Author Archive | robertsontk

Whitman: Transcendent Shaman

Introduction. Walt Whitman is often described as the quintessential American Romantic poet. Almost effortlessly, his voice conveys the ideals of the Romantic: innocence, Nature, and Universal transcendence. His very essence appears as a lurking, transcendent presence among his predecessors, Americans, and even reaching into foreign lands to inspire peoples of the world. Regardless of their […]

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Surrender

If everybody did not die the earth would be all covered over and I, I as I, could not have come to be all covered over and I, as I, could not have come to be and try as much as I can try not to be I, nevertheless, I would mind that so much […]

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Contamination

Reading Spahr’s poem “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache”, I thought that it cautions against allowing too much of the public world in. Hence, we remain “gentle”, to which she is referring accepting the benefits of a stream.  She relates the stream to a life force; the clean water provided by a stream is a […]

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Anticipation

I was really drawn to a particular quote in Lerner’s “The Dark Threw Patches Upon Me Also”. In this particular quote, Lerner describes our obsession with keeping track of time: We often say twilight but mean dusk, or check our watches without noting the time, two of the minor practices that make us enough of […]

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Walt on Video

The Whitman identity that has most impressed and influenced me during our readings this semester is the Whitman of non-binary soul and body. Whitman has expressed in numerous different ways the relationship between the body and the soul; though they are represented as two separate entities, their relationship interacts as though they are one. Feed […]

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Natural Continuity

In “Continuities”, Whitman seems to be challenging what is vs. what we perceive. Whitman suggests that people are often taken from the truth when evaluating the superficial. The phrase “what you see is what you get” comes to mind when considering this poem; Whitman, however disagrees with this as we see in the line “Appearance […]

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Tropico, Chapter 1

There is a lot of Whitmanian energy surrounding Lana Del Rey’s Tropico, and I thought I would continue the conversation about this short film here for this week. I picked this piece because of Jack Spicers “Notes on Whitman”. Spicer seems to take a cynical stance on Whitman, stating his world is too idealistic. Whitman speaks […]

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The Moon, The Woman, The Body Electric

Whitman takes special care to describe both the female and the male form in “I Sing the Body Electric”. In section 5, he approaches the female body, describing it as a “nimbus form” that is “lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day”. I find myself also drawn to the comparison of the […]

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Consistence in Past and Present

In the preface to Leaves of Grass, Whitman leaves no distinction between the past, present and future. The past (who we were) and the present (who we are today) interact together in order to place us in the future (who we will become): The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what […]

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