# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  Wordsworth vs. Whitman

## Shea

Before we began studying Wordsworth, I groaned because my instructor said he was the precursor to Whitman, whom I loath. But as I've been reading, I really enjoy his poetry! I connect more with it. Especially the poem "Michael", where the perfect pleasant rural life is ruined by the city.

Wordsworth seems to have this thing about the elderly, as if he's trying to hang on to old ways because he is afraid of the new scientific advancements. But discovering this attribute was like learning about myself! I love spending time with the elderly just to hear their stories. Too many times I find myself wishing I was raised among a generation that held more of their values.

I have no use for Whitman however, I found him to be very presumptuous (sp?) and more inclined to break values than anything else.

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## piquant

I love Whitman. I wish you could share my enjoyment. I think I love him because he is so deliciously insane. I am averyone, I am everything, I contradict myself, I sound my barabaric yawp. I picture him diry and earth, with a beard full of leaves.

But then again, I know very little of Wordsworth. Maybe I would like him better if I knew more about him. A lot of people feel the way you do about Whitman, but that's what attracks me to him.

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## Shea

Hee hee, I really don't mind the earthy image, but I didn't like his egotism.

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## Sindhu

Shea, I shared a lot of the feelings you mention with regard to Wordsworth's poetry initially and I still have a certain respect for SOME of his portrays of a by gone generation and era. But I felt later that this attitude was more than tinged with unbearable egotism ( Yes, I know you mentioned that in relation to Whitman, but beleive me, Wordsworth has his fair share! :Wink:  )
Have you read The Old Cumbrland Beggar? If not, try it- I'd like to hear wat you think. I won't offer my opinion now :Biggrin:  
You can find the poem at www.bartleby.com/145/ww139.html 
Sindhu.

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## Shea

Ok, I'll read it this afternoon after my classes. :Smile:

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## azmuse

hope you don't mind my two cents: i think it was awful. the best images were when the toll-girl and post boy showed him love. aargh. the rest: it was like being told of flowers s-l-o-w-l-y fading away. at least show them fading!
this was the only line i liked:
"And thus the soul,
By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,
Doth find herself insensibly disposed
To virtue and true goodness."
this was ok:
"My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week
Duly as Friday comes, though pressed herself
By her own wants, she from her store of meal
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door
Returning with exhilarated heart, 
Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven."
at least there's a picture, instead of hot air and wasted words. he could have built a poem with the last 2 lines - i really liked them, and at least they were passionate - and some good images; instead he wrote lofty, highflung crap. (ewwww.)

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## azmuse

plus it dragged...not very succint use of language. i kind of expect that, even in a long poem.

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## piquant

Well, based on this poem by Wordsworth, I'll have to strengthen my like for Whitman. Wordsworth and strike me, like Azmuse said, "lofty, high-flung crap."

If Whtiman was egotistic, it was from an all-ecompassing passion for life. He didn't have time to be lofty, he was to busy rolling around in the dirt, and shouting about how wonderful it was to do so.

How do you all feel about Allen Ginsberg? I think whitman was one of his major influences? At least they remind me of Whitman.

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## Shea

Sorry, I haven't been able to read The Old Cumberland Beggar, Sindu. (I will never take 5 classes in one semester again! :Eek:  ) I'll try to get to it this weekend. Now I'm off to decipher some Old English. I'm so worn out! :Frown:

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## Sindhu

Poor you, Shea!

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## atiguhya padma

I am not a great fan of either poet. Whitman I feel is probably better of the two.

Wordsworth started quite well when he was working with Coleridge, although most of what is good in the Lyrical Ballads, if I remember correctly was Coleridge's.

Wordsworth's best stuff is probably in The Prelude. Intimations of Immortality is pretty good at times. 

However, Wordsworth is really too twee. If he were alive today, you could imagine him writing ditties for birthday cards. He is by far the least significant of the major Romantic poets in my opinion (maybe he is significant in how much bad poetry he has inspired).

Atiguhya Padma

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## Sindhu

"twee" is THE word! And yes, the amount of bad poetry the man inspired is positively CRIMINAL!

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## Helga

I love Wordsworth, when I saw this forum I read everything I could find about Whitman and I don't like his work at all. I can´t even understand him, if someone could tell me about a really good poem by him that would be great. I've read a lot of Wordsworth and I love it. I can't see the similarity between the two so if someone wants to explain it...

