Wordsworth's works are now alway related with eco-literature. just like Thoreau's Walden.
How do you think about it?
Printable View
Wordsworth's works are now alway related with eco-literature. just like Thoreau's Walden.
How do you think about it?
Whitman himself was a poem. They were both great poets, different from each other. They both were innovators who changed the trend of a former age. Whitman was the mountain and Wordsworth a lake.
Oh I like that analogy. It calls to my mind the photographs in a book someone gave me as a kid, "the Lakeland Poets." A compilation of poems by people from the Lake District in England. It had gorgeous pictures of huge green hills with blue lakes running through the valleys. Anyway, Wordsworth is in there a lot, and to me those images stand well for such a comparison.
xby -- I think it's because he writes a lot about things in nature; flowers, clouds, the moon. But I hear a lot about Whitman being an environmental poet as well, because in Leaves of Grass he describes himself as being at one with the earth and everything in it. Such consciousness of nature was very unusual in America during the time he was writing. Most people were more interested in the machines of the industrial revolution; factories, trains, and electricity.
Post #8: Why do you think Whitman is one of Allen Ginsberg's influences? Would justify your comment?
Ginsberg has actually said so, and Whitman shows up in at least one of G's poems ("A Supermarket in California")Quote:
Originally Posted by rex_yuan
And speaking of inspiration, does anyone know Sherman Alexie's "Defending Walt Whitman"? Wonderful, wonderful poem that captures Whitman beautifully.
I didn't realise Alexie wrote poetry too. I've got Reservation Blues by him. Is it any good do you know?
Only in poems of or by Whitman can sweat be something so beautiful, so full of life that it becomes a celebration. Still a bit unsure if I like some parts of the poem - canīt really find words for why, perhaps it is just the way people are turned into objects to admire, not individuals, not quite human - but still it is so very, very beautiful. Reminds me of a poem of salmonfishing that I think Hughes wrote.
Thank you for writing about it, I had to try and find it.
***************
Defending Walt Whitman
by Sherman Alexie
Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs
and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown!
These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill,
although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait,
waiting for orders to do something, to do something.
God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot
on a reservation summer basketball court
where the ball is moist with sweat,
and makes a sound when it swishes through the net
that causes Walt Whitman to weep because it is so perfect.
There are veterans of foreign wars here
although their bodies are still dominated
by collarbones and knees, although their bodies still respond
in the ways that bodies are supposed to respond when we are young.
Every body is brown! Look there, that boy can run
up and down this court forever. He can leap for a rebound
with his back arched like a salmon, all meat and bone
synchronized, magnetic, as if the court were a river,
as if the rim were a dam, as if the air were a ladder
leading the Indian boy toward home.
Some of the Indian boys still wear their military hair cuts
while a few have let their hair grow back.
It will never be the same as it was before!
One Indian boy has never cut his hair, not once, and he braids it
into wild patterns that do not measure anything.
He is just a boy with too much time on his hands.
Look at him. He wants to play this game in bare feet.
God, the sun is so bright! There is no place like this.
Walt Whitman stretches his calf muscles
on the sidelines. He has the next game.
His huge beard is ridiculous on the reservation.
Some body throws a crazy pass and Walt Whitman catches it
with quick hands. He brings the ball close to his nose
and breathes in all of its smells: leather, brown skin, sweat,
black hair, burning oil, twisted ankle, long drink of warm water,
gunpowder, pine tree. Walt Whitman squeezes the ball tightly.
He wants to run. He hardly has the patience to wait for his turn.
"What's the score?" he asks. He asks, "What's the score?"
Basketball is like this for Walt Whitman. He watches these Indian boys
as if they were the last bodies on earth. Every body is brown!
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman dreams of the Indian boy who will defend him,
trapping him in the corner, all flailing arms and legs
and legendary stomach muscles. Walt Whitman shakes
because he believes in God. Walt Whitman dreams
of the first jumpshot he will take, the ball arcing clumsily
from his fingers, striking the rim so hard that it sparks.
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman closes his eyes. He is a small man and his beard
is ludicrous on the reservation, absolutely insane.
His beard makes the Indian boys righteously laugh. His beard
frightens the smallest Indian boys. His beard tickles the skin
of the Indian boys who dribble past him. His beard, his beard!
God, there is beauty in every body. Walt Whitman stands
at center court while the Indian boys run from basket to basket.
Walt Whitman cannot tell the difference between
offense and defense. He does not care if he touches the ball.
Half of the Indian boys wear t-shirts damp with sweat
and the other half are bareback, skin slick and shiny.
There is no place like this. Walt Whitman smiles.
Walt Whitman shakes. This game belongs to him.
Oh heck, yeah. He's got at least 5 books of poetry published. Isagel was kind enough to post "Defending ..." Here are links to a couple more.Quote:
Originally Posted by atiguhya padma
http://www.bpj.org/alexie2.html
http://www.bpj.org/hamlet.html
Whew! From way back then! I happened to come across this thread while meandering through the poetry forum. I had never read this poem, amuse, but thank you for enlightening me on the Wordsworth work. The full text:Quote:
Originally Posted by azmuse
The Old Cumberland Beggar
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww139.html
As for the aged debate between William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, I cannot confidently choose a side. Wordsworth's poetry seems so much more aesthetic, coming from the heart of romanticism, but Whitman I have such respect for as one of the first known free-verse writers, and inventors of such raw poetry that later influenced so many other greats, such as W.H. Auden, D.H. Lawrence, and Sylvia Plath. Both poets seem so disparately different, that I cannot choose a favorite.
I think a greater and more difficult choice would persist between William Wordsworth, his companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats - the greatest of romantic poets, in my opinion, who later led to other great genres, like transcendentalism. :brow: