Walt Whitman @ MindSay

1

And I saw askant the armies,

I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,

Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles

I saw them,

And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,

And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,

And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,

I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,

But I saw they were not as was thought,

They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not,

The living remain'd and suffered, the mother suffered,

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered,

And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.

 

2

Come lovely and soothing death,

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,

In the day, in the night, to all, to each,

Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais'd be the fathomless universe,

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,

And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise!

For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?

Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,

I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.

Approach strong deliveress,

When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,

Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,

Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.

From me to thee glad serenades,

Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,

And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,

And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.

The night in silence under many a star,

The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,

And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil'd death,

And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,

Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,

Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,

I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.

 

 

Excerpts from "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"

 

     Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

 

          When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

    WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer;
    When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns
              before me;
    When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add,
              divide, and measure them;
    When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he
              lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
    How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
    Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
    In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
    Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

 

 

Knowledge in and of itself does not create an educator. Educators have argued for centuries the best methods of instruction, how people learn, and there are several general philosophies of education circling around the education community.  In the long run, however, it comes down to the how individual educator impacts the individual student.  Educators have the greatest positive influence when they communicate genuine caring to the student. 

In the poem above, the well known American poet, journalist, and essayist, Walt Whitman, suggests the best method of learning is experiential.  Though the subject in the poem listen'd to the lecture of this learned astronomer, it wasn't until he wander'd off by himself and experienced the grandeur of the stars that the words of the astronomer made sense.

 

~ B

I have just (yes, just) discovered the greatness of Walt Whitman.  

Please allow me to rip my hair out of my head right about......now.

 

Words cannot even begin to describe the amount of stress surging through my body right now. I'm not even joking this past two days has been absolutely destructive to my general well being. I am sitting in the library right now typing a ten page midterm essay on three different topics...and I had to just pick the hardest ones, right?

 

1.) Why is Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" an example of Literary Naturalism? What ironies in the story contribute to its themes and what kind of ethic does Crane offer in the aftermath of Darwin?

 

2.) "Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening" is one of Robert Frost's most famous poems. If Walt Whitman had composed the poem, how might he have ended it and why?

 

3.) Is Edna a vile woman who perpetrates a set of dangerous cultural attitudes in The Awakening or a heroine who shows America how the world of Victorian values is incompatible with a woman's desires for a happy and satisfying life?

 

Yes, I have decided to answer those 'short' questions for my midterm essay. I even thought those were going to be the most easy, but alas I was wrong. I am wracking my brain over this right now and it doesn't help that this godforsaken dungeon of a library has the heat on so damn high.

 

But this isn't the extent of my night. Oh no. I still have to prepare the rest of that presentation for the Canadian Literary Conference this thursday. And my partner is not exactly helping the way I would like her to. The problem I feel is that we are both Leaders and we all know what happens when you get two Leaders and Not enough followers. This is an Academic Conference not some highschool presentation. There are going to be Professors from different countries as well as Grad Students and Counselate Members. This is not just some leisure trip.

 

Or maybe I am putting too much effort into all of this....I don't know right now. I just feel incredibly stressed...

 

 

I need a beer....

Once, in Dublin, I beheld a sign painted on the closed shutters of a building marked "Civil Arts Inquiry" and this is what it said:

ART CHANGES PEOPLE
PEOPLE CHANGE THE WORLD

I agree with this. I think this is why it is important to create art. A song on a lonely road, a night at the cinema, a painting that captured the imagination; these things change people in a major way. And that changes the world: oh, how it changes us . . .

Here's the other side of the shuttered doors:

WE ARE DOING NEW WORK
AND THAT IS OUR
DOWNFALL

Now, the whole point of modernism is not really too much of anything definable excepting that it breaks from its past in a major, groundbreaking way. That's how the oddly geometrical, cubist paintings came out, how E.E. Cummings could be so hideously irreverent, and how Ezra Pound could mix a thousand myths and feel like he didn't have to explain himself. It was new and it was shocking.

Was. It was new.

Reactions to modernism can also be considered modernist even if nothing else in their philosophies agrees with another. Gerard Manley Hopkins' reaction was to retreat to an even more ancient past, to early strains of the English language. Was that modernist? There are other questions to this, too; how big of a break does it have to be? does it just have to do with style or is it thought also? a mixture of the two, perhaps?

I've always operated under the principle that there really is nothing new under the sun, and that thought colors my perspective on most subjects; these stenciled shutters make sense to me, though.  

We consistently try to find truth and show it to others in a way that will reach them where they are. We try to disarm and dismay people with our swords of truth and beauty (and whatever other principles we stand for at the moment). That happens in art--from Titian to Picasso--but the newness wears off, becomes faded and shabby. Who is shocked by Andy Warhol's bright Marilyn Monroe pictures now? What is it to us to pick up a copy of Walt Whitman's writhing, hot verses?

I wonder, sometimes, whether my work is also my downfall. No, no, no; it isn't. I'm not writing new things. I'm writing for people to know the truth--I'm writing for them to want the best for other people. I'm writing to help people understand why other people do things. And humanity is humanity the world round; my writing will be culturally dated, it will be stylistically accounted for and conceptually mundane, but I will change the world in my own small-but-maybe-artistic way. I am doing real work, and that is my salvation.