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## Shea

I would have to agree with Azmuse about enjoying only parts of the poem, but I didn't think it was all that terrible. I wondered how accepted "The Old Cumberland Beggar" has been in certain circles (I guess that's how to describe it). I mean, it's one that wasn't included in my anthology, though there were about 50 other Wordsworth poems. I found "Michael" much easier to follow, though just as sentimental. Even a good poet has his bad moments. 

But Whitman's celebrated work was "Song of Myself", which I loathed. I hated how he presumed to know what I felt, which was absolutely not on target. At least Wordsworth allowed me to have my own feelings about his philosophy.




> However, Wordsworth is really too twee. If he were alive today, you could imagine him writing ditties for birthday cards. He is by far the least significant of the major Romantic poets in my opinion (maybe he is significant in how much bad poetry he has inspired).


Wordworth was at the beginning of the Romantic movement. All "movements" have there good artists and thier bad ones. Look at one of the first Romantic American writers, Washington Irving. Have you ever tried to read "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? That tends to be rather droll in several places.

Or look at the gothic movement. There were some very good writers, but then there were so many other tedious, menial writers that Jane Austen was getting so sick of them that she wrote _Northanger Abbey_ to satirize them. Maybe you should satirize bad greeting card writers. :Tongue:

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## Sindhu

> _Originally posted by Shea_ 
> *
> At least Wordsworth allowed me to have my own feelings about his philosophy.
> 
> 
> 
> *


 In the beginning, perhaps. But towards the latter half of his career Wordsworth became totally didactic, pedantic and intolerant of disapproval to an unbeleivable extent. Coleridge must have get signs of the coming change when he attacked Wordsworth's poetical doctrines in Biographia Literaria- and he paid the price for his attack- Wordsworth saw to that all right! :Frown:

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## Shea

I have yet to study that much into Wordsworth, unfortunately, I've been introduced to him in a survey course, so any further study will have to be after I graduate.

BTW, I thought that Wordsworth broke his friendship with Colerigde because Coleridge was a moocher. :Confused:  Whatever the case, both their poetry seemed to make more sense when they were working together. Didn't Coleridge write Kubla Kahn after they had their falling out? It was a good poem but extremely bizzare. Could be because it was based on an opium dream. Those crazy Romantics! :Rolleyes:

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## Sindhu

My thesis work included some pretty intensive work on the Romantic poets, including their letters, notebooks and so on. :Wink:  
Well, yes, technically speaking I suppose you could say Coleridge due to a life long inabilty to take care of practical affairs and to say "no" WAS a "moocher" :Smile:  but he didn't do much of his mooching on Wordsworth- WW was far too clever to allow that! And don't even get me started on the kind of personae the two men reveal in their "private" writings. Coleridge might have been an addict and a muddler but that was about it. WW went to the extent of being completely out of line- he didn't want to be friends with Coleridge, OK, I can understand that. That's one thing- but it's quite another to sit down and dash off letters to all mutual friends and even acqintances saying THEY shouldn't help his ex-friend either, which is exactly what WW did. :Mad:  Like I said, don't even get me started! Mind you, there's lots of material I like in WW's poetry, but as a person, from the available data he was @#%@ :Tongue:  
I've been wanting to put that down in writing somewhere for a looong time! Thanks for giving me the chance :Smile:

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## Shea

No problem! :Cool:  

I'm glad you were able to share that. My instructor touched on that very briefly (I mean about Wordsworth telling people not to help Colridge). That's what I hate about survey courses. Their required, but they don't allow you to really get into what your studying. I suppose I'll have to wait until I start going for my masters to really get into the extra-textual stuff. :Rolleyes:  

Thanks for the info! :Smile:

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## MacBeth

If you can get Wordsworth at his best, he will outdo Whitman (whom I also loath) by far. But a selct few of Wordsworth's poems will put one to sleep. Ezra Pound said, "The neophyte poet should read only as much Wordsworth as is bearable."

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## Isagel

> _Originally posted by MacBeth_ 
> *Ezra Pound said, "The neophyte poet should read only as much Wordsworth as is bearable."*


Can´t stop giggling. I like Wordsworth. His poems was the first poems I read in english, and they captured me. Their beauty. like the daffodils he writes about makes - to paraphrase - my heart dance. But Whitman gives me more than that delight. 
I adore Whitman, almost to the degree of wanting to snarl and defend him. I do not find him selfabsorbed , but absorbed with life itself. This is my favorite poems by him, and I felt a need to share it. 

