SESSION 14: WALT WHITMAN
Next Friday, 5th February 2010, MANUEL VILLAR RASO will give a talk titled:
WALT WHITMAN, THE GREAT ECCENTRIC OF AMERICAN ARTS
Place: Salón de Actos de la Delegación de Educación y Ciencia de Almería
Paseo de la Caridad s/n
Time: 18:00
I invite you all to this talk as it´s going to be very interesting.
TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MANUEL VILLAR RASO, go to his webpage:
TO KNOW MORE ABOUT WALT WHITMAN, here you have a brief summary:
Walt Whitman (1819-92) is considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets. Walt Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang about democracy and the brotherhood of man. His main work, Leaves of Grass, unconventional in both content and technique, is probably the most influential volume of poems in the history of American literature. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was published in 1855 at Whitman’s own expense and included 12 poems, Leaves of Grass.. The book begins with a statement of his theories of poetry and included the poem later known as "Song of Myself," in which the author proclaims himself the symbolic representative of common people. Although the book was a commercial failure, critical reviewers recognized the appearance of a bold new voice in poetry. Two larger editions appeared in 1856 and 1860, and they had equally little public success. Leaves of Grass was criticized because of Whitman's exaltation of the body and sexual love and also because of its innovation in verse form—that it, the use of free verse in long rhythmical lines with a natural, "organic" structure.
Emerson was one of the few intellectuals to praise Whitman's work, writing him a famous congratulatory letter. Whitman continued to enlarge and revise further editions of Leaves of Grass ; the last edition prepared under his supervision appeared in 1892. From 1862 to 1865 Whitman worked as a volunteer hospital nurse in Washington. His poetry of the Civil War, Drum-Taps (1865), included his two poems about Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," considered one of the finest elegies in the English language, and the much-recited "O Captain! My Captain!"
For a while Whitman served in the Dept. of the Interior, but he was fired because Leaves of Grass was considered an immoral book. In 1873 Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke and afterward lived in a semi-invalid state. His prose collection Democratic Vistas had appeared in 1871, and his last long poem, "Passage to India," was published in the 1871 edition of Leaves of Grass. From 1884 until his death he lived in Camden, N.J., where he continued to write and to revise his earlier work. His last book, November Boughs, appeared in 1888. Whitman was a complex person. He saw himself as the spokesman for a young democracy, and he cultivated a bearded, shaggy appearance. Whitman's early biographers depicted him as a sensual man, a great lover of women, and the father of several illegitimate children. Most of this was false. In reality Whitman was a quiet, serious man, robust in youth but sick in middle age, who had no children and is generally acknowledged to have been homosexual. Whitman had an incalculable effect on later poets, inspiring them to experiment in verse as well as in subject matter.
You can find much more information and poems by Walt Whitman on the net.
Poems
What am I after all
What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over;
I stand apart to hear--it never tires me.
.
To you your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three
pronunciations in the sound of your name?
O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
.
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
I am he that aches with amorous love...
I am he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?
O Captain! My Captain!
(here you have a poem animation movie with Walt Whitman reciting his own poem. Please, don´t forget to read the information on the right of the screen in You Tube)
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