Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Tweet-a-Week: Peter Doyle

Doyle, born in Limerick City, Ireland, was a working man, conducting streetcars, serving as an artilleryman for the Confederacy, all the while supporting his mother and siblings. One stormy winter night in 1865, while on his shift operating the car, he had a fateful encounter with a man he would become extremely close to -- and ultimately become a significant figure in the older man's life.

A poetic muse.

Regardless of whether he was a lover, a very close friend, etc., Doyle is someone dear who inspired Whitman in ways that took the poet to learn, experience, and create ideas. Perhaps it's no wonder why Whitman marvels and beholds working men -- he happens to know a great one himself! We see the amiable qualities of supporting oneself through physical labor, shoveling through the rank of not only being a worker, but also out of the mere generalization of a worker -- the man behind the wheel, the gun, etc. Doyle represents the lovable, loyal family man that becomes linked with the workingman character in poems such as "Song of Myself" and especially so in "Song of Occupations". There's also his self-dubbed nickname, "Pete the Great", that shares the same "stance" and swagger as Whitman's message of "I am me and you are you" and "I am the cosmos" -- extended even more with Whitman describing him as a "hearty full-blooded everyday divinely generous working man: a hail-fellow-well-met".

There is also, to note, the notion that Doyle may have influenced Whitman's decision to remove certain poems from his 1867 version of Leaves of Grass. According to Streitmatter:

For some scholars, the strongest impact of the relationship is found in the works Whitman deleted from the 1867 edition. That is, Whitman removed a number of poems that had appeared in the previous edition and that critics characterize as expressing the poet’s earlier “self-doubt and despair.” They say that Whitman eliminated these works because he’d now found the love of his life and therefore was in a “more optimistic mood.” In the words of one scholar, “Walt’s new-found confidence in love was, in large measure, a result of his satisfying relationship with Pete.”

If this is the case, it really makes me wonder about the subtle changes in Whitman's poetry that came from knowing Doyle -- the subtle things only those two would have known, little inside jokes or sayings between them that may seem normal but hold more weight. The powers of such a muse are vast -- he is Pete the Great, in the end.


Digression.

I actually find the photo posted on the motherblog even more interesting after reading this from Veasey's article:

Whitman was a burly six feet tall; Doyle, a slender five foot eight. Their differences extended beyond the physical. Whitman was a government clerk, journalist, and a published poet; Doyle, a workingman supporting his widowed mother and younger siblings. Whitman prided himself on patriotism; his brother George was a Union soldier, and he’d spent the last two years nursing the wounded in Washington’s army hospitals. Doyle had been a Confederate artilleryman, who’d obtained release from federal prison by claiming to be a British subject (born in Limerick, Ireland, he and his family emigrated here when he was a child). Pete and Walt were living proof that opposites attract.


In the photo (if we just consider it true in its black and white form), the two's opposite appearances come out more. Here we have the older Whitman and younger Doyle, the light-hatted Whitman and dark-fedora-ed Doyle, the dark-coated Whitman and the light-coated Doyle, the bulkier Whitman and the slender Doyle, and even the front-facing Whitman and back-facing Doyle. It's funny to think how, really, opposites can attract (though I guess it doesn't always happen, when it does, it really sets off quite a spark and magnetism).










Streitmatter, Rodger. Outlaw Marriages ~ The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples. Beacon Press, 2012. Web. <http://www.lgbt-today.com/news-a-articles/featured-articles/171-walt-whitman-a-peter-doyle--a-gay-poet-a-his-muse->.


Veasey, Jack. "Gay History Project: Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle." Erie Gay News. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.eriegaynews.com/news/article.php?recordid=200910whitmandoyle>.

Possible Projects

Ah, I can't help but feel like there are several possibilities to take on. So, because of my indecisiveness, I'll just list out the two ideas that I have:

1) YouTubing Whitman Remix -- Nature's Candy
Huh, the title sounds a lot more cutesy-cool than what it probably is. Anyway, I'm not really savvy when it comes to taking and editing videos, but I feel  more welcome in the realm of photography. I really wanted to choose another location for my video, but couldn't due to lack of transportation and the will to walk half an hour on a cold day. That aside, I would love to take on a longer excerpt from the poem (if not the entire poem, if the project requires such ambition) and combine it with a slideshow of images taken by myself within the sphere of my hometown, the city of Hercules -- all to capture the natural essences that Whitman has entwined in "Song of Myself". I really love the idea of using images (or anything visual) to bring more out of a poem's imagery. It does feel sort of contradictory to go with "showing" rather that "feeling" what Whitman wants to convey; nevertheless, until it is possible for us to be able to actually be within the pictures we take, this will have to do! Whitman's details of natural scenery really do paint a beautiful picture and, at the same time, do not lose sight (or touch) of its reality; the beauty comes not from dreamy clouds or spores, but instead from solid soil and grassroots. Thus, if I can take on trekking to the beach by the bay, the hidden forest, the dirt paths near and across the train tracks, it would not only be a fun field day of taking digital pictures, but it would also feel like a rough adventure through nature.