I wish I too could translate grass. I wish I could describe what the poem does to me. But I just show the poem instead. 

A child said, What is the grass? 
Walt Whitman 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the 
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

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## Sunny

> _Originally posted by MacBeth_ 
> *If you can get Wordsworth at his best, he will outdo Whitman (whom I also loath) by far. But a selct few of Wordsworth's poems will put one to sleep. Ezra Pound said, "The neophyte poet should read only as much Wordsworth as is bearable."*


Hi, guy, i am a stranger here. i coudn't fully understand what you had said above for my mother tounge is not english. what puzzled me most is 'But a selct few of Wordsworth's poems will put one to sleep.' Did you mean that a select few of Wordsworth's poems are really wonderful, just like lullabies that can make people fall into sleep peacefully, or those are boring, awful ones that make people drowsy when read it? i'm not sure what you mean. Could you please give me some explanations? thanks a million.

PS: Ezra Pound said, "The neophyte poet should read only as much Wordsworth as is bearable." What does this mean?I am mainly confused by the phrase 'as much....as' in that sentence.

Yesterday I read I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud , a most noted and beautiful peom of Wordsworth i think. It attracts me so much that I can't stop but reading it over and over again. But other works of Wordsworth are a little difficult to me to read,i think,so i need help!!

thank you!

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## Shea

> _Originally posted by Sunny_ 
> *what puzzled me most is 'But a selct few of Wordsworth's poems will put one to sleep.' Did you mean that a select few of Wordsworth's poems are really wonderful, just like lullabies that can make people fall into sleep peacefully, or those are boring, awful ones that make people drowsy when read it? i'm not sure what you mean. Could you please give me some explanations? thanks a million.*


I'm pretty sure he was talking about them being boring and making you drowsy, but I haven't come across them just yet in Wordsworth.




> *
> PS: Ezra Pound said, "The neophyte poet should read only as much Wordsworth as is bearable." What does this mean?I am mainly confused by the phrase 'as much....as' in that sentence.
> *


I think also that Ezra meant that one shouldn't read more of Wordsworth's poems if they don't like them. 

The English language does have rather funny phrases that don't always mean what they say. A friend of mine once went on a trip to Australia and at dinner, the people he was staying with offered him more food, but he refused saying that he was "stuffed". In America that means that your full of food and can't eat anymore. But evidently in Australia it means your pregnant! They had a pretty hardy laugh over that one! :Biggrin:

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## Sunny

hahahaha, it's so funny. thank you very much, shea. i'm so glad that i can get your help, reallly. I think cultrural gaps can cause many funny or embarrassed things. I am so interested in finding or listening to these things. any funny things will be my favorite. i awfully like humor stories which can make me laugh loudly. haha. i think humor is the most necessary thing in our lives.  :Biggrin:   :Biggrin:   :Biggrin:

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## Sunny

Just now i read another three poems of Wordsworth. _Composed upon Westminster Bridge, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways_ and _the Solitary Reaper_

So beautiful. Now I deeply attracted by Wordsworth's lyrical poems. All of three made me imagine and then became peaceful, and then thought of some melancholy prictures in mind. Can't describe what are they. Maybe a kind of loneliness or sorrow.

I don't know much about Whitman. Does his style familiar with Wordsworth's? Is there any one who can reccomend to me some of his works? 

thanks!

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## Shea

Glad I could help :Wink:   :Biggrin:  If you like funny stories or situations keep you eye on the general chat thread. I still giggle over some things even after I've left my computer. :Smile:

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## Sunny

OK, Shea, i will sure to pay attention to the general thread chat.
You must be a very kind and humorous companion to you friends. easy-going, eloquent.....haha, i've already been in love with this site, and hope can be accepted by all of you.

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## Shea

Aww... you make me blush! :Tongue:  This is a great site, hope to see you often!

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## Sindhu

> _Originally posted by Shea_ 
> *I'm pretty sure he was talking about them being boring and making you drowsy, but I haven't come across them just yet in Wordsworth.
> 
> 
> 
> *


I'm going to take a positively sadistic pleasure in pating some lines then! :Biggrin:  

"You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry,
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide." {from- "The Thorn", Wordsworth} Could description go further!!?

