Project to Develop

I have decided that I would like to develop the project in which we tracked the poem Song for Occupations throughout the different editions of Leaves of Grass.  Maybe I could track more than just Song for Occupations and come up with my own conclusion as to why Walt made these changes.  There are so many reasons as to why he made changes.  Was it the publishers?  Was it his own personal views? Was it that America was changing and so were the people reading his poems?  Why couldn't he just leave it the way it was?  I would have to figure which poems I would be tracking and do additional research about the questions that have been asked.  I think it would be wise of me to use the Whitman archives website as well as Specimen Days.  The thing about this is that no one will ever know the real reason, but then again that is the fun part! Speculate and come up with my own hypothesis!!

America's Characteristic Landscape

This Specimen Days post has the word LOAFER written all over it!  He calls great sights such as Yosemite, Niagara falls, and Yellowstone "great natural shows."  They aren't just landscapes, they are shows.  They provide entertainment to see.  An individual could just stare out into the landscape and experience something.  I think that is a big part of loafing, experiencing your surroundings without having to do anything but relax and watch.

I think he says that the landscape is changing, that the future destiny of these landscapes are for farms, they will no longer have the scenery of Yosemite or Yellowstone.  They will be taken over by "maize, wool, flax, coal, iron..."  At the end of the post he says that the prairies will remain with him. Maybe it is that he will forever remember their beauty and that farms cannot destroy his image of the beautiful scenery.  Either way, I think he is talking about the changes in America, the way it is becoming more materialistic.  He is talking about people's need for "things" but he will not forget that "their simplest statistics are sublime."

Martin Farquhar Tupper

Martin F. Tupper wrote Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts and Arguments.  It is a long series of didactic moralisings in blank verse and is said to be "prose cut up into suitable lengths."  It epitomized the moral and evangelical spirit of the mid 19th century.

Proverbial Philosophy is similar to Leaves of Grass in that they are both written in free verse and they somewhat didactic.  All of Tupper's works start with Of (some idea), "Of Truth in Things False", "Of Anticipation", "Of Education", "Of Pride."  Similar to how Walt titles his poems, "Song OF myself" or "Song FOR Occupations."  The title of the poem directly relates to the poem itself.  That might be something just of the period, but it it shows the reader what they can expect while at the same time being direct and confident about their work.  The authors, Tupper and Walt, could be using this as a strategy to preach.  There is a review written anonymously that also thinks the two are similar.  From "Walt Whitman's Poems." The Literary World, the critic writes, "The chaos of Mr. Whitmna's verse, to compare great with small, reminds us of the gray clay bluffs of Truro Beach.  Would it were as clean! In form he reminds us of Martin Farquhar Tupper."

I also found an excerpt from "Of Education" by Tupper to be fairly similar to some thing's Walt has said.  From "Of Education",

"mother, let him learn of thy lips, and be nourished at thy breast. character is mainly moulded by the cast of the minds that surround it: let then the playmates of thy little one be not other than thy judgement shall approve; for a child is in a new world, and learneth somewhat every moment, his eye is quick to observe, his memory storeth in secret..."

This reminds me of a mix between "Song of Myself" and "Song for Occupations."  The description of the lips and breast remind me of the part in "Song of Myself" where he is talking about the tongue.  The education of a child and how he/she grows up reminds me of "Song for Occupations."

Walt in the NOW!

After searching for quite some time on Walt in popular culture, I came across these three items.

I found that Walt, like many other writers and even just famous people, have their quotes put across some sort of landscape picture.  Anyone can put a quote over a picture!  But this picture is by far my favorite!  It makes reference to Walt's form of poetry.  I read somewhere that Walt is known as the father of free verse, so this picture is not only true, but witty, OR should I say, whitty. Plus, the dog is wearing glasses.  Extra funny points for that.  I have no clue why, but its funny to me!

Upon my search, I found this comic strip by Stephan Thomas Pastis who is the creator of a syndicated comic strip called "Pearls Before Swine"  which runs in hundreds of newspapers around the world.  I came across a particular comic about Walt and Twitter!  It talks about Walt's poetry in relation to twitter.  His sentences and much of his poems were so long that you probably can't fit a lot of the lines in 140 characters or less.  Imagine if Walt did tweet.  He would have abbreviated everything!  Plus, 140 characters is limiting what Walt needed to say.  I don't think he would've liked having limitations for expression.

Lastly, I FOUND WALT WHITMAN BEER!!!!! Or well it is called Walt Wit, but it's beer! And his portrait is on the bottle!!  The Philadelphia Brewing Co has a beer dedicated to him.  The description of the beer goes like this:

"The American poet, Walt Whitman, once portrayed a sunset over Philadelphia as "...a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and profusion of beaming shaft and dazzle". Pour yourself a bottle of Walt Wit Belgian-Style White Ale and see what he was talking about. A pinch of spice and a whisper of citrus lend complexity to this fragrant and satisfying ale.

Walt Wit - It's Transcendentally Delicious."

Wasn't it in "Song of Myself" where he wanted the reader to taste him?  "You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me.  And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart" (3).  Whoa!  So by drinking this beer, you really do get a taste of Walt?

So those are my fun findings of Walt in popular culture.  But I leave you with this photo.  Walt and Thom Yorke...TWINSIES!!!

Frances Wright

Frances Wright was a Scotland-born lecturer, writer, and abolitionist. She was the co-founder of the "Free Inquirer" newspaper and founded the Nashoba Commune where she wanted to educate slaves to prepare them for freedom.  She wanted to create a community in which it was multi-racial, a community of free blacks and whites.  Unfortunately, Wright became ill and the managers who took over during her illness and move back to Europe, had a stricter approach to the Commune and when she came back to Tennessee, the community had collapsed.

Her anti-slavery beliefs were interesting to Walt.  He went to see her speak at the anti-slavery halls in New York.  He spoke of her as, "a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs - too large to be tolerated for long by them...she touched the widest range of themes - spoke informally, colloquially.  She has always been to me one of the sweetest of sweet memories: we all loved her."  It seems he looked up to her.  He also says of her, "She was a brilliant woman, of beauty and estate, who was never satisfied unless she was busy doing good - public good, private good."  This speaks to Walt's beliefs on work which I have talked about in my past two posts!  The work she was doing was for the good of the people as well as herself.  She was learning more and teaching more and I think that was something that Walt was drawn to by her.

Growth Health Work

In Walt's Speciman Days post called "Growth -- Health -- Work", he talks about how he grew into a strong young man, maybe too quickly, but as time went on found the things he loved and began writing.  He writes about how he worked as a compositor in printing offices in New York.

Having just read his poem, "A Song for Occupations", I wonder how much of his work in New York relates to that poem.  In his Specimen Days post he says, "This latter I consider one of my best experiences and deepest lessons in human nature behind the scenes, and in the masses."  I think this speaks a lot to the poem.  The poem was not about the work that was being done, the manual labor, but the experience you get from it and how that makes you grow as an individual. In "A Song for Occupations" he says, "I bring not money or amours or dress or eating....but I bring as good; And send no agent or medium...and offer no representative of value - but offer the value itself."  In the poem and the Specimen Days post he believes that if you do good work, you will learn from it.