OR

Instead of "Song of Myself" I could also look into "Song of Occupations" or even "Calamus" (since it's a fresh new seed of thoughts in my mind). This could be even more helpful -- what kinds of images does Whitman evoke from nature to support his ground-breaking notions? Are they "consistent" (I say this rather objectively since a poet's style can change over time, but there's still that unique voice) with each other in other poems?

2) Motif: The Three Images of God
It may not seem that way, but I feel like there's plenty more to look into on this particular motif. When I did this project, I was looking for blunt and obvious mentions and references to God and religion, but what if there were subtle subtexts that relate without outright stating it? (What if any garden scenery could relate to the Garden of Eden?). I also want to include more stuff about the church and any roles it may play, and maybe, too, include some background information on how religion was practiced and thought of during this particular time -- and what about during, before, and after the Civil War, too? Overall, the treasure hunt of quotes feels unfulfilled and could use some more excavations -- the fun part about looking for quotes (or looking for artifacts) is finding new meanings and depths and explaining their signifying characteristics. In the end, if Whitman is claiming the cosmos and also explaining that one's own "specialness" is beyond that, then there may be a question of religion, and that spark may have set off flames -- that's also something to look into.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Tweet-a-Week: Martin F. Tupper

Tupper decided to try his luck sharing his work with the American public, falling flat on his face for not gaining popularity. However, when he published "Proverbial Philosophy", he garnered wide acclaim that, in newspaper reviews, swindled over time. If being considered "Tupperish" is essentially bad, and Tupper also had a piece of work called "The Crock of Gold", I sort of wonder of the phrase "crock-pot" relates to him in some way...that aside, after some quick glancing around, I'm still not quite sure what "Proverbial Philosophy"  is all about. Perhaps it's reputation became what people thought it to be, much like how Leaves of Grass turned out to be for some people.
According to Joseph L. Coulomb's ""To Destroy the Teacher": Whitman and Martin Farquhar Tupper's 1851 Trip to America", "Whitman openly admired the popular English author of "Proverbial Philosophy" (1838). Whitman had written in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle that, "the author, Mr. Tupper, is one of the rare men of the time." Tupper had received much backlash and overall public attention, and Whitman not only caught notice of the man's somewhat celebrity status via the newspaper accounts, but also used it to promote himself.
Critics even compared Tupper and Whitman several times, though it was usually in a negative light. For example, again, according to Coulomb's article, "a reviewer for the London Leader described Whitman's verse as 'wild, irregular, unrhymed, almost unmetrical 'lengths,' like the measured prose of Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper's Proverbial Philisophy." Also "in the London Examiner, a critic supposed that, had Tupper been a self-satisfied backwoods auctioneer, 'reading and fancying himself not only an Emerson but a Carlyle and an American Shakespeare to bot,' then he would have written a 'book exactly like Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass", suggesting that the two are inter-related. Whitman had these two reviews included in his 1855 and 1856 editions of Leaves of Grass, again continuing his use on Tupper's reputation to garner his own attention. It's interesting that, sort of like Whitman, Tupper started out as a "nobody" in the United States known for poorly written work, and Whitman decided to use the scandalous image of Tupper to get himself out there -- to mix "outcast" with "outcast". Indeed, perhaps the outlandish and crude method did build up on his messages in Leaves of Grass or made him seem more lowly -- but in the end, it probably served Whitman's intentions no matter what.


Coulombe, Joseph L. ""To Destroy the Teacher": Whitman and Martin Farquhar Tupper’s 1851 Trip to America." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 1996: 199-209. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. <http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1533&context=wwqr>.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Specimen Days: An Egotistical "Find"

An Egotistical "Find"

I wonder when Whitman had this moment -- had he known this message before he wrote "Leaves of Grass" or is this more along the lines of finding that his theory is true -- that, by testing his idea, he has found results that make it true? He has immersed himself in "primitive Nature" that consists of "broad handling and absolute uncrampedness" (marking the distinguishing feature of it versus the "advanced, but crowded and limited" civilization) for "hour after hour". He, again as in some other entries I have read, "painted" the scenery with images of "transparent browns, faint red and grays, towering sometimes a thousand, sometimes two or three thousand feet high -- at their tops now and then huge massed pois'd, and mixing with clouds, with only their outlines, hazed in misty lilac, visible". In particular, when one looks at the quote from the "old Dutch writer" and of Whitman's account, both acknowledge the idea of thinking how nature and its surroundings "may affect him or color his destinies"; the reference to color is definitely noticeable in that the mixture of different, natural scenes and forces create not only the universe, but also one's idea of what is universal.

