Other Whitman Material

You also might find this site of interest: Brothers in Arms: Masculinity in Whitman’s Civil War.

Spring Break

For Monday, 3.22, and Wednesday, 3.24, we will be talking about Walt Whitman.

The majority of our work will come from the web site The Walt Whitman Archive.

For Monday, 3.22, please read:

“Calamus” poems in the 1872 edition of Leaves of Grass:

• “In Paths Untrodden” to “A Promise to California”
• “Preface,” which is posted on our Segue site.

For Wednesday, 3.24, please read:

• “Here the Frailest Leaves of Me” to “Full of Life, Now”

A more creative assignment…

The Walt Whitman Archive has an amazing collection of Whitman photographs.

Please select one of the photographs (note that there are pages of them).  Print it out.  (There are hi-res images on the site if you click on the details of the photo.)  Then, incorporate that photo into some sort of creative endeavor over break.  You might take a photo of Whitman’s photo against the backdrop of an exciting locale of your break; you might write a poem to the photo of Whitman; you might recreate the photo yourself; etc., etc.  There are really no bounds here.  Just do something creative.  And then post it to the blog.

The goal of this assignment is to prompt you to really consider and even interact with Whitman as a person, icon, and even celebrity.  In addition, I’m hoping to give you a break from being completely analytical all the time.  Stretch your legs and your mind a little bit, and try to get at the literature from a different point of view.  Sometimes it’s easier to interact with poetry creatively than attempt to analyze it in prose.

Things to be looking for in the reading

Obviously, you will be reading a fairly big chunk of text.  I would suggest reading the “Preface” first, and then begin reading the “Calamus” poems with Whitman’s ideas of democracy in mind.  We will explicitly consider the ways that Whitman configures sensuality, sexuality, and homoeroticism as vital for a functioning democracy.