Song of Myself

By Walt Whitman

 

MLS 537M

Wednesdays, Early in Spring 2002

6:45-9:30

Steve Phelan

ph: -2409

phelan@rollins.edu

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

 

            How did a dropout, awash in his thirties after working a dozen jobs, suddenly write the great poem that sings America?  And how did that poem initiate not only all of modern poetry, but also important traditions in music, photography, and literary politics?  In this course, we will employ several liberal arts disciplines to guide a close reading of the great lyric that launched Whitman's career.  Using the Special Whitman Collection in the Rollins College Archives, we will trace the origins of Whitman's sudden burst of creative energy, first examining his early journals and letters, then surveying the subsequent influences of his work.  Although Leaves of Grass with its centerpiece “Song of Myself” was published in 1855, we are likely to conclude that it was written for the next millenium and that its genius still has not been fully understood.

 

TEXTBOOKS:

 

Whitman, Walt. 

Leaves of Grass.  Eds. Scully Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett.  Norton Critical Edition.  New            York: Norton, 1973.

Miller, Edwin Haviland. 

Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself": A Mosaic of Interpretations. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1989.

 

Other recommended books (not ordered in the bookstore):

 

Folsom, Ed, ed.

Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays.  Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Pr., 1994.

Loving, Jerome.

Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself.  Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Pr., 1999. [the best biography for a close reading of the text; provides comparisons to Whitman’s other writing just prior to 1855].

Reich, Kathleen J. 

The William Sloane Kennedy Collection of Whitmaniana.  Winter Park: Olin Library, 1996. [annotated bibliography of our Whitman Collection].

Reynolds, David S.  

Walt Whitman's America.  New York: Knopf, 1995. [the best biography for cultural influences in the text].

 

 

OVERVIEW:

 

Week One:       A close reading of "Song of Myself"

Feb. 6              An introduction to the Whitman Special Collection and CD-database

 

Week Two:      The Structures and Themes of “Song of  Myself”

Feb. 13            An introduction to Whitman criticism

 

Week Three:    Whitman's other major poems and selections from significant prose

Feb. 20            Subjects for research projects defined

 

Week Four:     Reports on research, substance and form, students L-Z

Feb. 27

.

Week Five:      Reports, students A-K.  Projects due in class on Wednesday night

Mar. 6

 

 


Preparation for the First Class:

 

In advance of our first class, kindly read carefully "Song of Myself" (all 52 sections) either by a strategy of your own or with the help of the following:

 

Leaves of Grass is a lifelong poem which grew as Whitman moved through the last four decades of his life.  The style is prophetic and expansive.  He rolls it out in great waves like the sea.  Don't read it like a novel from start to finish.  Don't read it for too long at once, but pick it up many times.

 

·           At first it may be difficult to get what is so innovative about his poetry.  I recommend you start by trying to figure out or define what Whitman means by the self. Who is talking to whom?  What is the basis of the relationship between the "I" of the poem and the "You" of the readers of the poem.

 

·           Choose a few themes or ideas that are interesting to you and follow them like a thread.  Then you'll be reading, as in a newspaper, the pieces that pique your curiosity. 

 

·           Finally, just choose a few passages that move you.  Be prepared to read them to the class and say what you like about them.

 

 

TWO OPTIONAL ASSIGNMENTS FOR THOSE EAGER TO GET AN EARLY START ON  THEIR PROJECTS:

 

After you feel comfortable that you understand his style, you might try a poem of your own.  Take a piece of your free writing about the poem and spread it out on the page like a Whitman poem, using the open syntax where a comma at the end of a phrase or clause gives you the right to multiply the idea into similar phrases and clauses. Otherwise, you might take some old poem of yours, a journal entry, or an unwritten episode of your own experience and turn it into a “Song of Myself,” assuming quasimodo what Whitman assumes.

 

Make an outline of the 52 sections of the poem and write a brief statement about any structure(s) you see operating in the poem.  How is theme and structure meshed for you in the poem?  After you've made up your mind, you might wish to check Miller's section on the critics' visions of structure in this amorphous poem (xviii-xxviii).

 

 

 

 

Week One:  Feb. 6                                                                   meeting in Woolson House

 

 

CLASS SCHEDULE:

 

Introduction of the course and the class

           

Discussion on the Self in "Song of Myself"

Reading: "There Was a Child Went Forth"

 

Video -  "Walt Whitman" from the Voices and Visions series (30 minutes or so)

 

8:10     10 minute  break

 

8:30     Kindly go to the first floor of Olin, turn right at the bottom of the steps, and

go all the way down on the right

Introduction to the Whitman Collection and the use of the Archives

                                               

9:00     Olin Library main floor:  Whitman Database on CD and the MLA bibliography

 

 

GOALS:

 

The primary objective of the first class is to do an exhaustive reading of the core poem, "Song of Myself."  In doing that, we hope to open up the set of possible topics and themes we might wish to follow in our research.  At the end of the class period we will see the range of research tools available to us, once we find a particular topic of interest.  The form of the project is entirely up to the students' interests and talents. I can envision typical research papers or papers with interesting creative attachments or embellishments (packets of poems, musical compositions, art portfolios, magazine articles with great photography, website materials, and so forth).  When you hand the project in, i would like to see all the evidence of your research as well as the project itself. 

