Saturday, January 29, 2011

Walt Whitman's "There Was a Child Went Forth"

Please use this post to discuss Whitman's "There Was a Child Went Forth". Some potential questions to consider:

What images stand out to you? Why?
What is the overall tone of the poem, and what effect does it have on your reading?
How do Kowit's chapters illuminate the devices the author uses here?

Please also feel free to relay any other impressions, questions, reactions to the poem.

10 comments:

  1. This poem actually got pretty confusing for me. It started with a good rhythym, but after a little while it was gone. I also lost track of what the subject of the poem was; eventually it seemed like Whitman was simply listing a bunch of things that he sees outside. I lost interest in the poem really quickly, and that reminded me of what Kowit said at the end of chapter 4 - make sure the poems are interesting to read! I lost my interest because the poem lost its rhythym and its point. And I'm pretty sure there's no such word as "commonest". -Nikhil

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  2. I like the general idea of this poem, the fact that the child gained knowledge and character from everything he encountered, but I agree with Nikhil... the poem lost me towards the end and I had to reread it several times to get a real impression of it.
    I thought that as the poem went on and the child grew, the poem grew too. What I mean is that in the beginning the child is experiencing flowers and animals, but then the drunkard staggering home and the school mistress, and then as the child continues growing he starts asking questions. Whitman also reveals trouble at home: the mild mannered mother, but the mean and unjust father.
    The tone of the poem shifts in the fifth stanza, and for me it was a bit like a slap in the face... up to that point life for the child seemed great and then Whitman drops on the reader the troubled home.
    ~Stephanie B.

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  3. This poem uses a lot of vivid language and metaphors which the Kowit readings highlighted. Essentially, the poem hinders on both. Let's face it, vivid language and metaphors ARE the poem. Personally, The images which caught my attention were the beginning stanza and the ending stanza. I completely agree with Stephanie on the whole "as the child grows, so does the poem." That's why those two stanzas stand out to me. The first stanza signifies that he is younger by the use of the word "first" (he could possibly be a baby). Then, the following stanzas use numbers to represent months. The middle stanzas talk about schooling. And then the final stanza carries a much more mature tone than the beginning stanza. And that's how I think the poem grows with the child.

    Also, I'd like to mention one other thing about the tone of this poem that I picked up on. It changes a little when he begins to talk about the father. I agree, it was a little bit of a slap in the face. When he was describing the mother and even in the stanzas previous to that one, the tone was light and almost dainty. Then when the father is mentioned, the tone shifts to hostile or almost threatening.

    Meghan Archer

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  4. I definitely thought the poem was a bit long too really captivate the audience's interest. Whitman may have been a great poet, but he was also a cocky poet from what I know about him. He could have perhaps made the lines shorter in order for it to have a smoother flow, but hey, he was greatly influenced by Emerson, so I suppose we as readers should be thankful. I agree with the above responses that the poem gave detailed description of the conditioning of a child as he became less naiive to the world around him. His view of the beautiful natural world began to be increasingly muddied by human nature. This is a good poem in that we all, to some degree, lose are innocence as our worldview awareness increases.
    -Kevin Clark

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  5. The image that I visualized when I read this poem was the countryside/nature at the beginning of the poem. As it goes then it talks about city and changes that the child goes by and that plays and it will play and important part in his life. In my mind was the image of the country and then suddenly the city, it just jumped and started to think the differences. I like this poem because it makes me think about everything I when through since I remember and that all those experiences will be part of my life. I really like this poem.

    Faviola Bonilla

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  6. I was a little nervous at first clicking on the Whitman link. Lately I've been ashamed of my feelings for Walt Whitman. I'm not a fan of his work, but he is so highly revered that I've wondered if I'm missing something. I was relieved to see that many other people in the class have apparently felt similar!

    The main thing which threw me off was the anaphora. I know Kowit speaks fondly of this, but I find Whitman's use of it heavy-handed and somewhat suffocating. The lines themselves flowed well and sounded pleasing (for the most part), but after hearing the same beginning so many times with little break or change of rhythm in the rest of the line, I found myself feeling frustrated, feeling a need to break free.

