Pound, Whitman, and Crudity
Walt Whitman was born in 1819 in Long Island but moved to live in New Jersey where he spent most of his life. He was known as an American poet and journalist. He expressed himself in poetry by describing his life and American lives as a poem. His first published poem was Leaves of Grass in 1855, which later became known as Song of Myself. Ezra Pound was born in 1885 and died in Venice Italy, 1972. He was an American poet that criticized other poems and worked with other novelist and poets to help shape their work. Pound wrote an essay explaining his thoughts and opinions on Whitman’s poem. Pound believed that Whitman was a writer who developed a new style of writing. He describes Whitman as a writer who was not
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To Pound even though Whitman used crudity to describe America, he did an excellent job in accomplishing what he wanted the people to read what the reality was in America.
Pound thinks of Whitman’s poem as crude and unrefined in “Song of myself”. In section 36 it states:
Near by the corpse of the child that served in the cabin,
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl’d whiskers,
The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below,
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the mast and spars. (Whitman 933-938) These lines are crude because it describes crudity in the form of using death by talking about the dead cabin boy and the stack of lifeless bodies. I agree with pound opinion about the lines being crude because these lines described way too much graphics for the readers. Whitman wanted the people to know about the graphic details that were going on during the Civil war. Whitman’s feeling toward the war was very strong. He use to attend as a nurse during the war, volunteering to care for the thousands of severely wounded and sick soldiers. Whitman has seen many deaths during this time so he paints an image showing the terrible scene that lies before him to get the readers to see the reality of what is going on during that time
Walt Whitman is a renowned American poet. He served as an example for all to follow. He put thoughts into peoples head. Whitman was very influential and had a very big effect on people. Langston Hughes was also a very influential American poet. He was known for changing others opinion of race and making their oppression evident to others. Hughes was very influenced by Whitman and he caused him to want to make a difference in people's thoughts on his race. Whitman wrote a poem called I Hear America Singing and some people believe that it influenced Hughes poem, I, Too, Sing America. Hughe builds on Whitman's poems in these categories; structure and technique, themes, and effect on people and society.
Now I intend to turn my attention to concrete examples from Walt Whitman's poetry to provide some evidence of that sexuality played an important role in his poetry, and there are possible readings to find traces for that. Of course, we cannot only rely on selected
Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes. Two highly renowed poets. One of Whitman's most known poems, "I Hear America Singing", is about living the American life; he explains multiple types of people in his piece of work and how they are all a part of America. Similar to this, Langston Hughes wrote the poem "I, Too, Sing America", and in this, he includes African Americans, suggesting that Whitman left some people out. Also saying, that blacks are proud and just as big of a part of America as anyone else. Along with this, both are similar in the sense that they are about people in America. Aside from this, there are three other ways in which the poems "I, Too, Sing America", and "I Hear America Singing", are similar. Becasue of this, the poems
Whitman was able to do this almost effortlessly because he saw what was really going on. He volunteered as a wound-dresser; he wrote letters for wounded soldiers, he gave of himself tirelessly. Whitman saw his nation divided and stood to tell his tale. He was an everyman; he was any man. Whitman was the human embodiment of undying compassion. Most of all Whitman is something
Whitman wrote broad stanzas and focused on the whole of America as his inspiration. His lines covered a wide range of topics and generated multiple points of view for the reader. He called his life’s work “Leaves of Grass”; stressing the
Even though the southerners are technically his enemy, he still loves them tenderly as he would his own kin. His family has been killed at the hands of his family. There were many pale-faced men as this who were unfortunate victims of civil warfare. This is a terrible tragedy, and Whitman challenges this by asking what happens after these "hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous? What deepest remains" (The Wound-Dresser, l 12)? The answer, only those who survive to tell the tale remain. Is it really something to celebrate after massacring your fellow countrymen? One might point out the heroics and bravery exhibited in the war, men have been made stronger and is just a growing experience for the country, but "was one side so brave? The other was equally brave" (The Wound-Dresser, l 8). The heroics and bravery are without direction in this war. If you commit a great act of sacrifice, then the results only hurt those whom you share land with, your countrymen, your brethren. Whitman grieves for these people, "for my enemy is dead. A man as divine as myself is dead" (Reconciliation, l 4). There is no purpose to this feud; it has extinguished a man, who is an equal, from this world. By speaking of his enemies as his equals and as divine as himself, he captures their humanity and in effect how inhumane it is to destroy them utterly. Through this portrayal of parity in the humanness of those who endure torture, Whitman thrusts out that the war ultimately
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 and he died on March 26, 1892. He had a nickname that was "Bard of Democracy. When he was 11, his dad took him out of school so he could help around the house and the farm. He started to work as a journalist and he did not really like it because he always had a hard deadline. Whitman became angered about the slavery problems so that is what made him sit down and start writing his feeling which became a poem.
