of New York are forced to move through time and space differently than their counterparts in London and Paris. It is not hard to imagine that Americans face more than their physical space differently than the English and the French. These maps alone don't state this explicitly but give us a visual image we can start from as we try to understand the differences between these people and their environments.

Help! I need an IT person at my side.

I'm reminded of the way I used to feel the night before our family vacations ... something's going to happen and it's going to be big and I'm going to be part of it. My stomach would be full of butterflies. That's how I'm feeling right now.

What I'd like to do with the archive is link words in the poem to the critics’ response to the word and the phrase. I'm sure there's a way that's less clunky than what I've come up with. Here's an example of what I've been playing with:

Leaves of Grass.

I CELEBRATE myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.

“From the unique effigies of the anonymous author of this volume which graces the frontispiece, we may infer that he belongs to the exemplary class of society sometimes irreverently styled "loafers." He is therein represented in a garb, half sailor's, half workman's, with no superfluous appendage of coat or waistcoat, a "wide-awake" perched jauntily on his head, one hand in his pocket and the other on his hip, with a certain air of mild defiance, and an expression of pensive insolence in his face which seems to betoken a consciousness of his mission as the "coming man." This view of the author is confirmed in the preface. He vouchsafes, before introducing us to his poetry, to enlighten our benighted minds as to the true function of the American poet.” [Dana, Charles A.]. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." New York Daily Tribune 23 July 1855: 3.

I think the reviewer’s thoughts on the poem and loafers is interesting and gives the reader insight to how the word loafe may have been interrupted by some to the readers in 1855. I’d like to be able to link the word to this particular quote but with my novice understanding of the tools I find that I am only able to link to the entire article. Maybe I need to explore Delicious; this may be the way to go. If Diigo was more reliable I think it would be perfect for this.

I want to spend more time with the blog entries of my classmates; they seem to understand the technology much better than I do.