by me, a midterm for my critical approach to poetry class, i got an A.
_American Criticism Within the Works of Whitman and Williams_
I think that most prose writers aren't aware that the sentence they write has a sound? That is, most prose writers aren't even concerned with sound in prose. I see it as rarely written with the knowledge that it was a sentence which could be spoken aloud, and rarely with the knowledge that it was a sentence which should be spoken with the every day spoken language of the native country as opposed to some prickley-edged, stuffed-shirt academician's literary language. Very rarely have I found a prose writer who has the knowledge that total vernacular spoken aloud has a sound quality. Thus, it is my opinion that Walt Whitman and William Carlos William's prose poetry, in which I feel the poets listen to their own sentences as if they were musicall, rhythmical constructions and could follow through with their paragraph as if though it was something of a musical jam session, are indeed a critique of the plastic, monotone conformity influenced by academics in American prose.
Within Whitman and Williams, I find prose paragraphs and prose sentences that represent their own speech rhythms, or chosen American speech rhythms. They are written out of their actual body rhythm, from some actual rhythm of real speech. They have the quality of traditional folklore and music, using the actual rhythm from real speech, comparable to that of an old taleteller. Without that sense of oral tradition within poetry, which is tied intimately to the rhythm of one's own body and speech, the result is less-than-real corporate sounding impersonal bullshit. It's a prose that doesn't proceed from anybody, and thus has the bureaucratic prose that comes from an assignment, something that is commercially viable. I'm not only talking about the cheeky, cheery junk that ends up on hallmark cards, but all the high-sounding wordy academic poetry that is so impersonal that it no longer represents any individual human spirit.
The point I shall argue is that there is a tradition of poetry in which the Spirit of America lives in us, not us in "America". This prose is completely personal, it comes from the writer's own person - his person defined as his body, his breathing rhythm, his actual talk. The word person there is taken from the context of Walt Whitman, who talks about "What we need is large conscious American Persons," as distinct from land-markers of longitude and latitude which define us as American citizens, or subjects, or marketing-research digits.
When I think of Whitman, I get a sort of noble ideal American open-minded sensibility, open road, open energy, with some flaws in it, and some contradictions, but nothing unresovable by common sense. His spirit shines through his words, and I think the essence of his character is rapturous, sensory self-rewarding, here and now, happy go-lucky nut. In _Song of Myself_, I think that Whitman is criticizing the moral superiority of the soul over the flesh, an idea that is prevalent throughout Western thought and orthodox Christianity. Listen to the line "The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, and buzzed whisppers... . Loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration... the beating of my heart... . . the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of greeen leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and darkcolored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belched words of my voice... words loosed to the eddies of the wind". The ecstatic moment which seems to roll off the tongue of his mind seems almost daunting to the mundane reader. It's entirely erotic, entirely daunting, and yet even though critical it's also inviting. Again, another line speaks "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origins of all poems." I believe in _Song of Myself_, Whitman is making a criticism on how dispassionate and dull-sensed Americans are by his overtly erotic and rapturous celebration of himself.
In the poem _The Clouds_, by William Carlos Williams, the subject is clouds of imagination, vagueness of imagination, what happens to your discourse if your mind is up in the clouds. It's like when you are talking about something, but you really haven't paid attention to any of the detail. It's when you're not paying attention to detail, when you're not "present" whre you are, if you're not making use of minute particulars, or if your indulging with ideas without things, as said by Williams "No ideas but in things." I think this is a definite criticism of America today, and can offer examplese of our very poetry class to prove it. When reading a poem, a classmate may say "In poetry, water usually symbolizes life and rocks symbolize stagnation in life", as a model for interpreting the poem at hand. The model, however, is so far removed from the poem at hand that it becomes merely a way of reacting to the poetry as opposed to staying in the moment and directly perceiving the information that is there at hand. Life and water and rocks and stagnation are only analogies in light of the poetry they've read. Imatgine all the poetry out there they haven't read. And now they're interpreting it the same way as a strategy that worked in an earlier poem. Imagine ghetto poetry, in it a rock probably symbolizes crack cocaine. Obviously, poetry doesn't work that way. And that's the clouds that Williams is trying to illustrate.
Whitman and Williams critique America in their poetry, but it doesn't lack American spirit. I think that any true spirit has the ability to look at things as a whole, which includes both the good and the bad. Thus their poetry can be spoken from the heart of the American language and still make a social commentary.
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Everything is better than it was the last time. I'm good.
If we could look into each others hearts, and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.
It takes a lot of courage to go out there and radiate your essence.
I know you scared, you should ask us if we scared too. If you was there, and we just knew you cared too.
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