January 16, 2002: Top

It's interesting that San Francisco came into today's lecture as a central place for writing. With Kerouac's obvious link to it, it makes it even more so. The fact that we are also reading Whitman in this unit is equally great. Why? Perhaps because Whitman can be seen as one of the 1st beat poets. he was writing for a post Civil War downtrodden nation much as Kerouac wrote for the post WWII downtrodden generation. The fact that Whitman invented the breath line stregthens the link to the beats, specifically Ginsberg. The fact that Mark Twain was involved in his own San Francisco Renaissance stregthens the link between this course and beat poetry too.

January 18, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman Song of Myself #3

Walt Whitman
Song of Myself Section 3

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Prior to this quote Whitman says he will not talk of the beginning or the end. In this quote he says nothing has ever been or ever will be greater, more inception, more youth/age, more perfection, more heaven..., than now. I don't think here that he is talking about the now he lived in at the moment pen touched paper. In all of his works there seems to be a sense of unity. I think that this is one of those times. He's equating this time to all times. The now he's talking about continues everytime the poem is read. There was no more heaven or hell then than there is now. So there is no use in talking about the beginning or the end when all times are the same.

January 20, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman Song of Myself

I feel that this poem is distinctly American. It holds something in it that screams "America." When reading it for EN331 I got the same feeling from it. When Whitman begins cataloging, talking about all the different people and places, you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell America. There are things he writes in there that you don't associate with any other country.

I feel that the main, driving, thing behind the American feeling is the democracy. Whitman unites us all in his poetry. At first glance of Whitman, it appears, that he is the most egotistical writer of American literature. Once you come to the realization, though, that the word "I" in most of his poems does not refer to Walt Whitman, the real meaning begins to show. "I" in Whitman's poetry is actually us. Whitman is the great equalizer, at least within the bounds of this country, bringing everyone together. No matter what level of station he makes us equal. Former slaves, prostitutes, and Presidents are all referred to in the same manner with no emphasis of feeling on one over any other. This aspect of Whitman is the poetic manifestation of the ideals our country stands for.

January 21, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman To a Certain Cantatrice

Who is this cantatrice? What is it that she has done? Is it something important? Something for the country perhaps? I don't know. The poem gives no clues what-so-ever to what she has specifically done. What it does tell us that people who he had planned to give this gift, the poem I assume, are: heroes, speakers, generals, those willing to serve the good old cause. So that must be what it is she is doing. It is just that Whitman won't tell us how. Either that or he wanted to say, once again, that everyone in this democracy is just as important as any other person. He is uniting the Americans once again, this time through a singer. I wonder what her voice was like. How did it hit Whitman? What pictures did it evoke in his mind? It surely hit, or else he would not have written this for her.

January 23, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman Shut Not Your Doors

I really dig this poem. It makes me think a lot. Before you get to the last lines you think that Whitman is being egotistical, saying his work is what is lacking from the libraries. The first lines make you feel that he has written a book on the war, at first I wondered if it was Leaves of Grass he was talking about.

The shift in the last few lines of the poem changes the perspective. The focus completely shifts. The subject of the poem, "I," is no longer Whitman. Once again Whitman has become America and the "I" is once again all of us. The book without words, "The words of my book nothing..." is filled with the experiences and emotions of the Americans after the war. I wonder, though, how does Whitman feel about the losing side. What are his feelings toward the failed Confederates? Is he, like Lincoln, wishing only to heal the wounds of the land? Or is he, like most men, wishing to continue to hold the war up to the South as a constant reminder, ever in the act of tearing the festering wound?

I think Whitman followed Lincoln's compassion for his country. I was going to saw "compassion for the South" but I don't think that is the right word choice. To separate the country, even in compassion, into North and South is to attempt to open the wound again. I feel that Whitman believed in Lincoln enough to try and be forgiving to the South.

January 25, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman To You

I think that this poem is incredibly pertinent in today's world. Nobody talks to anybody. One of the reasons I left UMass Boston was because of this. Everyone treated that school as if it was a full on Prison-run library. Nobody talked to anybody. The few people that did socialize worked on as if they were crazy by our mute classmates.

Why shouldn't we talk to each other? What's the use in communication if we can't just go ahead and do it? If you want to talk to me, if I look interesting, or if I say something interesting that you over hear, for God's sake come talk to me. Do that with everyone. Communicate. It's why we have voices. It's why we can formulate our thoughts into something expressable. I think Whitman felt the same.

