BA #4

A.

1. Whitman, Walt. "When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Poetry; an introduction. 5^th ED. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 629

< http://www.bartleby.com/142/180.html>

2. Walt Whitman had already become a well-known spokesman for the lonesome travelers of the world by 1865, the time of this poem’s creation. So it’s no surprise that the poem is essentially about casting away institutional understanding for his typical “nature is beautiful and not to be understood” mantra.

3. I’ve always enjoyed Walt Whitman, beginning with my introduction to Leaves of Grass in an earlier poetry class. There’s nothing especially intriguing or exemplary within the poem itself to warrant much discussion. Rather, there is the lasting affect Whitman has upon me that cannot be shaken and is only embellished when re-reading his work or discovering something new of his. It’s like listening to the Beatles: they’re simple and actually not that great if you pull apart the tracks of the song, but they deliver the listener to a different place, time and time again.

4. What better person to compare to Whitman’s stylistic prose than Shelley, specifically “Ozymandias”; written in 1818. Where Whitman emphasizes on the individual and his limitless place in the world, Shelley strikes the reader’s aspirations down. Ozymandias is belittling the individual, the seemingly colossal, where as Whitman glorifies the possibilities of discovery and exploration. Bringing nature into the discussion, Shelley considers the shattered visage in the ground as laying “boundless and bare”(13), where “The lone and level sands stretch far away”(14). It’s not much of a stretch to compare the infinite universe as a desert, so why does Whitman consider his desert “mystical”(8) and in “perfect silence”(9)? It seems as if Shelley investigates the dour attitude of the seemingly insignificant where as Whitman looks to find beauty and enchantment.