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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
You may think you don't like poetry until you read this. Then you will change your mind
What strikes me is how Whitman offers what could be taken as a cliche perspective of the world and makes it new. While this isn't the complete edition, the points of Transcendentalism are made clear and are as bold, new, and different from today as they were back in the 1800s. I will definitely be picking up the complete version to see how he changed over time.
Walt Whitman is not my style, but I appreciate his work very much. His poetry is a bit too patriotic for my taste but here's my favorite one.
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching
content,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can
walk undisturb'd,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire,
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears
only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal
sanities!
These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and
rack'd by the war-strife,)
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,
Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me forever
faces;
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,
see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for.)
Maybe I'm just not big brain'd enough to read poetry.
None of it is beautiful or makes any sense. None of it paints a parallel or a beautiful picture. I can barely understand the point of any of it. There are just so many pages and 40 pages in I can't even tell you what I've read.
None of it is beautiful or makes any sense. None of it paints a parallel or a beautiful picture. I can barely understand the point of any of it. There are just so many pages and 40 pages in I can't even tell you what I've read.
3/5 for the poems, 5/5 for the narration.
The poems themselves are very repetitive and are not to be put under scrutiny in terms of content. They are filled with wide-eyed wonder that disregards constructive analysis and criticism. However, I enjoyed listening to them as I would enjoy listening to a spirited sermon intended to foster faith and hope, or an eloquent politician's speech after they've just won an election. Did I agree with everything said? No, not at all. I couldn't even keep my focus, often drifting off in my own land of dreams. But the spirit of celebration and the tone of unquenchable hope are both infectious, and infectious joy is what I welcome on dreary and grey winter days like this one. And the poems are truly brought to life by the narrator, Edoardo Ballerini. His narration is well articulated, nicely paced, and dignified, yet full of emotion.
The poems themselves are very repetitive and are not to be put under scrutiny in terms of content. They are filled with wide-eyed wonder that disregards constructive analysis and criticism. However, I enjoyed listening to them as I would enjoy listening to a spirited sermon intended to foster faith and hope, or an eloquent politician's speech after they've just won an election. Did I agree with everything said? No, not at all. I couldn't even keep my focus, often drifting off in my own land of dreams. But the spirit of celebration and the tone of unquenchable hope are both infectious, and infectious joy is what I welcome on dreary and grey winter days like this one. And the poems are truly brought to life by the narrator, Edoardo Ballerini. His narration is well articulated, nicely paced, and dignified, yet full of emotion.
I've read excerpts from Song of Myself many times. But this was the first time I could read all 52 stanzas. Whitman contains the multitudes. There's probably on line in each one of the 52 that you could discuss for hours.
It's also helpful to see all his other poems and understand that Song of Myself didn't come out of no where.
It's also helpful to see all his other poems and understand that Song of Myself didn't come out of no where.
hopeful
inspiring
reflective