So Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' is in 52 sections - I call them cantos - and there's no way that we can do justice to all 52 in the time we have, but I thought it would be good for us to try to understand Walt, particularly in the context of Emily Dickinson. These are two proto-modernists. They're heading toward breaking the rules of conventional official verse culture of the 19th century. Formally, they're doing very different things but they're somewhat equally breaking the rules, but Walt does it in a very different way. So let's start right from the beginning; the first two lines: "I celebrate myself and sing myself and what I assume you shall assume." What's positive and happy and good, Max, about that before we get to the doubts about it? What's so great about it? It's full of self-esteem, it's about himself, it's about being proud of who he is and what he thinks and celebrating that; celebrating his being a human being. And it's about the 'I's, about the first person pronoun, which is, given romantic poetry's allowance for the 'I', not completely new, but it's perhaps new in its emphasis; this is about him. This is essentially a verse journal really, a verse diary. "I celebrate myself and sing myself." Sing? Anybody want to comment on "sing"? Amarice? It seems reminiscent of minstrels, it seems like an epic, except this would be an epic of the self rather than a legendary hero... And singing as opposed to talking or writing... There's a kind of an exuberance like implicit in singing that you can get... In association with poetry and its original state maybe; the singing, the bardic, the lyric, as in the lyre. The ballad. Kristin? It's more of a ballad-type 'sing'. Although the form is not a ballad form. It's not a ballad form. Yes, right, balladeering, I guess is what you mean... OK the downside; "I celebrate myself and sing myself and what I assume you shall assume." What an audacious thing for him to say. Ally, where do we start with that: "and what I assume you shall assume." There's a positive and a negative there. Well the negative is, well, you know, according to who? You know, like what gives you the right to assume what I would assume. Assume is a really interesting word in this context, right?Assumptions. Basic assumptions. We assume the same things. Well, assume could also mean like, to make an assumption would be like, I think this about something but to assume something could also mean that you kind of like, sort of put it on or take it in or, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean like, to make an assumption about someone like, you can also like assume a certain attitude or... Ah, as in assuming positions? Sure. Right, so there's assuming a position that when you're talking about Walt, who is sort of omnisexual, there's a certain positioning that's exciting for him, and the position that he has as the writer in connection to you as the reader, it's somewhat sexualized and so there is an assuming a position and the position he assumes is the same position that you shall assume. So then "I loafe and invite my soul," I always found this when I was first studying Whitman, just it tickled me to think of someone giving him license or permission to invite himself as if to say- Do you really need... Does the self need permission to do something for the self? I invite myself, my soul. I learn and loafe, etc. "I, now 37 years old in perfect health, begin". Lovely, "begin," this is the birth of the subject. Not the birth of the person or the man. The birth of the subject, of the writing subject, of the language itself. OK let's look at the end of section one, "I harbor for good and bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, nature without check with original energy." Let's talk about the phrase "original energy." Anybody ever thought about the way the word original works there? Kristin, your thought. Original in that it's a- What kind of originality? Let's talk about... ...the origin. Origin meaning birth. It's natural. It's natural. Original... Originality... First, unique, legitimate, original, the first, the real thing, right? But also original, originary, origins, bardic, singing... Back to basics, "original energy." I'm returning poetry to its expressive origins, I guess he's saying. OK, now we go to canto two or section two, and in this section, "Houses and rooms are full of perfumes..." There's an internal rhyme, "the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself, and I know it, and like it, the distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume. It has no taste of its distillation." Later, "The sound of the belched words of my voice loosed to the eddies of the wind." He seems to be OK with perfume rooms, but he seems to be better out in the air. "The sound of the belched words." So, would you think of Emily Dickinson as offering us "belched words"? Never. So what is "belched"? What are "belched words"? "The belched words my voice loosed to the eddies of the-" Outdoor air, the atmosphere, the unscented atmosphere- What's he trying to say? Emily, where does he stand? What position is he taking? And what does air have to do with poetry? Any of those