Whitman's Beautiful Democratic Poems Of Friendship example essay topic

John Bell Mrs. Taylor English 2 May 30, 2000 All Alone Walter Whitman was an American poet of the 1800's. Walt was arguably one of America's influential and innovative poets of his time. Whitman began work as a printer and journalist in the New York City area. He wrote articles on politics, civics, and the arts.

During the Civil War, Whitman was a volunteer assistant in the military hospitals in Washington, D.C. After the war, he worked in several government departments until he suffered a stroke in 1873. He spent the rest of his life in Camden, N.J., where he continues to write poems and articles. Leaves of Grass, a book of poems Whitman began in 1848 was so unusual at the time that no publisher would publish it. In 1855, he published it himself. Between 1855 and his death, Whitman published several revised and enlarged editions of his book.

Walt sent a copy of the book to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ralph would send the poet an enthusiastic letter which he hailed him "at the beginning of a great career" (Whitman 732). Walt believed that Leaves of Grass had grown with his own intellectual development. Calamus, a section of poems in Leaves of Grass is a section talking about love and friendship. Poems in Calamus have been put in and taken out through the years with the revisions of the book. Two poems that can be found in Calamus today are "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing" and "To a Stranger". These two poems have not been Calamus together since the beginning of the book, but now they are together and very similar.

Since love and friendship are two major aspects that Whitman was looking for in life. He wrote many poems on those topics alone. Calamus is group of poems that explain love and friendship. "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing" and "To a Stranger" are two poems that explain his loneliness and his wanting of a companion. Whitman uses people and objects to symbolize his thoughts and feelings. Calamus is a series of letters written during the years 1868 to 1880 by Whitman to a young Civil War companion, Peter Doyle, the unsophisticated Washington horsecar conductor.

The letters have been published under the appropriate title Calamus, as they constitute a record of precisely the kind of relationship Whitman meant to describe by that title". The terms of endearment Whitman uses in these letters are lavish and suggest metaphorically the character of the emotion motivating his attachment" (Allen 25). It is difficult to challenge the purity and spirituality of the feelings Whitman and Doyle had for each other. Many cant figure out what was between them.

"There can be no doubt that these feelings transcend those usual to friends or companions of the same sex" (Allen 25). Whitman was a homosexual and many of his poems relate to manly love. "To the serious reader of Calamus, the 'manly love " that recurs both as a term and as an idea is of such genuine poetic complexity as to render it a good deal more than " abnormal' and considerably less than 'deficient' " (Canby 124). The poems also show the friendship of men and women through his life.

Calamus is a section that has changed along with the revisions of the book. The poems came and gone with how Walt felt each poem held up in each section". No section in Leaves of Grass has received so much close attention and been the center of so much discussion and controversy as Calamus" (Bliss 288). Whitman's own saintlike, spiritual life shows as proof that the poems could not be unwholesome.

"William Sloane Kennedy calls Calamus, "Whitman's beautiful democratic poems of friendship" (Bliss 288). The purity, innocence, and spirituality of the Calamus concept cannot be missed. The idea in not original with Whitman. As he states", the Calamus idea was expressed by all mankind's saviors and has frequently been expressed by the term " brotherly love' " (Bliss 289). In the early stages of Calamus poems there were twelve in number and had as their title and unifying symbol, 'Live Oak with Moss.

' "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing" was one of the first twelve, "To a Stranger" didn't come till later. "This twelve poem series is am artistically complete story of attachment, crisis, and renunciation and was motivated by some specific emotional experience" (Bliss 293). Through time some of the poems would leave the section and lines would be changed in some. Contrary to frequent implications by Whitman's critics, his revisions of Calamus over a period of some thirty years do not reveal that he was trying to cover up or change the original character of the group of poems. The 1860 version of Calamus had forty-five poems, by the time of Whitman's last edition, it had been reduced to thirty-nine.

"I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing" was one of the first poems that Whitman put into Calamus. It took Walt two months in New Orleans in the spring of 1848 to write this poem. This poem was originally intended as the key poem of Calamus. In 1860 this poem was place number twenty of the Calamus poems. This poem is about Walt himself. "The Live-Oak poem evidently originated in some private experiences that happened to Whitman" (Allen & Davis 178).

