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oatakan / sep 22nd

September 20th, 2009 by oatakan

My recent posts and comments, I was wondering about Whitman’s education. I even had questions on my comments to other fellow students about his education, like what a talent of a person on using words in an enchanting way to express feelings and thoughts. By the time of reading leaves of grass, I started to get more curious about Whitman’s life, therefore I am so into finding about what he has been through in his life and as a reflection these creative writing (his amazing work) came up. I have recently found this information about his self education one of the pages about Whitman and I think this would be useful to share.

“By the age of eleven, Whitman was done with his formal education (by this time he had far more schooling than either of his parents had received), and he began his life as a laborer, working first as an office boy for some prominent Brooklyn lawyers, who gave him a subscription to a circulating library, where his self-education began. Always an autodidact, Whitman absorbed an eclectic but wide-ranging education through his visits to museums, his nonstop reading, and his penchant for engaging everyone he met in conversation and debate. While most other major writers of his time enjoyed highly structured, classical educations at private institutions, Whitman forged his own rough and informal curriculum of literature, theater, history, geography, music, and archeology out of the developing public resources of America’s fastest growing city. http://whitmanarchive.org/biography/walt_whitman/index.html#education

At first, I thought he definitely had someone in his life courage him to study, advising and directing, however based on information above we can see that he was self motivated who had passion on learning and writing.

In last class we had, there was this discussion about some of his lines, which were about slaves during the time. His line started as “The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside…(p37) and he continues that briefly saying he took care of the slave by giving him a room and clothes. Based on these lines I thought of Whitman as brave for helping a slave and concerned of human rights, not racist and had an image of being enlightened. During the time slavery was legal in USA, I also found a short info about slavery and history of it on Wikipedia that as follows; “From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of much of the present United States.[6] Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves; there was a small number of white slaves as well. The majority of slaveholders were in the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture, with farms of fifteen or more slaves proving to be far more productive than farms without slaves. According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

In relation to slavery he explain his ideas in his lines perfectly and talks to people how he defends equality between people.

I am the poet of the body
And I am the poet of the soul
I go with the slaves of the earth equally with the masters
And I will stand between the masters and the slaves,
Entering into both so that both shall understand me alike.

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who is whitman to me so far?

September 13th, 2009 by oatakan

September 15th

ty 002 Until registering this course I haven’t known anything about Whitman and I thought that the course would be similar to other literature classes. At first day of class it was surprising for me that class was online based which really makes me enjoy reading other’s writings and being able to ask questions and submit comments.

I found Whitman very clever, enchanting person the way that he plays with words. He touches with his writings to variety of occupations, different age groups, the nature, the religion, sexuality, etc and by combining those, creates amazing image in one’s mind. I personally kind of able to see what he sees when I read his lines. I do wonder about his personality and family life and wonder that what made him start writing poems. We know that he dropped out the school age of 11. In order to write these poems, I think he sort of educated himself but how? Did he have anybody helping him showing the directions? Or is it possible to have passion and being talented to write and develop yourself from reading that you do regularly?

After reading the “Song of Myself”, it has come to my attention that he uses some words constantly like earth, sky; sun; shortly the nature to explain his feelings. Also, the words like man and muscularity which I think his being homosexual plays a role in those lines. Furthermore I admire his courage to write anything about prohibited to talk about.
“Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.”

Song of Myself 53

We see that, he really wouldn’t care about anything that would happen to him after expressing himself in any way he wants. As we told in class, Church was the dominant power in those times and he shows himself against it in some of his lines. Additionally, I think, he is a positive thinker, friendly and open minded and he wants others to see what he sees based on his poem.

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September 13th, 2009 by oatakan

Sep 15th Oatakan (image gloss)

deep-cave

“I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe

…and am not contained between my hat and boots,

And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good.

The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of earth,

I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself

They do not know how immortal, but I know.”

American Heritage Dictionary (2)

Fathomless:

adjective Too deep to be fathomed or measured.
adjective Too obscure or complicated to be understood.

The word fathomless means “too deep to fathom” and with respect to the universe, this can be applied both to its physical depth, as well as to the difficulty in understanding its properties.

(www.fathomless.net)

Since, I am struggling to understand his words and put them together to find out meaning of his lines ; (fathomless) is the perfect word to call Walt Whitman as well as he calls himself. I think in these lines he is trying to explain his existence in a unique way. He tells about objects like not one thing looks like another, however they complete each other. Furthermore, he defines himself as being immortal and fathomless. In my opinion, he is not afraid to die and he accepts being complicated to be understood.

The picture is US, Fantastic Pit in Georgia’s Ellison’s Cave, which I thought incredibly deep (fathomless) adjuncts with Whitman’s thoughts and work.

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Song of Oktay

September 6th, 2009 by oatakan

Sea of streched gorund-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you…I too am one of phase and all of phases.

[50]

In these lines, I found that Whitman redefines the greatness of sea and relates it to his feelings by taking a side by the sea.In other words, act of sea resembles his deep feelings like his anger, his calmness and how they change. Also, he sees the sea as graves that many people drawn in the past without being burried which he recalls unshovelled graves. In the picture, I am in a marine and looking at ocean and thinking , hence I do find myself relevant to these lines. I always loved to watch the ocean when it was calm, in the other side I was afraid of it when the scary waves hit the shore. In my opinion, Whitman is saying; sea is like human being when we think of our feelings that sometimes being angry, sometimes being happy and calm and how huge it is that just like a human being how great amount of feeligns and information we can store in ourselves and some of the pains, difficult times we experience we just forget them by the time just like sea burries lives of people.