January 28, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman Song of Myself 16

Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
Walt Whitman

The great melting pot that is America is shown in this line. If you take the idea that Whitman accepts the responsibility of uniting America within himself, this line makes perfect sense. He is that melting pot, or rather the speaker of the poem is the melting pot. Whitman created one singular voice to express the American feeling, to express what it means to be American. This poem, I think, says "If this is how you feel you are one of us." Song of Myself is what it means to be American. You don't have to be a citizen to feel this way. It is more of an idea than anything else, less substantial but more important that whatever certificate they may give you upon your completing of your citizenship. Democracy is not an American invention. Therefore, the feeling of being American can extend beyond our borders to those who wish for this democracy and freedom.

January 29, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman Song of Myself 18

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. Walt Whitman

There are a great many elements of Taoism in Whitman's work. His continuous attempt to unite, within himself, the whole of the country show Taoist principles of being one with everything. This quote here is very yin yang. Its as good to fall as it is to stand. Its as good to lose as it is to win. I think a better word would be "important" rather than "good." Nobody is going to feel that it is as good to be a loser as it is to be a winner, but they may feel that is just is important, because it is. Without the loser, there is no winner. What is winning if there is no losing? An empty accomplishment. If we only engaged ourselves in things that we knew we would be triumphant at then the triumph would be empty.

January 30, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman One's-Self I Sing

America is a very small elitist group. Not all the population of the United States are Americans. I'm not just talking about the legal and illegal aliens living within our borders. Not all the CITIZENS of the United States are American. Just a small elitist group is American. White Anglo Saxon Protestants, the Mayflower bunch, those few those happy few who are Americans.

So what about all those people who don't live in the United States but live in "the Americas." They aren't allowed to be Americans either. They are "Central Americans," "South Americans," or as they are collectively known "Latin Americans." That is a title I have never truly understood. I've never met a Latin American who spoke, read, or wrote Latin. Yes I know it is because they're language is based on Latin, but so is the Italian and French Languages, they aren't called Latin Americans. It just makes no true sense to me, its just another prefix to make them not American. Perhaps the most mistreated of the Americans, as far being called American, though are the Canadians. They are just Canadian, they aren't even allowed to add the suffix "American" to Canadian. I know they are seen as annoying but couldn't that at least be "prefix Americans."

January 31, 2002: Top

In looking for meaning in Emily Dickinson's poem I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died I could not find an easy answer. To take the poem literally would be to believe that she somehow wrote a poem, this poem, after her death. So obviously I won't take it literally.

Death may be viewed as a change in consciousness. Perhaps here it represents some form of meditation, in which case the poem could be possible. You can hear a fly while meditating, you can hear its buzz while changing consciousness. You cannot hear it while you truly die and then have your corpse reflect upon the noise with a poem, its just impossible.

I believe this poem, however, to be about sex. Death, in the Shakespearen sense, often stood to represent an act of sex or moreso and orgasm. This is what I take death to mean in this poem.

The first stanza contains her orgasm, "the heaves of storm" and the quiet glow which surrounds her body afterward, "the stillness round my form." The second stanza talks of her partners orgasm, "las onset, when the king bewitnessed in his power." The third stanza recognizes the loss of her virginity through this act "I willed my keepsakes, signed away what portion of me I could make assignable." The last stanza is her falling asleep after the act in the dark "the windows failed, and then I could not see to see."

February 4, 2002: Top

Corresponding Whitman To a Historian

Walt Whitman
To a Historian
"Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future

I enjoy these lines for a few reasons. The first, as seems to be his way of doing things, Whitman creates unity through himself. I don't believe the "I" in this poem is referring to Whitman, I believe the "I" refers to the unified voice of democracy or America. So the history of the future is presented from and through us. Its our history our future.

The other reason these lines amuse me are the words history and future being used to describe the same thing. "The history of the future" the wording makes it seem as if the future already past and in Whitman's case I suppose a great deal of the future is already history. Twis the words a little bit and you get "the future is history" saying that the future is over, done, dead. All very nihilistic in a way. Either way these lines serve to amuse me.

February 6, 2002: Top

On Paul Laurence Dunbar's
We Wear the Mask.

I found our class discussion on this poem to be somewhat tiresome. It seemed that nobody in the class, for whatever reason, wanted to be the one to bring up that it had to do with the suffering of African Americans. I myself am guilty of this but for the reasons that one I am lazy and two I'm sick of being one of the few people in class willing to volunteer an opinion. It is my belief that my classmates had other motivation for remaining silent, of course I could be wrong. Their reasons may be the same as mine. My belief, however, is that they either A. truly didn't discover this poem's subject or B. if they succesfully transcended that mental hurtle they felt awkward about bringing up "Black Suffering" in the world of today's classroom. Why? I think it is because this world has gone overboard in trying to be P.C.. Political Correctness is on the verge of ruining this country's ability to express. I predict within three generations this country will P.C. itself into stupification.

