24.8: Walt Whitman

In his experiments with poetic style and conventions, Walt Whitman, it’s safe to say, inspired and continues to inspire the generations of poets who’ve come after him. Living from 1819 to 1892, Whitman was a poet who did most of his writing around the time of the American Civil War (1861-1895). His book Drum Taps chronicles that war, but Whitman is best known for his book Leaves of Grass which truly upended everything about how poetry was written and the subjects poets could discuss. Many modern poets continue to look back to Whitman as the most influential poet ever to write in the English language aside, perhaps, from Shakespeare.

---

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

By Walt Whitman

---

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

---

“A Child Said, What Is The Grass?”

By 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

---

Post-Reading for Whitman:

1) What information does the “Learn’d Astronomer” present? Describe not just what this person discusses but how the information is presented. What is the “Learn’d Astronomers” “teaching style.”

2) How does the speaker of the poem (the “I” voice we are listening to) react to the presentation of the “Learn’d Astronomer? ”

3) Consider the word “unaccountable” in the fifth line. Why is that a good word in this poem? What are the different ways it could be read? What are the implications of those different readings?

4) Why does “perfect silence” (line eight) help? Discuss the way this poem’s speaker seeks comfort. Does the speaker find an antidote or not? Why is the “silence” the speaker finds “perfect?”

5) Go online and read William Wordsworth’s poem “The World is Too Much With Us.” It’s easy to find. In what ways are Wordsworth’s poem (written in 1802) and Whitman’s poem (written in 1865) similar / different? Which better explores the theme? Why do you think so?

Journal Writing: What have we lost with all our new technological whiz-bang wonders? Write a journal page to explore your own ideas about the sentiment Whitman expresses in his poem. Feel free to argue with the speaker of the poem if you want to make the opposite case, but don’t just dismiss the feeling the speaker identifies—it’s one valid response to the industrial world. Be sure to bring in some direct references to the poem in your analytical reflection.