Final Project! and Evaluation.

Here is my final project, the cento poem regarding the perspectives of slavery, the west, and the Free Soil Movement. I used lines from Whitman's Calamus poems, William Cullen Bryant's 'America' and 'A Northern Legend', John Greenleaf Whittier's 'At Port Royal 1861' and 'Song of the Negro Boatmen', Langston Hughes' 'A Dream Deferred', and various quotes from Whitman and the Free Soil Party.

The Cry of [the] Free Man
[for the protection of the liberty of whites]

O western orb sailing the heaven,

OH mother of a mighty race,

I will escape from the sham that was proposed to me.

Like a raisin in the sun

every wrong shall die

by the lone rivers of the West.

[Like] the joy of uncaged birds

shall sit a nobler grace than now

where field and garner, barn and byre.

Labor must not be degraded.

[It] must shape our good or ill,

drop strength and riches at thy feet,

[give] power, at thy bounds.

The thronging years in glory rise

for the starved laborer...

[So with] a hand like ivory fair

Fight on and Fight ever

[For] sea-winds blow from east and west

[but] the clouds are coming swift and dark.

Class evaluation:

I'm not sure if I have many quarrels with how the course was ran. I really enjoyed how each class was led as more of a discussion than a lecture for it got me to think more critically about Whitman's work and learn new perspectives [from fellow students] that I would have never been exposed to if the class were set up any differently. The course load did seem a bit overwhelming at times since we had to respond to the tweet of the week, specimen days, and a poem, but over all I learned a lot and enjoyed meeting online as well as in the classroom. 

Whitman: The Dude

Prompt #1

Of the few movies I have seen by the Coen Bros, it seems like the contents in which they explore all tend to gravitate around the idea of taking average, common day people and putting them in extraordinary situations they would never normally find themselves in. The Big Lebowski for example, The Dude is the epitome of your run of the mill guy, unemployed, part of a bowling league, does the same thing day in and day out.. but gets mistaken for a millionaire lebowski and has to be part of some heisty situations, people start dying, people shit on his rug etc. In Burn After Reading, the same thing happens except replace the dude and his friends with a couple of gym employees and the mistaken identity is a swap of a bag or the handling of an important CIA disc (can't remember exactly). In a very rough, simplistic analysis, it seems as though the Coen Bros are trying to elevate the hopes and status of the average person by saying we are all privileged enough to be in these situations. OR it could just be a very good formula for entertainment: put someone in a situation they know nothing about and watch them run around like a chicken with their head cut off.

In relation to Whitman, he is doing somewhat of the same thing. Celebrating the average american by trying to elevate them to a status worthy of 'poetry' and 'scholars.' What the Coen Bros and Whitman are saying is that we are all worthy of entertainment topics, to say the least, so when we see ourselves up on the big screen or in the latest Whitman poem, we feel acknowledged, accepted, privileged, special etc. One good example would be Whitman's Song for Occupations: he literally lists occupations, and it's almost like we're going through a list, searching for our names, as if wondering "did we get accepted?"

One difference I must mention though is that in the Coen Bros movies, the average guy tends to get fucked over, so in a way it's saying we can't handle high rolling. Let's just stick with the reasoning being to make ourselves feel better about or current status.

Ginsberg!

For starters, Ginsberg has free form, lengthy lines, no rhyme, little structure, similar to Whitman. Hearing Ginsberg read Howl, it seemed he was taking on a preachy style. The same in which Whitman was interested in: not so much the content but the breath and rhythm of the poem.

With themes and imagery, in Howl, there is the juxtaposition of the great minded youth paired with the corrupt institution tearing them down. Whitman wasn't as explicit as Ginsberg, maybe that's just the difference in language over time, but he clearly was against the institution as well. Speaking against the scholar, the typical poet etc. In A Supermarket in California, Ginsberg definitely takes on the voice of the lost American youth, "Where are we going, Walt Whitman?" that Whitman addresses as well "I contradict myself." This piece specifically remins me of section 20 of Whitman's Calamus poems. The one where he is speaking of the tree he saw in Louisiana that stands alone. Whitman looks to it for answers, or at the very least admires it for what it stands for. I feel that in Supermarket, Ginsberg is taking on the role of Whitman the speaker in section 20, and Whitman becomes the tree, the one with the answers.

'the man' vs. 'the poet' : I think who 'the man' is defines who 'the poet' is. I see a correlation between Whitman and Ginsberg in the sense of them representing, or attempting to, an identity, an American identity. But they do so through the medium of a more specific identity, Whitman the average American worker and Ginsberg, American, disenfranchised youth. When I listened to the reading of Howl, after this line "who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall," people laughed. I didn't get it.  This seemed to be because maybe it was very colloquial and particular to New Yorkians, have to experience it to understand. This is similar to Whitman. A New York man. They're trying to speak to a whole but can't help but speak to particular part as well. In thinking of Song of Myself, many images specific to the times and the place of Whitman, but it is still able to stand the test of time and relate. The same happens with Ginsberg. I think maybe a little more obscure and particular, but same idea. There will always be these types of people and it will call to a certain youth of every generation. SO in relation to the man... it is where they come from, their specific experience, that pathes the way for the poet. The poet borrows from the man to inspire and create the work of art. By getting specific, can be universal.