Tag Archives: Walt Whitman

The Voice of a Rainstorm

60 pages into Specimen Days and I wish I had started reading earlier! Cunningham is just as good as I remembered him, his prose is rich and precisely descriptive, his characters are compelling and almost disturbingly empathetic. And most of … Continue reading

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An Ecocritical Look at Whitman and Neruda: Some Initial Thoughts

In my final paper, I will explore the ecocritical relationship between Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda (and maybe William Carlos Williams?). Relative to the exhaustive of the body of scholarship that has been done on Whitman and Neruda, not much … Continue reading

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Catalogues

“By listing, by naming, the atrocities-the harrowing stats, the scary particulars-in our world-at-endless-war, we might at least exert control over our sanity and extend our mind and compassion to others.” This is description of Juliana Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone … Continue reading

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Connectedness in a Post 9/11 World

This week, we focused on Whitmanian influence in a post 9/11 world, and the complications that ensue when trying to reconcile Whitman’s optimism and ideas of connectedness in an America that seems to have been tarnished and mutated.  As many … Continue reading

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Catalogues: Spahr vs. Whitman

In the aftermath of 9/11, I think a lot of people in the United States felt a profound sense that the senseless murders of thousands of people on American soil by terrorists was one of the worst things that ever … Continue reading

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The Poem as Fruit

I am invigorated by the shift to a woman’s perspective of Walt Whitman, which (obviously) often places him in the maternal role and/or that of a nurse.  Because Sharon Olds has been one of my favorite poets since I saw … Continue reading

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A strange thing

This is just a strange thing that happened to me the other day that I thought might have to do with Whitman. It was John Berryman’s birthday and I was looking for this one particular Dream Song that I did … Continue reading

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Whitman’s Cameos

I love it when Walt Whitman makes a cameo in a poem. Reading about Whitman’s skills on the b-ball court in Sherman Alexie’s “Defending Walt Whitman” reminded me of Allen Ginsberg’s trip to the grocery store in “A Supermarket in … Continue reading

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The Mystery of Oppen

This week I must say I was particularly fascinated with the simultaneously revealing and befuddling poems of George Oppen.  Oppen was the poster-child of what came to be known as the “Objectivist” school of poetry, which has been categorized by a lack of … Continue reading

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Clarity in the Sense of Silence

Today’s class discussion about “objectivism” really got me thinking, especially because so many people has responses that were different from my own initial thoughts of what it means to be an objective poet. One thing that stood out to me … Continue reading

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