Whitman identifies himself for the first time in section 24 and even then into a balance of scriptural, half-comical outline as “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son” he strikes readers in a distinctly proud and individual posture and addresses the audience in a doubly straightforward demeanor. He talks about how his body does indeed “spread,”not only from head to toe, but also from from earth to heaven, and from self to others. So now his voice can now represent the nearby and the inaccessible, the life around him and the life a long way from him. The pace begins to diminish as he distinguishes nearly and carefully with one section of society as it were: the injured, the imprisoned, the
During the course of his career Walt Whitman struggled with his career trajectory. While he was an exceptional writer, his work was never fully appreciated until his death. Walt Whitman’s trial and tribulations led him to write of his experiences such as in “The Mississippi at Midnight,” which describes how the river captured his attention. His observations created a beautiful piece of literature that encompasses the river. One of the verses that reinforces his writing style is “Oh tireless waters! Like Life’s quick dream onward and onward even hurrying like death in this midnight hour you seem, life in your chill drops greedily burying”( Whitman, The Mississippi), stating that life is too short and that it can be extinguished ever so quickly. Being captivated by the Mississippi river,
Renowned poets and philosophers Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, although being from different schools of thought, actually shared many of the same views about nature and mankind’s role in society. Whitman, being more of a ‘romantic’ poet, praised nature’s beauty and majestic qualities. Thoreau, on the other hand, was more of a Transcendentalist; The Transcendentalism school of thought emphasized individualism as a common theme and celebrated the ‘self’ as a separate, but equal, counterpart to the nature of our environment. While both of these poets had their opinions on the landscape around us, they were quite similar in their beliefs about mankind’s existence and skirted the line between both schools of thought.
Walt Whitman is considered one of the most important writers in the history of American Literature. The people of his own time called him a radical, a madman, and a pornographer. These days he is greatly appreciated and entitled as a fearless prophet of a new stage of human development. Sometimes Whitman would be in a slump and he felt that he needed to deflect the people who inquired too directly. This even meant using examples of homosexual elements in his work, as well as unbelievable stories of him having affairs with numerous women and fathering many children, unknown to him. Throughout these sorts of times W. Whitman has gone through both resentment and flattery, nevertheless showing us
On this verse, we can see how Whitman tries to connect to mind, body, spirit and nature. In “Song of Myself” Whitman attempted to change the meaning of American poetry. I described identity issues that pertain to him, but that the audience was able to identify with. Whitman, opened the door to
Along with the use of metaphors, the form of the poem plays an important role in uncovering the views of Whitman. First and foremost, this poem was written in free verse which is a form of poetry that lacks structure. The free verse stucture of the poem is shown in the lack of form in the stanzas of the poem. Some stanzas are six lines long while others are only one, and the lines can be either concise or drawn out. The poem also lacks any apparent rhyming scheme or rhythm. Unlike Shakespearean poetry, where the foot of the poem stays the same, the lack of any apparent structure to the poem leaves the reader unable to predict what is coming next. In addition to this, at the time this poem was written, free verse was not common. In fact, Whitman may have been one of the first poets to use this form, showing that he may have been rebelling against the predominant structured form in poetry. The lack of any apparent structure guides the reader towards the conclusion that Whitman did not like structure in poetry, and can even be
Pound went on to keep that pact with his many works that include The Cantos, The Condolence, and To Whistler, American. Like in the 1855 version of Leaves of Grass, Whitman gave a descriptive image of him in a “working dress and large hat, arms akimbo, standing at his ease,” this is also matched by the descriptive image in Pound’s Pavannes and Divisions (Willard 573). Whitman
Whitman is known for being revolutionary for his use of free form verse in the nineteenth century. This style is evident throughout Song of Myself which aids in his descriptions and devices used to get his meaning across. His grouping of three lines per stanza for this section is common for the entirety of “Song of Myself”, which has variations of three line to occasionally five line stanzas. His freedom in his poem’s style and lack of rhyme scheme allow him to fully showcase his thoughts in a new way for this time period. An overall summary of the poem is Whitman’s pondering of himself and the world in behavior and personality to him being fully confident in himself with no existential crisis. For the first half of section 20, Whitman’s character of himself questions everything beyond the ownership of himself. He questions the integrity of other people’s identities and characters as well as ignoring social norms involving manners and religious behavior. The declaration of a lack of manners and questioning the church would have been scandalous to