things. Well, the idea of belching words is inherently very artless; belching is something that is, like, naturally inarticulate, and to express ourselves verbally by means of an inarticulate sound is a kind of... A barbaric yelp, a howl. It's going to be very influential. So this is the unaesthetic aesthetic. This is the supposedly natural voicing of the body. Yeah, Dave, you were going to say something? That it's also unrestrained, a belch sometimes happens involuntarily, you need to let go... Unrestrained, it's unconstrained- formally as well; the long lines, the repetition, the seeming prosaic style: "air", "breathing", "respiration", "inspiration". So there's a relation between original, original writing, original poetics and the "belched words," "loosed," not constrained, but "loosed to the eddies of the wind." "You shall no longer take things at second or third hand," he says at the end of canto two; "You shall no longer take things at second or third hand nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books." Oh oh, he's really outdoors now. What's he saying and how do you feel about it? Anna? That's a really direct response to Emerson. In Emerson's speech, the American scholar, he says that like, Americans can no longer look to- what people before us have written and said, like you should read and you should be educated, but it's time now for Americans to make their own cultural stamp, make their own cultural contributions, and I think Whitman's really responded to that. Yeah it's like primary experience; going out there and doing it for yourself instead of relying on looking through a window at someone else doing it like Emily Dickinson might want to. So, first hand experience is a guide to reality. This is a Whitmanian hallmark and this is going to become a problem throughout modern poetry. When we get, in chapter eight of this course, to John Ashbery's poem "The Instruction Manual," he parodies this whole idea that first hand experience is a guide to, in this case, the town of Guadalajara, where he mocks the idea that we can actually know something about Guadalajara and that these aren't words. In fact what Walt has written here about secondhand knowledge is secondhand knowledge because it's words. And in fact the specter of books is "The Leaves of Grass," the book itself. So, there's all kinds of theoretical impossibilities with this naïve "I experience and I convey experience," but we love it because he's trying to break free, as you were suggesting in a kind of transcendental way. Section three canto three, I love this stanza. "There was never any more inception than there is now." I'm going to ask you all what "now" means after this. "There was never any more inception than there is now, nor any more youth or age than there is now, and will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. Urge and urge and urge." Max, what does "now" mean? In this context. Well now is- Now is the poem. He's talking about.... You went right to the, like, bonus answer. Can you give us more primitive answer? Now would be maybe the time of his writing or the time of that sort of first hand experience... The progressive nineteenth century present, which Whitman was very interested in, there's that... Progress, human progress. Good, and now you go to your second level answer. Now is also the poem. And why do we say that? What does presence mean in writing, in language? Well, if we're talking about this sort of paradox or theoretical impossibility of conveying his experience with words then he sort of- he's saying that the words here, this poem, this language, is the experience. This is it. This is it. There's never more- I love this. Never any more inception, any more creativity, any more birth, any more origins than there is right here, as I write. In a way that's the same self-referentiality we see in Dickinson. That's the "this," for occupation "this," "nor any more youth or age." We don't look back, we don't look forward, what we do is we have this presence, the presence of this subjectivity of this writer, of this walk. If you want to look for me, look under your boot soles; I'm there: The leaves of grass. I'm always there, wherever you look I'm there. Maybe just going back to the reading of "assume" that Anna pointed out; maybe he's encouraging the reader to assume the body of the poem in that sense, so that sort of under-riding that statement. Neither he nor the reader is assuming anything, except for their abiding experience in the world and also in the poem. I like that. No assumptions. I'm here you're here. The division between reader and writer has disappeared now that the writer has gone, and what you have is a text that you absorb, and inception takes place right here. Now means here, it's presence; the presence of the writer, "Urge and urge and urge." We think of "urge" as being the original creativity, but in fact here, the "urge" is the urge to be here after you're no longer. The language itself. If we go to canto five, there's a passage that's what I call meta-pedagogical. I'm very interested in meta-pedagogy. Meta-pedagogy is the inclusion of the idea of teaching, how something is taught, in the thing itself and