Whitman's loneliness mad him feel wanted and needed. "But Iwonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves all its life without friend or lover near, for I knew I could not" (Whitman 126). Whitman thought that if he was going to do something great that he couldn't do it alone. He feels that if he doesn't have a friend of lover near, the will be nothing that will drive him to success. The tree in "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing" was alone with no other tree to be next to. "Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself" (Whitman 126).

Whitman felt that he was alone in the world just like the tree was standing with no companion near to grow with. Whitman was alone during this time of his work. If Walt was not in this setting of mood, there are many who believe that Whitman would have been able to write such poetry. Walt being alone kept him from being happy, although this motivated Whitman to express his thoughts and feelings in to what he wrote. Also the look of the tree being rude, unbending, and lusty was how Whitman felt how he looked and how he was.

This poem is also about the love that Walt Whitman wanted in his life. Whitman felt alone without a lover near. And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight of my room, It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them, ) Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love" (Whitman 126-127). The twig from which Whitman broke off the tree, is the object that represents Walt. He relates the moss in this to be a lover. I lover that he has not found in life yet.

He believes that the moss being twined around the twig proves that the twig and the moss are strong together. This represents the love that Walt needs in his life. "The poet believes the expression of his emotions of 'manly love' to be as rudimentary and natural as growing vegetation" (Allen& Davis 184). To Whitman and the romanticist "natural " means "good". As Whitman looks at the tree, he realizes that the tree is wonderful tree with nothing around it. "For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space" (Whitman 127).

The tree has made itself great with no support or help around it, which Waltfeels that he can not do at all. "Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well could not" (Whitman 127). The tree "uttering joyous leaves" is like Whitman writing great poems, which Waltfeels he can not do without the help of friends. He repeats this line again at the end because he knows that there is noway he can make it without a friend or lover. "To a Stranger" is a poem in Calamus just like "I Sawin Louisiana". The poem started out being titled "A Passing Stranger", but in 1867 the poem was put into Calamus with its present title.

It placed number twenty-two of the Calamus poems. Unlike other poems, this poem was not revised or moved around. This poem is different from "I Sawin Louisiana", because there are no objects in the poem that Whitman uses to represent his feelings. On the other hand he uses strangers he sees to show how there can be people you relate with all around you and you don't even know it". We are all strangers on earth" (Schyberg 291).

Whitman feels that this is true. Whitman says, "an accidental meeting is a reunion from the era of stars" (Schyberg 291). In this poem Whitman sees strangers and wonders if they can be something he was looking for. "Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream, ) " (Whitman 127). Whitman thinks of the stranger as someone he was seeking in life that could be a friend to him or even a lover. When he sees the stranger thinks of it as a dream, because he doesn't know if that is who he is seeking.

Whitman not wanting to be alone, is constantly looking for another companion along the way. As Whitman sees these stranger, he thinks of what similarities that he could possibly have with these strangers. "I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me, I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only", (Whitman 127). Whitman thinks of the good times that he has had, and if the stranger has had good times just as he did. Walt thinks about himself growing up, and if the stranger went through some of the same things that he went through as a child. Whitman thinks of stranger even after the stranger is long gone.

"I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when sit alone or wake at night alone" (Whitman 127). Eventhough Walt does not speak to the stranger he thinks about he or she when he is alone. Whitman does not want to lose the stranger that he has seen. "I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you" (Whitman 127). Whitman wants to be with this stranger sometime in the future. But to Whitman, being with the stranger could be how they were before they met.

He can still grow up with the stranger as a friend and eat and sleep with the stranger, but it doesn't mean they will be together throughout life. Whitman doesn't want to lose the stranger because he or she could be a good companion to him. "I Saw in Louisiana" and "To a Stranger" give good examples on how Whitman puts his life into his writing. Love and companionship are to major aspects that Walt Whitman needed in his life.

Without those two things, Whitman felt that he could not produce good poems or even have a good life. The poems in Calamus are some of the best poems that show Whitman's true feeling of his friends and lovers. Many don't even understand how Whitman felt. John Burroughs say, "Whitman is so hard to grasp, to put in a statement. One cannot get to the bottom of him, he is bottomed in Nature, in democracy, in science in personality" (Loving 1).