Speaking of the quote, overall, at the same time, however, I feel like Whitman has become slightly distant from his original terms. In addition to the word alterations found in words like "pass'd", "untrammel'd", and "pois'd" that allude to "Shakespearean"/Biblical language, there's also the fact that he quotes "an old Dutch writer, an ecclesiastic", seems a bit strange as well. By recognizing someone who can be considered as among the upper-class, it almost seems unlike Whitman, unless this was written at a later time when Whitman seemed to have taken in to "sprucing himself up" in a mold of a typical poet. Still, the point about finding oneself in nature is found in the quote, just as it can be found in Whitman's account of this "egotistical 'find"'.

Investigation: Whitman in Pop Culture

1. Pearls Before Swine comic strip

(Image found from http://mikechasar.blogspot.com/

I was really happy to find that Stephan Pastis brought Walt Whitman into his comic -- something I find myself dabbling into whenever I come across a cute GIF of Pig. Regardless...
Rat, a narcissistic, sarcastic sort-of character who tends to be insulting and insensitive, at first, seems to really have done a mean thing to have messed with Whitman's poetry, especially making a sort of remark about the lack of brevity in his poems. Also, why restrain the expansive, fluid Whitman? One cannot tame such a beast. At the same time, however, would Whitman have been insulted? If his poetry had been "twittified", perhaps it could have made sharing his works and messages so much easier, gaining more readers and eyes -- culture and literary expectations, aside anyway, unless that same break from it is even more shock factor to his radicalism. After all, look at how absorbed many people are with "txt talk" and the like -- shortened messages are not only easier to write out, but they're more "portable", if you will, and are easier to share. Whether or not Rat was making a silly jab at Whitman's work or subversively suggesting that such compactness could have actually worked, there is a sense of reworking messages and text to the people and readers, and maybe Whitman would have seen humor or perhaps celebration to such a thing.

2. Breaking Bad quoting of Walt Whitman's poem, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"

(Video found from http://mikechasar.blogspot.com/)

While I have never heard of this show before I found this clip, I get the feeling that the characters have reached a new bond after the recitation of the poem. From what I found, here, the main character, Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with lung cancer, has acquainted himself with Gale, a lab assistant for a meth lab of a drug kingpin. Walt has turned to selling the drug as a way to secure his family's financial future for when he dies. As the two men converse and Gale looks back to his thoughts of how he got to where he is, they begin to relate to each other about the magic of chemistry, a passion each of them share -- that sets the stage for Gale's recitation of the poem.
The poem itself seems to make a distinction between the rules, lessons, figures, and details of the mathematics and the awe-inspiring wonder of one experiencing the vastness of the subject -- between the inside and outside, to experience things with one's own senses, to reach that higher level of understanding etc. Walt and Gale seem to share that desire and perspective to embrace the magic of chemistry and marvel at its wonder, and from there the two bond and become closer to each other. It is here that Whitman sort of brings in that "Disney magic" without breaking into song, as blogger Mike Chasar would say. I feel like, here, Whitman's message of people coming together and also of finding the beauty in the universe -- sure, meth isn't exactly natural, but chemistry does root from taking sources and forces that sort of come from it first.

3. Allen Ginsburg's poem, "A Supermarket in California"

Ginsburg, one of the leading poets of the "Beat Generation", drew plenty of inspiration from Walt Whitman for his poetry, including for one of his famous pieces, "Howl". In a way, he was regarded as the American poet of his time, emulating a similar feel of being free and to find the truth of experience in the world.

I feel like, in this poem, Ginsburg relates to Whitman as an equal, close family figure or a close friend. Together, they go through a sort of adventure through a supermarket within the dreams of the speaker just from having touched Whitman's book. While Whitman may feel quiet and almost even a mundane sort of figure, there is still the otherworldly wonder he possess in finding meaning in getting intimate with his surroundings. There is also a respect for the poet, as the speaker regards Whitman as "dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher"; while again a bit calm and tame for the radical and yawping figure, nevertheless, Ginsburg acknowledges his utmost point of having looked up to Whitman as a source of inspiration, a phenomenal role model for American poets, and also a figure that shares the same radical views Ginsburg may have.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Investigation: Reviews of Leaves of Grass

Dana, Charles A. --The New York Daily Tribune's [Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]

