The Poetry, Yes

It has been a bit since my last post. I don't know why. There were things that needed blogging about certainly. Perhaps it was some sort of inexplicable funk that left me wordless and write-less as well.

This week our class will be discussing Sandburg and Rukeyser and, though part of the Sandburg group, i found myself wanting to delve deeper into Sandburg than perhaps we can in the allotted time. First and foremost i have always been a Sandburg fan. His poetry is concise, imagistic, beautiful, and real. He is a Whitmanian poet, there is no doubt. The alussions to Whitman and his symbolism are dotted throughout the poetic landscape of Sandburg. Yet that isn't really what i want to talk about. I'd rather talk about the differences. A one Professor Hanley had said that those differences may be more intriguing to look at than those similarities.

First Thoughts:

In 1855 edition of Leaves Of Grass we have the Preface in which Whitman explains to us why America must not only accept his poetry but understand that there is a new language of America, and there is the birth and coming impotence of the American bard. Whitman uses this preface to set the reader int he right mood to accept his poetry.

A line provides a small summary "I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or origionality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains" (viii).

Whitman is as he is throughout the book, He seeks to pull the reader in and destroy the artifice of poetry that he feels creates a barrier between him and the reader. Nor does he believe his style, his "originality" will cause a barrier either. He believes precisely that he has created a style of poetry in which one can be brought in right up and understand him at a fundamental level.

The book then continues on with "Song of Myself" in which Whitman brings us to him and he shows us, like Virgil to Dante, America and himself. He has worries about being comprehensible throughout the poem and he tries to bring us closer and closer.

His project and Sandburg's are alike in that Whitman focuses on some aspects of Americans but the difference is that while Whitman is setting up a mythology of the American Bard who speaks about America, Sandburg is instead exploring, expanding, and explaining the mythology of The People.

17

"'The people is a myth, an abstraction.'
And what myth would you put in place
of the people?
And what abstraction would you exchange
for this one?
And when has creative man not toiled
deep in myth?

....

'Precisely who and what is the people?'
Is this far off from asking what is grass?
what is salt? what is the sea? what is
loam?"(30)

Here Sandburg recognizes that there are metaphysical perplexities involved with his and Whitman's projects. He furthermore directly aligns his project with Whitman's by showing and creating a metaphorical connection between their two primary questions. They are tackling a similar question, but where Whitman uses nature metaphorically to represent much of what he is trying to figure out Sandburg shows us that he will not hide the subject his is talking about in this way.

Sandburg understands that he is creating a mythology of the people or at least collecting the mythology of the people and showing it to us in his art form. Whitman was trying to create an institution of American poetry. Whitman was creating the figure of the American bard. Sandburg cannot recreate Whitman's project but understands the fundamental similarities between what they are trying to accomplish. Sandburg is conflicted. How does one make space for oneself in the cannon when you come to the realization that you are trying to figure out the same problem as a predecessor ( Harold Bloom has some interesting essays on this topic)?

Well you do what Sandburg has done, you recognize that previous work, and though you may love it, you reject it.

Whitman had told us that he wouldn't let his poetry have assets that rest like a curtain between us and him. Yet near eighty years later Sandburg shows us that some of Whitman's metaphors may indeed get in the way of us and him. The question about the grass may as well be a question about the people. We are the 29th bather and we are the people, yes.   Yet instead of writing to create the new American bard as Whitman had done, Sandburg writes for the people, and to show the people.

These are some ideas that aren't fully formed yet. Only more reading of each poet could truly fortify them. But from what i have read this is one of those things that seems to speak to me. I am not saying that Whitman never wrote for the people, or about them, but his intentions were slightly different than Sandburgs when it came to the people.

I'm sure i will eat my words on some of this or edit it at a later date but we shall see.