I hate Song of Myself!!

[Shea]

I will not doubt that Whitman is an excellent poet, I did like Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (though I didn't understand why he sent the birds north in the springtime) but I hate Song of Myself. I know it was said by the critics 150 years ago, but I'll say it again; he's too egocentric. I hate the way he presumes to know how I feel. Which I admit is an ingeneous attribute for a poet, but I don't appreciate the way he pulls it off. I can hardly wait untill my instructor moves into the Dickinson poetry. :x

[SFG75]

An interesting point. The sheer length of the poem is problematic in my opinion. I believe it paints a striking picture of agrarian America in the 19th century. You can imagine all of the workers doing their respective trades and the young nation teeming with growth and optimism. The brilliance of it was how he captured this spirit and the mental attitude of *manifest destiny* that was around at the time. Communicating such vague things is hard to do as time passes and many historians try to put a spotlight on such things, lest people forget.

The poem is also great in that transcendental themes of oneness and of being interconnected with others crops up quite frequently. It's just as much of a moral/ethical manifesto, as it is a simple poem about what he observes in America.

[TrooperW]

I know it was said by the critics 150 years ago, but I'll say it again; he's too egocentric. I hate the way he presumes to know how I feel. Which I admit is an ingeneous attribute for a poet, but I don't appreciate the way he pulls it off.

When I first read Whitman, that was what I initially thought too. But is the poet really presuming to know how you feel? IMHO, it seems Walt is taking us and showing us his journey and his feelings in Song of Myself. But in the end, he let's us go, and tells us: "I stop somewhere waiting for you"

So ultimately, he leaves us this choice of whether what he assumes is really what we shall assume too.

[tomingram]

And of course you don't quite feel the way he feels.

He wrote over one hundred years ago. Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California" deals with this issue, yet Ginsberg was enamored of Whitman. Wonder why...

[Darcy88]

I was just reading it. He lays the images and exclamation marks on heavy. But some of those images are poignant and read perfectly beautiful and true. The one with the runaway slave he takes in. The one with the trapper marrying the red-skinned young woman. The one where he talks about being in the mountains and the wilds, hunting, sleeping upon the gathered leaves close by his dog and his gun. Its a constant ejaculation, the poem throbbing erect, never going down. Its a ride in which one is strapped to the front of a zippingly fast-moving train. Its how one must feel after awakening from a decade long coma and becoming acqainted with a world vast and rich, one freshly and strikingly new.

[tomingram]

Not to mention Whitman's staggering technical innovations. With one sweep of his brawny arm, Whitman brushed aside two thousand years of tradition, establishing free verse poetry.

[Darcy88]

As much as I love the poem I can understand how someone could hate it. Whitman's ego was large, he used exclamation points almost too much if I dare critique his wonderful work, and the philosophy denouncing all modesty and measure can seem a bit much. But there is still so much beauty and truth in there, and such clean flowing expression, its hard not too love it. But I think if I read Whitman in anything but small doses I'd get overloaded by it all.

[tomingram]

Well, we should be careful. The poem may explicitly renounce modesty, but the poem implicitly suggests something far more nuanced. We should be unmodest, but not more so than anyone else.

If anything, Whitman seems to suggest that we should toss out any modesty about our absolute equality with everyone else in the world. Or at least the Americans, the "roughs". That is, the adventurous spirits. Thus, Whitman isn't advancing egotism, as some charge, but simply advancing complete democracy.

After all, Whitman doesn't claim to be better than anyone. He claims the opposite: everything about him that is good also belongs to everyone else. He just happened to have seen all of this: and, well, who else had said these things, as Emerson said, so "incomparably well"?

[Darcy88]

He did have a massive ego. Someone who met him said his favourite topic of conversation was himself. But he was Walt freakin Whitman, and so I forgive him the big ego. And even if he didn't explicitly state that he was better than anyone, I'm sure he knew he was, because it was so obvious that he was a genius.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

His ego was unquestionable. He thought he was going to be an immediate hit with Song of Myself, a revolutionary of the literary world and beyond. He thought it would bring about social change and usher in a new era of peace. Definitely no ego there.

[Kingbob]

It has been credited as “representing the core of Whitman’s poetic vision. In the poem, Whitman emphasizes an all-powerful "I"，but just his exaggeration，a method to express his emotion.

[Darcy88]

A lot of poets are self-absorbed. Often when I write poetry it turns out to be a little self-absorbed. But I can't think of a poet who used "I" and "me" more frequently than Walt Whitman. It can get tiring. Its like yeah Walt, I know you are a genius and an incredible freaking poet, but ease up on the self-absorption a bit. And he uses capitalized words like Being, Unknown, Eternity, Infinity, which at the time I'm sure were novel and profound, but now, at least to me, come off as rather tired and trite.

So I got tired of all this, and so skipped a few pages, only to come across two brilliant sections of Song of Myself which do not contain the words "I" and "my," nor any of those hippy-ish stoner phrases like Eternity. These sections were just brilliant, amazing, and showed how great Whitman could be and often was. Here's the beginning of one:

Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me.

Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,)
His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be;
Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us.

We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d,
My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.

We had receiv’d some eighteen pound shots under the water,
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead.

Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,
Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported,
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves.

The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,
They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.

Our frigate takes fire,
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck and the fighting done?

Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.

Only three guns are in use,
One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s mainmast,
Two well serv’d with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks.

The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top,
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.

Not a moment’s cease,
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.

One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.

Serene stands the little captain,
He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,
His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

That's my experience with Whitman also. Among the tiresome and repetitive egocentric ramblings are snippets of absolute brilliance.

[Darcy88]

I really like these sections too:

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west—the bride was a red girl;
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking—they had moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper—he was drest mostly in skins—his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck—he held his bride by the hand;
She had long eyelashes—her head was bare—her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her feet. 180

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside;
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile;
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
And brought water, and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet, 185
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north;
(I had him sit next me at table—my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.)