Week Two:  Feb. 13                                                                            in Woolson House

 

READ:            

The Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass

Browse the first two sections of LG, “Inscriptions” and “Starting from Paumanok,” to see what his purpose or definition of the whole enterprise might be. He is doing something new, but what exactly is it? What is the function of the poetry implied by this work.

 

 

RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT:

Use the Olin Collection, the Database, and the Archives to do research into the early notebooks/manuscripts, the biographies, and the studies of sources in order to come up with a thesis and the first draft of a short paper (1-3 pages) on your intuitions about the quintessence of Whitman's inspiration, the primary motivating force or constellation of forces that brought him to write "Song of Myself."

 

Follow your own order of research, but be sure to look at the database of key concepts and terms, use those findings to focus on one or more proto-texts (quotations) from among the letters, notes, manuscripts, etc.  In addition, identify the key passages of the poem for your idea and read the relevant survey of criticism in Miller's compendium. 

 

CLASS SCHEDULE:

 

Preliminary ideas about Structure (WW's in writing, yours in reading)

                                           Scope (how far the poem reaches, how much it covers)

                                                 Themes (his and yours, his words and yours)

                                                       Genre (what kind of a work of literature is this?)

Reconsideration of the structure of "Song of Myself" in conjunction with the Preface

 

8:10 break

 

Discussion of the findings of your research and the topic for your paper/project.

 

CD - "To the Soul: Thomas Hampson Sings the Poetry of Walt Whitman"

Vaughan  Williams: "Sea Symphony"

 

 

OBJECTIVES:

 

By focussing on the creative impulses which guided Whitman and on the most interesting features of his poetry, we will become open to the rich array of possibilities of the poem for the next millenium and, more immediately, for our project topics, due next week.
Week Three:  Feb. 20                                                                          Woolson House

 

 

ASSIGNMENT:

 

Read:   "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

            "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"

            "Sleepers"

            "As I Ebbed with the Ocean of Life"

            "I Sing the Body Electric"

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

            "The Noiseless Patient Spider"

           

Topics:  Bring a one-page precis and     one-page bibliography for your project

 

SOME TOPIC SUGGESTIONS:

            A. R. Ammons, the poet of chaos, motion, entropy, and the sea

            Any one of Whitman’s Wild Children, the Beats:

Ginsberg, Kerouac, Wm. S. Burroughs, Snyder, Ferlinghetti, DiPalma

            Buddhism/Zen

            John Burroughs and natural history

            The Civil War/Lincoln

            e. e. cummings

            Democratic Vistas

            Langston Hughes

William Sloane Kennedy

D. H. Lawrence

            Music: choral / opera / popular - see Wm. S. Burroughs

            Neruda, Canto General, and other Latin American writers: Pessoa

Native Americans/native americans

            Photography: Susan Sontag, Edward Weston, etc.

            Quakerism

            Science: chemistry/biology/technology

            Sexuality/Homosexuality

            Transcendentalism/mysticism, Bucke and other disciples

            Wallace Stevens

            William Carlos Williams: In the American Grain

 

 

CLASS SCHEDULE:

 

Discussion of the Poems

 

            break

 

Scheduling of Research Areas for reports and final paper/projects.

 

Week Four:  April 22                                                                           Woolson House

 

 

ASSIGNMENT AND SCHEDULE:

 

Reports on projects:  L-Z

Obviously the folks who go first, this week, will have less to show and more to tell.  In other words, if you go first, you have less pressure next week.

 

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Week Five:  Mar. 6                                                                              Woolson House

 

SCHEDULE:

The rest of the reports

 

A party to celebrate Myself.

 

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FINAL PROJECTS DUE: 

 

FRIDAY, MARCH 8 in MY OFFICE ENVELOPES

To the left of my door, Orlando 109, by 5 pm

Late papers will be lowered by one grade (A à A-)

 

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GRADE FORMULA:

 

Participation:     50%

            Includes weekly discussions, reports, and preliminary paperwork.

Project:            50%

            Originality - Research - Quality of Writing/Production (20%-20%-10%)

 

 

 

Steve Phelan, Professor of English, Orlando Hall 109 (ph: -2409)

Email: phelan@rollins.edu  ---  Campus Mail: 2662

Website: http://fox.rollins.edu/~phelan