Walt likes to think of himself as a teacher: "Loafe with me on the grass. Loose the stop from your throat." What would the stop in your throat be? Metaphorically - I hope there's no real stop... Whatever's controlling your thoughts from getting out... Preventing you from saying what you want to say. The notion of the voice, an inhibition that's lodged in the throat. The thing that won't let you full throttle, to yawp, to squeal, to use a neologism, or to listen to the world and say it. That kind of again naïve notion of representation. "Loafe with me on the grass," that's of course his theme; conceit, the leaves of grass. "Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat": let it out vocally. "Not words, not music or rhyme." Rhyme? What's wrong with rhyme? It's constraint. Whitmanian? Are you going to be Whitmanian for a second? What's wrong with rhyme? That rhyme can often be a stop in the throat, but it can... It's a constraint, right? ...prevent you from what you actually want to say because you're like "Oh well, this is an A_B_A rhyme, so I have to rhyme this, so I can't use the word that I really want to use because it doesn't rhyme." So the long line, seemingly, is the unstopping of the throat "not rhyme," "not music or rhyme I want. Not custom or lecture..." What? What's custom have to do with lecture? Dave? Lectures are given in a customary sense; there's a specific way of giving a lecture; there's a formulaic way. So what is the lecture as opposed to something else? What is it, what kind of conveyance of information is a lecture? What's behind it? What are the assumptions? That there is a speaker conveying something... A speaker and a listener... ...and a listener who is... ...Someone stands, others sit, someone speaks, others are quiet. Someone knows, others don't. Someone is, the others aren't yet. That's the custom of knowledge. It's also the custom of subject-object relations. It's the custom of subject-speaker, object-reader. It's the custom of writer-reader and Walt is challenging that, somewhat naïvely, exuberantly, sillily sometimes; challenging the notion that there's someone to tell you what you know. What he really wants to do is crawl inside your brain and your body and find out what you know and speak it for you. Ooh, it's a little creepy! "Not custom or lecture," that's the meta-pedagogical moment. What we do when we read these poems together is we form a collaborative collective close reading, and I have a feeling that if 10,000 people were to read this poem together and collectively interpret it, the interpretation would be better than if one person were to do it him- or herself. "Not custom or lecture, not even the best. Only the lull I like..." Lull? "...the hum of your valved voice." All right, so "lull"? "Only the lull", love this word. "Only the lull", what's he referring to? I think he's referring to the present, just the present moment. Just translate 'lull', outside the poem. If I say "there's a lull..." It means a pause. A pause, a quiet, Kay... It can also be the melodic quality of someone's voice. Yes, lulling someone to sleep. So, there's a kind of somnambulism, a relaxation; a tranquilizing that takes place, paradoxically, despite all this exuberance. "Only the lull I like"; the loafing... On the grass... In this book, 'The Leaves of Grass'; the leaves being the pages of the book. The leaves of grass. "Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice." I almost want to say valv-ed voice, except that he wouldn't be happy with that. "Valved voice"? We've heard about the stop. Anybody do music? Stops? Right, the stops? Don't we describe on a wind instrument the thing... Or an organ... Also on the string instruments... On a trumpet you have the valves... Yes, valves and stops; "the hum of your valved voice." The valves open... Yeah. So, let's quickly look at six, section six. Here we get into the grass, and I really want to understand this: "Or I guess [...] Or I guess [...] I guess it must be the flag of my disposition [...] Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord [...] Or I guess [...] Or I guess [...]" What's he doing with this "Or I guess"? I think he's setting up, you know, that there's... It could be so many different things and it's like he's kind of saying it over and over again to get at it in different ways. Many different ways. You know he's not at all Steinian, he's not at all cubistic, at all... And yet his willingness to try to get things right by repetition is very predictive of certain aspects of modern poetry, and of modernism generally. He's trying this angle; 'I try this', 'I try this', 'I guess it's like this'. Leaves of grass... Grass is such an open-ended hieroglyphic, it's such an open-ended symbol. Grass. Tell me about grass, quick. Off the top of your head: grass. Covers the entire world. Yes, everything is grass. Max, grass. It's small... It's everywhere... It's minor, it's common... It has little, little, little bits that become one big thing. Is it rhizomic? Does it actually attach it's... I don't know how grass works, but it's semi-rhizomic. It comes from a seed, right? And they, but they seed through... Anyway, but there's something about grass