Emblematic Blades (Walt Whitma
ENGLISH 240 - Tutorial Leader - Chris Wortham April, 2004Walt Whitman (1819-1892) can be described as America's first truly original, home-grown poet who wrote in free verse in celebration of America and being American.From humble beginnings on Long Island, he lived and worked in Brooklyn and New York from 1823 till the outbreak of Civil War in 1861.Between these years he had worked as a carpenter, teacher, printer, journalist and editor of several local newspapers. He was a "word-smith", physically constructing words from typesetting, composing stick and type cases. Thus, from the age of 14, he was introduced to words manufactured from presses and cold type, and went home every night with ink stains on his hands and fingers.As he was growing up simultaneously in Brooklyn and New York (with a brief spell in New Orleans as the editor of the Crescent), several influences had their effect upon him.Perhaps the first was being lifted up by Washington's companion in arms, the French general, La Fayette when he arrived in Brooklyn in 1825 to lay the foundations of a new public library. Walt was six at the tim
Because of his wood-pecker character and interests, he filled his poems with the minutiae of life around him, like an attic full of odds and ends, antiques, the new as well as the old, the debris of the ebb and flow of life that included the brilliant with the banal. It is fitting to end with what his friend, contemporary critic, novelist and journalist, John Trowbridge had to say about him. " (Scented Herbage of My Breast)From his poetry we gather he was a very sensual, sexual man. Much of his poetry is influenced by the opera, especially the emotive music, cadences and arias of Italian opera. While a carpenter's son, he could build houses during the day, and attend the opera in the evenings to be enthralled and raptured by the likes of the Italian prima donna, Signora Alboni, whom he described in "Song of Myself" as that: "lustrous orb" and "booming mother". He appointed himself America's premier poet laureate, displacing his sage and mentor, Emerson, who in his now famous "Greeting letter" of 1855, put him on the path to national fame. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof and everything else in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic (Song of Myself). Walt wanted people to have a healthier attitude to their bodies and to sex, and in this he was at least a hundred years before his time. He knew Walt fairly well and was perceptive enough to see the man behind the mask, and honest enough to speak the truth about his legacy to the world: SEE APPENDIX B ***********THE END. The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers, the young man all color'd, red, ashamed, angry;" (Song of Myself)was it any wonder men and women blushed with embarrassment.
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