When I typed this on a screen for the first time, the line breaks seemed to fall naturally, it seemed to want a roughly eight-syllabled line, and the four stressed syllables of Anglo-Saxon verse. It’s out into the turbulence of everywhere, In a language it doesn’t know, this sparrow, Here’s a slightly unfocussed scan from my notebook.Īnd now, here’s the final version, from the collection Don’t think about it, don’t edit it, don’t stop. I wrote the first version of it at Saturday workshop in Sheffield, nearly two years ago. ![]() What it does for anyone else is not my business, but I know I love performing it at poetry readings, the rhythm of it. ![]() There’s a poem in my collection that did that for me. When you feel it, when it excites you, when it’s like someone else wrote it through you……then trust it. What do you do with that trembly feelingwhen you think you have written a really good poem, or perhaps it’s not …… What set me off today was a post in Carrie’s NaPoWriMo Jeansheridan on The Cobweb’s been update… My kind of poetry: Emma Storr’s and Bob Hamilton’s “Offcumdens”Īnthony Wilson on The Cobweb’s been update….He has a feeling of fraternity and oneness with God and his fellowmen ("And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own/And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own") and a vision of love ("And. Section 5 is the poet's ecstatic revelation of union with his soul. is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest." More important is the eternal procreant urge of the world." He prepares himself for the union of his body with his soul: "I witness and wait." As his soul is "clear and sweet," so are all the other parts of his body -and everyone's bodies. In the third and fourth sections, Whitman chides the "talkers," "trippers," and "askers" for wasting their time discussing "the beginning and the end," and "the latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies. He can enjoy each of the five senses - tasting, hearing, smelling, touching, and seeing-and even more - the process of breathing, the beating of his heart, and "the feeling of health." He invites the reader to "stop this day and night" with him in order to discover "the origin of all poems." He is enthralled by the ecstasy of his physical sensations. The poet expresses the joy he feels through his senses. The poet is tempted to let himself be submerged by other individual selves, but he is determined to maintain his individuality. "Perfumes" are symbols of other individual selves but outdoors, the earth's atmosphere denotes the universal self. ![]() "Houses and rooms are full of perfume," Whitman says. In section 2, the self, asserting its identity, declares its separateness from civilization and its closeness to nature. ![]() He will let nature speak without check with original energy." He is thirtyseven years old and "in perfect health." He hopes to continue his celebration of self until his death. He relates that he was "form'd from this soil," for he was born here, as were his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. The poet will "sing myself," but "what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." The poet loafs on the grass and invites his soul to appear. This poem celebrates the poet's self, but, while the "I" is the poet himself, it is, at the same time, universalized.
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