AND this when he HAS got hold of a potentially good story in this piece, of a mother suspected of child murder, faithless love etc and THIS is how he leads into it:
The refrain is 
"Oh misery! oh misery!
"Oh woe is me! oh misery!" and the poet wonders 
"And wherefore does she cry? --
"Oh wherefore" wherefore? tell me why
"Does she repeat that doleful cry?"

In my opinion, I'm not interested enough to find out and I'm glad that WW says: 

"I cannot tell; I wish I could;
For the true reason no one knows,"

But then again, I suppose I shouldn't say this sends you to sleep, it is, again IMO, so awful it will keep you awake! "Three feet long and two feet wide" indeed! "Measured it from side to side"- He really 
_must_ have been jobless! :Rolleyes:  

PS. I remembered this poem and tracked it down on the net to save typing and lo and behold it turns up in an online anthology of bad poetry!  :Wink:  

BTW, I hope no one thinks I'm antiWW, there are several shorter poems as well as large sections of Prelude and Excursion which I think are SUPERLATIVELY good. But really, on occasion.....
Sindhu.

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## avid_reader

Until i came into this forum I never knew (rather never thought) that WW had written some poems just for the heck of it !!
Well !! one learns new things always .. one travels and travels towards one's Ithaca "to learn and go on learning from those who know"
But his famous poems are really good . Our high school teacher simply adored WW. Probably thats why I wouldnt say anything against the great man even if he wrote 99 bad verses and only 1 good poem. (logic/reason stand aside plz)
Whitman .. i havent read .. probably one of these days, i should !

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## emily655321

> _Originally posted by Sunny_ 
> [B]Just now i read another three poems of Wordsworth. _Composed upon Westminster Bridge, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways_ and _the Solitary Reaper_[B]


Sunny, "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" has always been my favorite Wordsworth poem. I'm glad you like it too.

I like both Wordsworth and Whitman, although for different reasons (and different moods). Wordsworth is very straightforward and sing-songy, but the imagery is still beautiful and melancholy. It's kind of sitting-under-a-tree-on-a-sunny-afternoon mindless prettiness.

I used to agree with one early critic who said that Whitman read like "a shopping list." Until 11th and 12th grade English class when we spent whole classes analyzing single poems, and I discovered that his poems did indeed have a subtle, innovative structure, and the more layers you peel away the more there is to find. I was amazed to reread poems after taking the time to discover all the subtle nuances, and be enthralled by what had before sounded like random "shopping list" sentences. Reading Whitman is a lot more akin to reading a Russian author, i.m.o. -- you have to be in the mood to give all your attention, absorb, go back, peel away, look in the corners, reread, reread, reread.

After really looking into their personal styles, it seems bizarre to me to try to compare these two guys.

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## xby

Wordsworth's works are now alway related with eco-literature. just like Thoreau's Walden.
How do you think about it?

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## rex_yuan

Whitman himself was a poem. They were both great poets, different from each other. They both were innovators who changed the trend of a former age. Whitman was the mountain and Wordsworth a lake.

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## emily655321

Oh I like that analogy. It calls to my mind the photographs in a book someone gave me as a kid, "the Lakeland Poets." A compilation of poems by people from the Lake District in England. It had gorgeous pictures of huge green hills with blue lakes running through the valleys. Anyway, Wordsworth is in there a lot, and to me those images stand well for such a comparison.

xby -- I think it's because he writes a lot about things in nature; flowers, clouds, the moon. But I hear a lot about Whitman being an environmental poet as well, because in Leaves of Grass he describes himself as being at one with the earth and everything in it. Such consciousness of nature was very unusual in America during the time he was writing. Most people were more interested in the machines of the industrial revolution; factories, trains, and electricity.

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## rex_yuan

Post #8: Why do you think Whitman is one of Allen Ginsberg's influences? Would justify your comment?

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## trismegistus

> Post #8: Why do you think Whitman is one of Allen Ginsberg's influences? Would justify your comment?


Ginsberg has actually said so, and Whitman shows up in at least one of G's poems ("A Supermarket in California")

And speaking of inspiration, does anyone know Sherman Alexie's "Defending Walt Whitman"? Wonderful, wonderful poem that captures Whitman beautifully.

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## atiguhya padma

I didn't realise Alexie wrote poetry too. I've got Reservation Blues by him. Is it any good do you know?