    I'm not sure whether this poem gained anything by being a poem. I may be alone on this, but after a couple re-readings I came to the conclusion that it would work just as well as prose without line breaks, and I am of the belief that a good poem needs to be a poem; that the line breaks are made with reason and conviction and must add something to the reading: every part should be just as it needs to be, and there should be nothing superfluous, even about the empty space.

    There must, however, be good things to say about Whitman; this poem was no travesty, it simply wasn't my style. One thing I noticed is that individual sections, couplets, handfuls of lines, etc. seemed to work better than the poem as a whole. This was attributed by other students to the work being too long, but for me it was that I could handle the repetition in smaller doses and appreciate some of the more beautiful moments. I did particularly enjoy "Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of
    white or brown two miles off,
    The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little
    boat slack-tow'd astern"

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  7. There is something captivating about the seemingly-simple farm life. The yearly creation of new life- whether it be field grain or yearling- has an impact on the emotional and ecological world and in this case, a lasting impact on one young farm child. His daily ventures into his personal world of country living leave a lasting impression that becomes the very essence of his person. This child's growth from conception, this child's development from a father's genes/ a mother's genes, the modeling of a personality from experience and observation- is the idea that all children carry with them the experiences of youth.

    I agree with some prior postings that this poem by Whitman could very easily be a work of prose, but I feel that the beauty of Whitman is his embrace of a semi-non traditional approach to the mechanics and semantics of poetry. His imagery is quite straight forward when read as a series of childhood exposure and in the end, this boy is city-bound, and sea-bound...always carrying the past in his being.

    Perhaps there are poets who do not attempt to sound precisely poetical, but instead venture to write a story with prose-like flow and simple images.

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  8. I thought that I would write on this poem because I did not really feel anything from it. I got the impression that Whitman was trying to speak on how people grow and change from everything that the encounter and everything they do, but there was not much feeling to it for me. When I read it aloud, I noticed the lines started to get longer and longer. Perhaps it involves the growing of the boy, as Meghan and Stephanie touched on. The is good imagery here with the colors of the flowers and the animals. Also, we get some sound with the song of the bird. Whitman makes use of his favorite device anaphora once again, repeating And at the beginning of most of the lines. What Julia said on it, however, struck home with me without even knowing it. I did feel a bit suffocated, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I guess where it really went wrong for me (and others I am seeing) was the shift in the second stanza. I felt it started off strong, but going into that second stanza, the metaphor just lost me.

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  9. I can see how this poem can be confusing to some but you have to understand that it is almost like a list. Every line is a list item. Each list item is something that the boy has come in contact with and remembered. I believe that they are more like memories that shape the boy, things from his childhood that he remembers, things that are from our childhood that we might relate to. The images get more powerful towards the end when it begins to talk about nature such as the line, "The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping" as opposed to an earlier one where he is just seeing people on the way to school.

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  10. I think it would be clear to anyone that this poem is heartily brimming with imagery. Among this cornucopia (always fun to use that word) of sensory details, a few that stand above the rest to me were as follows: "Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the/ esculent roots of the garden", "And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the/ tavern whence he had lately risen," "The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,". I include the last example, which describes the child in the poem's father, because I think it paints a fairly complete description of the father while only revealing one aspect of him, his speech. Words like "quick", "loud", and "crafty" speak beyond voice to personality.

    The poem's overall tone is one of reminiscence and gratitude. The people and objects described in this poem are all remembered affectionately. What's more, Whitman also says that the boy's parents "gave him" traits and that the things around him became part of him. I think that this poem is meant to be a large thank you note to everything that factored into the boy's childhood and made him who he is today.

    Whitman uses the short e and long e vowel sounds a good deal throughout the poem: "Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?/ Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes/ and specks what are they?"; "Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing at/ the ferries,". I feel that the short e sound is a good choice because the poem moves quickly and does not allow the reader much time to really settle in to any of the images Whitman evokes. I think this is to due to the fact that, as Kowit reports, Whitman carried around a notebook and recorded a couple lines here and there about whatever touched his fancy that day. This poem seems to be an excellent example of his using these various inspirations to make a coherent whole.

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