In regards to "Leaves of Grass", this critic seems to focus on the language and how it reflects Whitman, "the natural poet." Dana remarks that the poems "are certainly original in their external form, have been shaped on no pre-existent model out of the author's own brain". After reading this review a second time, I caught notice of the overall elevated language of the critique itself -- something linked to the traditional and respected view of poets in this time. I would figure, too, that "The New York Daily Tribune" also carries some prestige, and that would also explain the style and diction. It's almost like an older tree-parent (if such things existed) was giving its perspective on the young saplings that are growing from their traditional views; by saying that his nature may be "coarse and defiant" while his language may come from a "naive unconsciousness", it gives the impression that the traditional old fogeys -- the elitist, aristocratic scholars and writers -- view Whitman sort of like their own teenage son whose thoughts, ideas, and style is something they feel is caused by inexperience or lack of proper "literary grooming", if you will. It's bluntly stated, thus, in this way: "His words might have passed between Adam and Even in Paradise, before the want of fig-leaves brought no shame; but they are quite out of place amid the decorum of modern society, and will justly prevent his volume from free circulation in scrupulous circles". Until Whitman "cultivates" himself into the "decorum", then he may be left out of the "prestigious tree circles, and possibly forests of the literature world". Nevertheless, there is recognition of the idea that Whitman aspires to share enlightening to the reader from every core of his being and that, throughout the poem, there is this "genuine intimacy with Nature and a keen appreciation of beauty" -- that sensuality that brings everyone beyond knowledge, but that seems to have been missed by this critic at least partially if not the other acknowledgment of "bold, stirring thoughts".

Anonymous -- Life Illustrated's [A curious title]

This curious reader took the leap into the "unconnected, curious, and original" "Leaves of Grass" and seems to have found "striking truth and beauty". Here, it is noted that, though Whitman may be a loafer, he is "thoughtful", "amiable", and "able", someone who is not limited by his "occupation" as a loafer but who transcends into respectable thought. Perhaps this reader is one of the "free-souled persons" mentioned who "read and chuckle[d] over with real delight as the expression of their own best feelings", noticing, probably, the beauty of nature, of the equal, yet different divine qualities of each and every person, the sensuality of experience through the senses -- something that struck the reader that isn't specifically mentioned besides the "independent sentences" and "rhythmical prose". By giving the alternative title, American Life, from a Poetical Loafer's Point of View, the critic, maybe, saw "Leaves of Grass" as the fresh, newly surfacing perspective (after being denied due to the presence of the respected traditional aristocratic view) that brought to light the democratic pride that needs to be addressed and embraced.

Somehow, the comparison between the book, "Leaves of Grass" and a small atlas stood out to me, especially so when, at the end of the critique, there's the remarks that it "was printed by the author's own hands, and that he is philosophically indifferent to its sale. It pleased him to write so, and the public may take it or let it alone, just as they prefer". To me, it almost seemed like the critic is saying Whitman made this sort of map to the world around us, but this map is almost like that of a treasure map in that it's something he left behind for those curious to search and explore its "new and peculiar" contents. However, is Whitman completely indifferent? After all, he puts himself out to the world by setting himself apart from the aristocratic literary contemporaries of the time by taking on the image of "a perfect loafer", and thus wants that attention to be on him and his messages.

However, just as curious as this claim is, so is this curious critic, indeed -- why be anonymous? Perhaps this person fears backlash from those who do not share his/her sentiments about the "unconnected, curious, and original" Whitman? Maybe it is because this person pretty much divides the "respectable people" from those who would find beauty in "Leaves of Grass" and thus, including the first suggestion, brings to light the inevitable social pressures and norms with some question and criticism -- that the elite can only see nonsense in such an original collection?

Anonymous -- Punch Magazine's [A Strange Blade]

This critic refers to Fanny Fern who also has her own critique featured  in The New York Ledger; it can be assumed that Punch's critic couples her with Whitman because of their similarities in literary style, representations of middle-class, and perhaps for their lack of conformity with the norm -- basically, different equals bad, says the anonymous speaker, who also so happens to have not much to say besides calling "Leaves of Grass" a "mad book". Perhaps, by referring to Whitman's claim of being the "Kosmos," this reader saw Whitman as an arrogant loafer who thinks himself bigger than he really is, for what kind of "American Rough" would dare express such defiance toward the norm? But, if that's the case, did the person completely miss out on the message that all are equally different and powerful? What is it about "Leaves of Grass" that has this person compare it to a weed that needs to be removed from "the fields of American Literature"? Was it the colloquial language that seemed to be unclassy? Was it the fact that the image of Whitman just became this stereotyped image in the Anon's head that rendered him from taking the text seriously or under the same light as well-respected contemporaries? Why be anonymous in the first place if it's okay to consider Whitman's work something bad? Going back to Fern's work and the label of "green stuff", this critic must have kept traditional styles too close to heart, for anything "new" seems to be inferior -- these new blades need to be cut before they ruin the fields of well-respected writers. Overall, it just feels like this reader had nothing constructive to say and just expressed his/her initial reaction to the radical book, leaving no room for acceptance of the new form or new poet, even though, with time and new experiences, that there will come new perspectives and takes on not just poetry and literature, but everything as well.