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## Isagel

Only in poems of or by Whitman can sweat be something so beautiful, so full of life that it becomes a celebration. Still a bit unsure if I like some parts of the poem - can´t really find words for why, perhaps it is just the way people are turned into objects to admire, not individuals, not quite human - but still it is so very, very beautiful. Reminds me of a poem of salmonfishing that I think Hughes wrote. 
Thank you for writing about it, I had to try and find it. 



***************
Defending Walt Whitman 
by Sherman Alexie


Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs
and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown!
These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill,
although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait,
waiting for orders to do something, to do something.
God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot
on a reservation summer basketball court
where the ball is moist with sweat,
and makes a sound when it swishes through the net
that causes Walt Whitman to weep because it is so perfect.
There are veterans of foreign wars here
although their bodies are still dominated
by collarbones and knees, although their bodies still respond
in the ways that bodies are supposed to respond when we are young.
Every body is brown! Look there, that boy can run
up and down this court forever. He can leap for a rebound
with his back arched like a salmon, all meat and bone
synchronized, magnetic, as if the court were a river,
as if the rim were a dam, as if the air were a ladder
leading the Indian boy toward home.
Some of the Indian boys still wear their military hair cuts
while a few have let their hair grow back.
It will never be the same as it was before!
One Indian boy has never cut his hair, not once, and he braids it
into wild patterns that do not measure anything.
He is just a boy with too much time on his hands.
Look at him. He wants to play this game in bare feet.
God, the sun is so bright! There is no place like this.
Walt Whitman stretches his calf muscles
on the sidelines. He has the next game.
His huge beard is ridiculous on the reservation.
Some body throws a crazy pass and Walt Whitman catches it
with quick hands. He brings the ball close to his nose
and breathes in all of its smells: leather, brown skin, sweat,
black hair, burning oil, twisted ankle, long drink of warm water,
gunpowder, pine tree. Walt Whitman squeezes the ball tightly.
He wants to run. He hardly has the patience to wait for his turn.
"What's the score?" he asks. He asks, "What's the score?"
Basketball is like this for Walt Whitman. He watches these Indian boys
as if they were the last bodies on earth. Every body is brown!
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman dreams of the Indian boy who will defend him,
trapping him in the corner, all flailing arms and legs
and legendary stomach muscles. Walt Whitman shakes
because he believes in God. Walt Whitman dreams
of the first jumpshot he will take, the ball arcing clumsily
from his fingers, striking the rim so hard that it sparks.
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman closes his eyes. He is a small man and his beard
is ludicrous on the reservation, absolutely insane.
His beard makes the Indian boys righteously laugh. His beard
frightens the smallest Indian boys. His beard tickles the skin
of the Indian boys who dribble past him. His beard, his beard!
God, there is beauty in every body. Walt Whitman stands
at center court while the Indian boys run from basket to basket.
Walt Whitman cannot tell the difference between
offense and defense. He does not care if he touches the ball.
Half of the Indian boys wear t-shirts damp with sweat
and the other half are bareback, skin slick and shiny.
There is no place like this. Walt Whitman smiles.
Walt Whitman shakes. This game belongs to him.

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## trismegistus

> I didn't realise Alexie wrote poetry too. I've got Reservation Blues by him. Is it any good do you know?


Oh heck, yeah. He's got at least 5 books of poetry published. Isagel was kind enough to post "Defending ..." Here are links to a couple more.

http://www.bpj.org/alexie2.html
http://www.bpj.org/hamlet.html

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## mono

> this was the only line i liked:
> "And thus the soul,
> By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,
> Doth find herself insensibly disposed
> To virtue and true goodness."


Whew! From way back then! I happened to come across this thread while meandering through the poetry forum. I had never read this poem, amuse, but thank you for enlightening me on the Wordsworth work. The full text:
The Old Cumberland Beggar
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww139.html

As for the aged debate between William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, I cannot confidently choose a side. Wordsworth's poetry seems so much more aesthetic, coming from the heart of romanticism, but Whitman I have such respect for as one of the first known free-verse writers, and inventors of such raw poetry that later influenced so many other greats, such as W.H. Auden, D.H. Lawrence, and Sylvia Plath. Both poets seem so disparately different, that I cannot choose a favorite.
I think a greater and more difficult choice would persist between William Wordsworth, his companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats - the greatest of romantic poets, in my opinion, who later led to other great genres, like transcendentalism.  :Brow:

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