Whitman's Poetry Research Articles

Whitman's Leaves of Grass: Poetry and the Founding of a 'New World' Culture

If it can be generally stated that nineteenth-century European 'high' culture valued poetic discourse over the less codified practices of everyday language, then Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is an attempt to give everyday American linguistic usage poetic value. Whitman's poem includes discourse that does not comply with the traditions of European poetics but that is proclaimed nevertheless to be poetry in order to suggest that the liberal-democratic American state has a natural beauty equivalent to the most refined poem. Leaves demonstrates this national beauty by including a wide variety of utterances and observations in its epic project, even though this inclusiveness also implies a critique of the project that the work undertakes. The ambitious extent of this collection threatens the identity and distinctiveness of the literary text itself. Like a state with poorly defined borders and institutions, a work that intends to articulate such an inclusive democratic poetic voice challenges the necessary formal distinctiveness that would recognizably make it a form of literary discourse. The result is that Leaves must solicit the willing participation of its readers in order to realize the project that it undertakes. Whitman's poetry requires that the reader constantly renew its discourse by reinvesting it with new poetic meaning and, as a result, reaffirming it as the poetry of a flourishing, liberal American state.

Nineteenth-Century Racial Thought and Whitman's "Democratic Ethnology of the Future"

Whitman's apparently positive depictions of racial others are intepreted in the light of his assumptions about biological indicators of racial identity and the role literature plays in recording that identity. Part one demonstrates that in the context of nineteenth-century racial thought a poem like "Salut au Monde!" seems directed less toward celebrating cultural diversity and more toward indicating the less-evolved status of other races compared to Americans. Whitman cannot describe the typical American as fulsomely as he can others, however, who serve in his poems as models of racy individuality-however backward they may seem. Part two therefore looks at Whitman's examination of various "specimens" of American identity, such as Lincoln, and at the ironies and contradictions that frustrate this examination. The problem for Whitman was not racial difference (racial others being for him and his contemporaries known quantities) but racial sameness. What Whitman needs, then, is some symbolic means of bridging the gap between actual American diversity and the ideological imperative of American identity, and this he finds in the concept of similitude (adumbrated in "Song of Myself"). But Whitman's poetry offers resolutions unavailable (and undesirable) in American culture. Part three describes Whitman's cultural discontent, chiefly as expressed in Democratic Vistas, where he chastises Americans for their bodily grossness and bad manners and discusses what he calls "the democratic ethnology of the future," a racial solution to America's cultural problems.

The growth of Leaves of grass: the organic tradition in Whitman studies

With the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Walt Whitman became a central and controversial figure in the fast-developing field of American literature. With each of six editions, Whitman added new poems and revised old ones, creating a cultural artifact as fluent and organic as the theory and practice on which it was founded. In The Growth of the Leaves of Grass Professor Killingsworth argues that the critical tradition finds its primary models for interpreting Whitman's poetry in the organic metaphors initiated by the poet himself, in particular the metaphor of vegetative growth. Early in the critical tradition, however, the romantic ideology of organic growth is challenged by a model of technical competence whose key metaphors involve images of architectonic control. The interplay of these models informs the several critical approaches that have developed over the century since Whitman's death. M. JIMMIE KILLINGSWORTH is Professor of English at Texas A & M University.

Walt Whitman and Asian American Writers

Explores Whitman's attitudes toward Asian Americans and reads the work of several Asian American writers--including Sadakichi Hartmann, Yone Noguchi, Lin Yutang, Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, Garrett Hongo, and Maxine Hong Kingston--in the context of Whitman's poetry and vision of democracy.

Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text

Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text

Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text.

Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Whitman's Poetry of the Body [review

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Whitman's Poetry of the Body [review

Modular America: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Emergence of an American Way

Introduction: Modularity in Cross-Cultural Perspective Education: College Curriculum Industry: The American System of Manufactures Architecture: Skyscraper Literature: Whitman's Poetry Music: Blues and All That Jazz Sports: Football in America Law: Property, Alienation and Women Religion: Disestablishment Endings: Historical Explanations and American Ideology

T. S. Eliot's Prosody and the Free Verse Tradition: Restricting Whitman's "Free Growth of Metrical Laws"

the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, he proclaimed in the now well-known preface that the rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show a free growth of metrical laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush (1973 [1855]: 716). The poetry of the 1855 and successive editions drew its sound structure primarily from the metrical laws of the language system instead of from literary tradition. The poetry was rooted in language itself, as spoken in America, and not in the literary tradition that had been developed and defined in Great Britain (Gates 1985; Hollis 1983). One of the difficulties in studying free verse has been seeing the identity of its varied types. Recent research has established a prosodic identity of free verse in the structuralization of verse from the linguistic system. Differences within the free verse tradition can now be determined as variations on the ways the structuring takes place to produce meanings and effects. Walt Whitman's poetry has been shown to be highly wrought from the shaping of sound units stylized from speech and writing (Gates 1985); and William Carlos Williams's prosody has been demonstrated to be an intricate working of these stylized units in lines and across lines in such a way that the sound and meaning systems of language are exploited for polysemy and heightened emotion (Gates 1987).

Whitman's poetry of the body: sexuality, politics, and the text

Whitman's poetry of the body: sexuality, politics, and the text

The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. M. Wynn Thomas, Whitman

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. M. Wynn Thomas, WhitmanDavid KuebrichDavid Kuebrich Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 86, Number 4May, 1989 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/391741 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1989 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Metaphor and V.: Metaphysics in the Mirror

Thomas pynchon's V. is, among other things, a lament over the separation of the physical from the metaphysical in modern existence. To use D. H. Lawrence's terms from Studies in Classic American Literature, V. is a parodic narrative about those post-mortem effects which follow Moby-Dick, such as the ghoulish quality evident in Whitman's poetry.

: The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. . M. Wynn Thomas.

: The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. . M. Wynn Thomas.

The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. M. Wynn Thomas

Book Review| September 01 1988 Review: The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry., by M. Wynn Thomas The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry.M. Wynn Thomas Agnieszka Salska Agnieszka Salska Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Literature (1988) 43 (2): 253–255. https://doi.org/10.2307/3045180 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Agnieszka Salska; Review: The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry., by M. Wynn Thomas. Nineteenth-Century Literature 1 September 1988; 43 (2): 253–255. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3045180 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1988 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Walt Whitman and Louis Sullivan: The Aesthetics of Egalitarianism

Examines the relation between Whitman and Functionalist architect Louis Sullivan and uses Whitman's poetry and cultural criticism "as a lens with which we might focus Sullivan's writings on architecture"; emphasizes "the extent to which the social and political assumptions of the two artists determined the experiments in form which each made in his respective art."

Thomas, M. Wynn. The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry [review

Thomas, M. Wynn. The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry [review

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. By M. WYNN THOMAS. Pp. xii+314. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1987. £17.95 net. ROBERT REHDER ROBERT REHDER University of Fribourg Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XXXIX, Issue 156, November 1988, Pages 570–572, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XXXIX.156.570 Published: 01 November 1988

The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry.

Introduction 1. A Critical Situation 2. Self-Possession and Possessive Individualism 3. Inhabiting the Kosmos 4. Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 5. The Nature of American Society 6. Mannahatta-New York 7. The Other Civil War 8. The Pains and Obligations of Memory 9. My Book and the War Are One Notes Index

Songs of the Canons: Song of Solomon and "Song of Myself"

Argues for the influence of Song of Solomon in particular and the Old Testament in general on Whitman's poetry, especially "Song of Myself"; contends that Whitman reveals "no real heresy, but rather a return to a more authentic scriptural view of love."

Sexuality and the Language of Transcendence

Explores various sexual metaphors and allusions in Whitman's poetry (especially "Song of Myself") and argues that "the mightiest sexual drives lead the persona to an intimation of the transcendent state."