February 7, 2002: Top

Just as I was thinking to myself how all travel pieces are very similar Twain alludes to Gulliver’s Travels. In the opening chapters of Roughing It, Twain, like all travel writers, began cataloguing. He listed in great detail, as do all travel writers, what he and his brother were taking on their journey. What was funny about it was that part of the listing of this stuff was when he had to send it back home because they couldn’t bring more than 25 pounds with them on the stage. And just after realizing how much it reminded me of all travel logs I’ve read in the past, he mentions Brobdignag and Liliputians. It is almost as if he knew what I wanted to hear next.

February 8, 2002: Top

One of the sections of Roughing It we read reminded me of Beowulf. Clemens was describing Kamehameha and after his name he listed all the things Kamehameha had done. You find this sort of thing throughout Beowulf I have a felling that Clemens Knew this. I, however, wonder why he would do this. He always seems to be making fun of someone or something. Is this also a little joke on the sly? I get most of his jokes but if this is one of them I don't get it.

February 13, 2002: Top

I'm more interested in the background of the Kate Chopin novel The Awakening than in the actual story itself. I'm bored by stories of rich girls and their problems of manners and etiquette. I like the area around which this novel takes place. New Orleans and the surrounding Creole communities interest me. The political and social background of America at the time intereste me. Slavery, racism, sexism, the South leaving the Union, all that stuff interests me. Edna's quest for freedom interests me too, but only in the concept of it. How she goes about it, though, bores me. I don't quite know why. Afterall she is bucking society completely off and doing things her own way, but still maybe its the descriptions of the life she's throwing off that annoys me. I'm more interested in the sentiment of rebellion and the context of the story than I am in the story itself.

February 15, 2002: Top

I do not like the character of Edna. Perhaps that is why I don't like this story. I have no sympathy for her quest for freedom at all. She has children, but she's a terrible mother. She has a husband, and although she may be just a trophy wife, she has no respect for him what-so-ever. "Why should she," you might ask, "if she's just a trophy wife?" Because that was the culture back then, that was society. That's how it worked. She was irresponsible. She should have quested for freedom before she had kids. She's a terrible person. Anyone that would kill themselves and leave their children to deal with that for the rest of their lives is evil. She has a responsibility to those children to be there. I'm glad her character died, she's a pain in the ass, whiny, useless, silly little rich girl.

February 25, 2002: Top

Spring NY semi-busy avenue walking along next to the park / step off the sidewalk and instatnly its night, harlem dark the homeless sleep in doorways, a mix of newspapers and tattered sheets blanket an old black man w/a big dirty grey beard. he may be dead, dawn is coming. a middle aged man sells newspapers on the corner / i step on to the train, time speeds up people file in and out at accelerated steps with production line precision, the train weasels through the city. / i find myself abourd a large river boat on the hudson, looking out at the brown water trash floats by crashing for a second into the hull before it reaches the distances behind us. i look up into the sky, i look down again i'm on the roof of a six story walk-up on the lower east side an old woman feeds her caged pigeons and someone is playing "bird" jazz on a deep tenor sax / back in the park by the duck pond, two frogs float belly up next to a mcdonald's coffee cup, caution contents may be hot / battery park acrobats from Cape Verde do their routine slow and methodically but soon they leap, tumble and feint falls with ever increasing speed eyes closed three men throw a forth high into the air, close enough to grab a handful of blue he falls swiftly, much faster than his ascention / early morning "little italy" the produce carts are being pushed, old women dressed in black and old men with still-color-clad wives buy oranges and apples and avacadoes from vendors / across the side walk on 5th ave an army of ants carries a crust of cream cheese covered bagel to their home in a bed of flowers / a drunk stumbles off of s 42nd street into traffic, his stumbles are steps in a fatal dance w/the honking cars, he does not see them but wades through the sea of one ton metallic waves and trips on the eastern curb falling flat splitting his lip smashing his bottle, the people hustle by, unlooking uncaring of the fallen voyager. he rolls to his side, spitting blood he falls asleep head resting on his hands / construction site 100s of feet up a man with a bolt gun shoots bolts into corragated steel / rain drops begin crashing into his hard hat splashing down across his straining arms one floor above sitting across a 6" steel support beam a man eats lunch out of a metal lunch pail as the rain makes his bread soggy and his bald mr clean head gleam in the retreating light. clouds roll in black pregnant with the smog and acid rain ready to give the city a chemical scrub down, the man sighs and throws his soggy sandwich his eyes follow it down 'til he can no longer see it. a young librian jumps startled as it hits the ground next to her splashing mustard and mayo across her carefully polished pumps as she bends over to clean it off w/a napkin a pickpocket grabs and runs off with her pocketbook, he speedily dashes in and out of the slow moving masses. cutting down an alley slows to a walk pulling and then discarding the contents of her purse, finding her wallet he drops the imitation leather bag and opens his treasure 15 bucks he throws the wallet in the dumpster and kicks a can at a 3 legged dog asleep in a pile of trash / a leaf sails upon the river running along 10th ave, created by the rain, with a whirlpool swirl it dissappears into the storm drain / back in the park three children play on the swings, a girl in a red coat touches the sky with every pump of her legs and forward lean of her torso / a blue cald cop kicks the fallen drunk, of 42nd street, in the ribs, he awakens

