Reply to comment

Reactions to his writing

Whitman and I are from the same part of this country and some of the scenes which he describes I can relate to ... These things he describes are those which I have experienced my entire life. Although so beautiful and meaningful to me, they are images which I would not be able to put to words with such elegance so as to get others to see the beauty in that which I see. I suddenly appreciate Whitman's ability to do this ... merlin

The more I read Whitman, the more I have to agree with the idea of his writing being presented as a stream of conciousness. Every idea he states is connected with a later idea. It is both hard to follow and easy to understand ... enewbern

When I read Whitman, I do not feel connected to him as an author and I do not feel emotions when I read Leaves of Grass (except my frustration for not understanding). Therefore, I feel as though Whitman has accomplished the idea of writing in a non-representational fashion ... Anisha Chirmule 

Thinking about what Whitman has on his mind

we talked about why Whitman would write a book telling people, in essence, to stop wasting their time reading about other people's experiences, and to go have their own experiences instead. It seems hypocritical. I think Whitman probably meant it as a "do as I say, not as I do" message ... epeck01

Whitman may be giving us another option to choose from our ways of seeing the world and we can decide to take it into account or not. So, I believe that he is following the art that Sontag is describing. He is trying not to be original in his writing, that way we do not need to find some interpretations and we can let his poetry take over us and show us something completely new ... amirbey

Whitman is claiming to have found beauty and truth in all of us.  He is celebrating not only himself, but the entire human race.  In his writing, he is holding up a mirror to ourselves and asking us to look long and hard.  The discomfort many readers experience is reason to push back at Whitman.  He is asking us to be less conformative, filtered, and guarded; he wants to remove our shame ... jrlewis

Living with Whitman?

Living with Walt Whitman would have been like a night mare ... although he sounds like he is embracing everything and everyone in this world and celebrating them, I think he is just outright declaring his indifference. He tries to give everything the same value and put it on the same level, but to me it feels like he just doesn't "give a damn"! ... skhemka

I was the only one who said that I wouldn't mind living with Whitman. When most people found him eccentric, annoying, and a little too hippie like, I saw him as a unique human being who was passionate about life and willing to share his passion with everyone around him ... Whitman's writing allowed me to take a brief break from my chaos and appreciate my world around me ... fquadri

Whitman and evolution

I think I understand why we are reading Whitman: not only is his work itself a great example of a transitional and important piece of the history of American poetry, but there are also similar themes in both Darwin's work and this book of Whitman's ... Evelyn said that she found "Song of Myself" to be strange because there were moments when Whitman seemed brilliant, but the rest of the poem feels like too much (even useless). An evolutionary process creates some brilliant things which will go on existing, but it also creates things that are "useless" in that they do not persist. Whitman and this process, then, are similar ... I guess my main problem with this comparison is that I don't think that Whitman wrote what he did at random ... selias

Walt Whitman may, himself, be an evolutionary process; just like Evolution, Whitman is boring at times and exciting at times, he tries out new things (his writing style was so new that it was/is difficult to understand), and he creates something like "Leaves of Grass" that is on the border of having no meaning, until it is assigned (by humans, of course) ... I believe that recognizing that there is no clear meaning is, itself, very meaningful, and that it contributes to our own evolutionary process ... Jackie Marano

One analogy that came up was if Whitman represents evolution and you don't want to live with Whitman it states that you don't want to live with evolution ... So, am I scared of living with evolution? Yes, I have my fear of not knowing what is to come; scared of the random process that affects my life and the people around me. Whitman can go live with someone else, right now I don't need discomfort at my back, , and I don't want to think about what is to come, try to figure out the meaning behind the randomness. And yet with this class I have to think about the unknown, have to question myself, have to explore, and maybe with this exploration I can conquer my fear and begin to live with Whitman as he tries to show me how the world works through is eyes ... mcurrie

Whitman and interpretation

Perhaps then, Sontag meant to warn us against motivated and conscious interpretation as opposed to subconscious and unmotivated interpretation ... I want to know how to read Whitman-how can I avoid trying to analyze, but still get something out of his poetry? ... I also understand what Sontag means when she states that we are almost trained to interpret and analyze to the point where we lose the work of art. Against interpretation reminds me of reactions in organic chemistry and the detail with which we need to understand all of these reactions ... by the time we have memorized all these details, we end up forgetting what the reaction was supposed to be used for the in the first place! ... ibarkas

This reminded me of a Mark Twain quote that it is a sin to put a moral in a story. Basically, Twain seems to be suggesting the alternative way of viewing art and stories as generative rather than disclosing when it comes to meaning. If we’re always searching for something of deeper significance, we might miss the beauty of the often-opaque mysteries that we are constantly immersed in ... sustainablephilosopher

While I still believe I have difficulty in wrapping my mind around abstract profoundness, I am grateful to this course for forcing me to confront my unease. The need to confront meaning within the undefined has forced me to evolve my own way of thinking, my own analytical story. ... rmehta

And on ... to more getting comfortable with abstract profoundness