that's kind of interconnected, it's true... I don't know what I'm talking about! But what about the... but it's a plant. He's reminding us that leaves of grass... Grass actually has leaves... We mow it, so we don't think of it as having leaves, but the American Beauty rose is the flower of Andrew Carnegie, of the perfection. Clipping all the roses in order to get this one thing becomes an American symbol of excellence and capitalism. And "Leaves of Grass" is the common, it's the ubiquitous, it's really a democratic... That's why they call it grass roots, you know, that's... Grass roots, exactly! We should have thought about that two minutes ago; grass roots. So, "Leaves of Grass," this poem, 52 sections... "Leaves of Grass." Well, 52 sections in "Song of Myself," "Leaves of Grass" is a lifelong project. So, we have leaves. Leaves are the pages of the book and so they are common, and they are a series of "Or I guess[es]", "Or I guess", "Or I guess"; an attempt to get it all right and to make one poetry of everything for a lifetime. "Or I guess the grass is itself a child [...] Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic." Tell me about that: "uniform hieroglyphic." Well, it's kind of a mystery that no-one is privileged to, if it's a "uniform hieroglyphic", as opposed to a specific hieroglyphic. Not that that's necessarily mutually exclusive... So hieroglyphic means, that word means...? Well, yeah, a symbol... A symbol, keep going. We use it... Like a pictographic symbol? Something that requires ciphering. It's a code. It's a message, but "uniform"? It's a paradox isn't it? A "uniform hieroglyphic", Kristin? Well, because all the leaves of grass are supposed to be different. They're different, but they're uniform. So he's creating a common commonality out of the many... The leaves of grass... Uniform... One common meaning, very much like Emily Dickinson, who's going to proliferate meanings that do not get resolved. This is a uniform hieroglyphic. E pluribus unum. Out of the many (this is grass): one: the grass. "And it means sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, here and there growing among black folks as among white." I like the stars in poetry, the grass is growing under those on opposite sides of segregation and indeed slavery. "Growing among black folks and white folks. Kunuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same." What's he saying? What's his politics? It's Democratic. Democratic, keep going. Well, as you just said from the many one everyone is treated equally. Democratic, American, e pluralis unum, equivalence, equality. Multicultural. Liberal. Liberal, progressive in the sense of it's inclusiveness "Kunuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff", I love that. "I give them the same"; they all get my leaves of grass. This is really, in a way, well we'll argue this later, but in a way, the opposite of Emily's selectivity... of visitors the fairest. For Walt, of visitors the uglier the better, the commoner the better, the more diverse the better. But you can also have the Congressman, you know... He's not being like... It's two-tiered... It's not just low; it's high and low. Yes, exactly. Let's just spend a little more time before we break on section eight, "the blab of the pave". "The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders, the heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb..." 'Back of the bus, back of the bus!' I don't know what he's doing that guy, "interrogating thumb." This seems to be a city; "the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor". Hey, can you hear that? "The snow-sleighs clinking, shouted jokes", "he he he!". "pelts of snowballs [...] hurrahs for popular favorites"; the theaters used to be let out... 'There's Brad Pitt (19th century version'. "The fury of roused mobs, the flap of the curtained litter, the sick man inside borne to the hospital, the meeting of enemies, the sudden oaths, the blows"; there seems to be a fight in the middle of this. "The excited crowd, the policeman with his star". 'Let me through, let me through, cops here! Look out, the police are here! Step aside! Step aside!' "working his passage to the center of the crowd, the impassive stones that receive so many echoes, groans of over-fed or half-starved who fall sun-struck or in fits, what exclamations of women taken suddenly to hurry home and give birth to babes..." I won't try to do the sound of that! "What living and buried speech is always vibrating here"; here being the city, here being civilization, here being society. This is not a nature poem. This is a poem about people gathered together tightly: "what howls restrained by decorum", "what living and buried speech is always [...] " (there's almost a subtle notion of the unconscious) "buried speech is always vibrating [...] what howls". There is the Allen Ginsberg word. There's the lineage Ginsberg. "what howls restrained by decorum, arrests [...] slights, adulterous offers [...] acceptances, rejections [...] I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I depart". This is a catalog and when we continue I want to talk about the implications of the catalog of the list, so we'll do that.