February 27, 2002: Top

I think of Daisy Miller with about as much fondness as I think of Pride and Prejudice or any of those other novels about silly little girls and their love affairs. I don't like these novels about manners and proper dress and attitude of women who lived a hundred years ago or more. I don't get anything out of these novels except a headache, and a desire to never read one again. I never come away with some concept that intrigues me or a slightly skewed new perception of my society. Both of which I think you should come away from a piece of "literature" with. So far I don't like any of the characters in this book. Not the males or the females.

March 1, 2002: Top

I'm not surprised that Daisy Miller died at the end of her novel. I don't think that Henry James like Daidy Miller anymore than I did. I honestly didn't get the feeling that he cared for any of his characters in this novel. So why did he write it? Was he being critical of Americans in their search for culture in this novel? Or was he being objective? Living on this island I get the feeling, from contact with all of the different Polynesian and Asian cultures, that I as a mainland American, and a white male to boot, have no culture. That's what people seem to think anyway. Maybe they are right, and maybe that's why Daisy Miller had to die. Perhaps she died from lack of culture in a land of culture. Perhaps the melting pot of the mainland is diluted and thin and brackish that we have pathetic remnants of culture and nothing else.

March 4, 2002: Top

Paul Lawrence Dunbar's A Negro Love Song was great. It reminded me right away of the blues songs of Robert Johnson. I love anything that I begin to associate with Johnson. I can hear Johnson slide guitar and rolling blues licks at the end of every Dunbar line. The voice I heard in my head the very first time I read the poem was that of Johnson, high pitched and rattling "Jump back, honey, jump back." I never thought of Robert Johnson as a poet but if Dunbar's A Negro Love Song is a poem than so are all of Johnson's songs.

March 6, 2002: Top

W.E.B. Du Bois's The Sorrow Songs was one of the most interesting readings so far. I think that most of the readings up until now have been enjoyable and entertaining. This reading I think might be the first that has really enlightened me into something I'm interested in. I've always been interested in "folk" music and blues music. These "sorrow songs" are the root of the music I love. In fact they truly are the root of 99.5% of American music. The only excluded music would be neoclassical, opera, and most showtunes, but even those three have been influenced in some small way by African American musical existence.

March 6, 2002: Top

I love the way in which Dunbar uses regional dialect in his poems. In A Negro Love Song I didn't really look at that aspect. The reason I think was that it was a song. I expected it to be in dialect. But when I read When Malindy Sings the dialect really hit me. I think its beautiful. The poem would have been a nice poem even in normal "Standard American English" but you can really hear it in dialect. But besides the sound and look of it is the sentiment. I have often felt, in my artistic endeavors, as a poet and musician that I should just pack it up and give in when I encounter a musician or poet of a higher caliber than myself. As soon as I read the first stanza of this poem, I new how good of singer "Malindy" was. I know the feeling of just giving up in the face of the beauty of something greater than myself. Its both a beautiful and a depressing feeling. Its beautiful to witness talent, but its depressing to think that you'll never be that good, that people don't say the same things about your work as you say about the work presented to you. I love the poem. Its entirely beautiful.

April 10, 2002: Top

Huck and Jim are friends. Empathy is the pathway between the two. They feel no sympathy or pity for each other, they see each other on the same level. The difference between empathy and sympathy/morals is that empathy is more important and more real. Empathy is a feeling coming from within you, that makes you feel the other person's pain, to hurt with them. Sympathy is feeling bad for that person, its not a shared pain. Empathy is more important then morals because whereas empathy comes from within morals are something society teaches you to have, you have societies morals not your own. Empathy comes from you, it is yours.

April 12, 2002: Top

Pleased to meet you
you know my name
but perhaps you don't know all of them.
I am the buck wai
the gaijin
the gui lo.
I am the white devil
a honkey, a cracker
the wonder bread ghost.
I am a haole.
Please forgive my pale skin
blame not my light colored eyes
that you feel are indifferent
to the plight of your people
and the historical significance
of your stoic silence.
You can blame me for your problems
after all I am the right shade.
You can blame my mainland education.
You can blame my citified ways
and large vocabulary.
After all I'm only white
its not like there is any culture behind my white bread world.
So go ahead
sling your silent accusations through temperate eyes.
Its okay
I have no culture.
I'm white -- we don't...feel pain.