This Compost is one of the many Whitman poems we’ve read that moves along that Hegelian dialectical structure of ecstasy, crisis, and resolution. However, this one stands out in that it begins in crisis. The first section begins with the line “Something startles me where I thought I was safest,” after which a series of disillusioning discoveries are cataloged, and the earth which Whitman usually celebrates in all its splendor and filth, becomes a threatening, diseased object. The section concludes with an inversion of Whitman’s characteristic process of detailing what he sees and ennobling it in this way: “I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath;/ I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.”
In the second section, however, this initial despair is answered with a sense of ecstatic revelation (“The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead…all is clean forever and forever”) before moving into a sort of sobered resolution between these polarized registers: “probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.” This line is significant not only as a moment of resolve within the poem but as a statement about Whitman’s poetic process. The image of grass automatically provokes an association with Leaves of Grass, and as the final line acknowledges the processes of decomposition and growth out of the “divine materials” of earth, it also acknowledges that his ecstatic vision must be put into crisis, to decompose, in order that a workable vision within the world may arise.
I like your analysis of the structure of this poem. I was caught off guard when it began in crisis, especially when it’s main trope was nature because nature was so consistently a safe ground, even a holy place, for Whitman. I would challenge the idea that this is entirely Hegelian in structure, There seems to be only one rise and fall of crisis and resolution. Are there other mini moments of thesis/antithesis throughout that I am missing. I’ll be honest my reading of Whitman takes a few passes through before I see the extent of his craft. Another thing about this poem that I did not quite make sense of was Whitman’s association of humanity with death, decay, and disease. There seems to be no resolution of this and man is forever the plague of the earth while earth is pure and perfect and cleans up when we spoil. This does not seem Whitmanian, I feel like he usually gives man a redemptive moment in which he finds connection, friendship, and hope. Why do you think Whitman chose to do that?
I really liked your take on how the second part of the poem was about the speaker’s “revelation”. It seems that nature has a rejuvenating quality that takes even the darkest concepts, like death, and makes them beautiful. Spring and summer are mentioned a few times, perhaps relating to the idea of rebirth and regeneration. The speaker is “terrified” of earth because of its immense power. I love that you say the vision must decompose in order for nature to, for lack of better word, “recompose” this vision into something new and beautiful.
Great conversation here. I don’t think any single poem captures Whitman’s poetry, and the way that poetry–on the level of individual poem and career arc–moves on that path from crisis to recovery. I like the point about this poem being very much about Whitman’s poetic process. That is true on an even more literal level when we consider that the act of arranging type in the printing box is called “composing.” Whitman in this sense suggest a clarified and refined language that still caries with it the residue of crisis as a natural part of its ability to enact recovery.