2. Explain the role of the city in the Whitmanesque notion of human bonding.

"Suspension," a term used repeatedly in the poem, is the poem's medium and goal.

Whitman's proclivity for water and sea dates all the way back to his childhood on Long Island, and it provides the key images for many of his finest poems.

The ferry ride has been presented as mythic journey in earlier literature, but never before as a place of encounter.

Suspension keeping it all fluid and "present," here/there and now/then may be interpreted as the rhythm of desire.

Whitman emerges finally as "soul maker." He creates a bridge with his fellows and readers through his vision and writing. If we compare this poem with Baudelaire's view of crowds, we see the warmth and pathos of Whitman's vision.

3. Summarize how Whitman's career as a reporter is reflected in his poetry.

“Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun" displays Whitman's ability to appreciate both the urban and the rural.

We cannot miss the age-old rivalry between city and country in this poem.

Whitman's endorsement of urban life over country life stamps the piece with modernity.

"Sparkles from the Wheel" is one of Whitman's gems in the area of urban epiphany, the visionary experience of a new order.

Whitman is again the reporter, the flaneur strolling through the city, looking for experience.

The poem celebrates pedestrian but miraculous moments of beauty, those moments of everyday life that become radiant if we know how to see them.

"Sparkles from the Wheel" can be seen as an emblem of Whitman's poetry: the creation of beauty from the simplest elements of daily life.

Lecture 27

1. Give examples of different traditions of death that Whitman draws from.

Referring to the Egyptian god Osiris, Whitman speaks for a vision of eternal renewal.

In Western philosophy, we have Whitman the Hegelian: champion of thesis and antithesis, both sides always in play, leading to some larger synthetic vision.

Death is often presented in Whitman's poetry as nature's truth, as transcendental illumination.

"The Scented Herbage of My Breast" speaks directly to the pathos and obsessive beauty of death.

2. Explain the relationship between poetry and death in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking".

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is Whitman's most intimate and moving poem about death as the key to his vocation and as the generative force of poetry. The poem begins as an invocation to childhood memory, a return to beginnings.

Whitman displays here an exquisite talent for depicting the denizens of nature, in this case two birds.

The birds, described as "Two feather'd guests from Alabama" speak their beautiful duet in this piece. Love and fidelity emerge here as the lesson of nature, the project of the species.

Death and loss are to be understood here as the origin of song. Whitman personifies his creatures and offers us the human drama of animals.

All singers are inherently solitary, bereft; we see here both the origin and the cost of song.

Whitman the great ventriloquist translates the sea as well as the birds into language, thus giving voice to the entire scene. The tragic loss that the bird experiences is presented as weaning, as the universal condition of self. In this poetic "aria," the "savage old mother" in Whitman's drama of self-birth testifies to a mythic imagination of great power and ferocity. Death is finally understood as nature's great secret, as baptism of the poet.

3. Summarize Whitman's unique relationship with Lincoln and how this helped to fashion "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

Whitman himself changed dramatically during the Civil War years, and the experience as wound dresser altered him, left him broken and prematurely aged.

Lincoln's assassination in 1865 is therefore seen as emblematic of American deaths, as the paradigm experience of a dreadful national wound.

Lincoln is never named in the great elegy. We are left with the view that it could be anyone; it is a sign of national mourning.

Lincoln's death transforms Civil War into America’s Iliad, into a legend that demands to be written.

Whitman's loving and tender attitude toward Lincoln—so unremarkable to our eyes—was utterly unlike contemporary views of Lincoln, which were unremittingly hostile.

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is the great American elegy of the 19^th century.

Whitman begins with an introduction to the players: lilac, star, and thrush.

The thrush's beautiful song is referred to as the "song of the bleeding throat." Whitman's message here is that poetry is to be understood viscerally, as a hemorrhage.

The plot is simple: the coffin travels to Springfield, and the poet's offering (an offering that we will have to measure throughout the poem) is made.

The poet evokes his ultimate companions: death on each side, guaranteeing a fellowship that will sustain him.

In positing the bird/poet as warbler, Whitman touches on a staple Romantic trope, but in a new key.

The poem then offers us an evocation of America the bounteous, North and South, a land of plenty that must heal its wounds.

The poet's "carol of death" is presented as an offering to the "dark mother," as a strange ritual of maturation and of paying one's inevitable dues.

The poem achieves greatness through its visionary moment, in which destruction is transcended, and one moves beyond butchery and death. The poem is about the work of mourning.

The poem's rhythm is insistent in its plea for "passing," moving on, trying to find closure for the war.

Lecture 28