Yesterday, I began discussing the value and use of sound, waves of pressure that move air, move through air, vibrations that we sense and are part of the development of effective poetry. Music sends out pressure waves that we interpret in our minds, that moves most of us emotionally — the same with poetry. The cadence and rhythm of phonemes, syllables, and words can create emotions in and of themselves.
Writers, authors, know how to use words well. Great ones know how to listen for those cadences and rhythms of the vibrations of life all about them before they ever put words to paper or digital circuitry. They listen for it; they take the time to hear and analyze and interpret and create. Enter Walt Whitman. His mind works through the filter and sway of his heart. Why would I say that? When one can hear and see and sense all that he did and identify in unity with it, that means that part of self has been yielded. This ultimately results in growth, joy, and myriad other consequences, but ego does not give up any part of self. Whitman had that ability to hear the music of life about him and translate it into words, and when one can hear those vibrations of life as he does, the heart has mediated with the Spirit — because he sought it, desired it, received it. As I mentioned last night, Whitman writes a number of poems centered on songs. His “Song of the Redwood-Tree” gives us insight into hearing, really listening, and then making meaning of those precious, finely tuned energies of life. In the poem, initially he hears “A California song” when men are chopping down a huge hundreds-of-years old redwood tree. He physically hears “crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by strong arms, / Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood forest dense… .” What else does he hear? What makes this a song, something that reaches deep into the souls of people and moves them and delivers a message? He listens more closely, with his heart, and senses “the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.” What is the tree saying to him? When I get to points like this, I have a strong desire to get on YouTube and read the whole beautiful poem, but I can’t now. If you have the chance, read these few poems of WW’s that I reference. It won’t be wasted time; see what music his poems sing to you. His spiritual receptive sensors hear the tree’s energies, and he translates them for us. The tree speaks for two pages. In part, the tree speaks: “I too have consciousness, identity, / And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth, / Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine, / Our time, our term has come.” The tree as Whitman hears it reveals that it vibrates with spirit. In doing so, it appears sentient, able to sing, and it accepts that its life is at an end. However, what its life has produced will move others into the future, a “grander future.” Now, I don’t know what this says about conservation but based on Whitman’s other poems, I am fairly certain that he is not in favor of destruction of ecosystems. He is about balance; he doesn’t see death as an end but rather as a new adventure or a springboard for blessing of others to come. He really grasps life and death. The point here, though, is he hears the message of the redwood elevating to a “Still prouder, more ecstatic…chant.” The tree’s chant ends with a prophetic statement that sees that generation of Americans will grow tall and strong and stalwart as the tree itself, but they, too, will come to a point that their culture will yield to something greater. And they, like the tree, will not be seen or appreciated for the value that they have provided to those future generations. Whitman sings the song of America as an ever-growing, progressing culture and nation; all who have gone before contribute to the “modern, child of the real and ideal.” Succeeding generations grow into spiritual fullness by engaging with the heart in their chosen work and direction “To build a grander future.” We have our work to do not only in connecting with our hearts and then with the spirit bound up in life all around us but also in making meaning from Whitman’s song, really, the “Song of the Redwood-Tree.” How does it move us? What does that song do to us? I cannot answer for you because reading the whole poem is indeed a song, a very moving song full of reality and hope. But what I have shared in part here does lead to a few further questions. How much time do we spend in fellowship with our hearts, listening for and interpreting life around us — nature, city life, suburbs, cultures, the endless possibilities around us? In what ways and to what extent do we identify with those vibrational songs of the Universe? How do those songs change us, help us, encourage us? Walt, near the end of the poem, observes this: “The new society at last, proportionate to Nature…” See! How we treat Nature will predict our end, because it will be proportionate — might be good, might be bad. Depends on how the songs affect us!
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Sometimes, it seems, I cannot escape the poetry of Walt Whitman. He is so expansive in his writing, exposing the secrets of the Universe that are laid out all around us. He takes the time, taps into his heart, and uses his acute senses.
I think that our senses are judged as acute when we make meaning from the input we receive from our world. In other words, others think that we are super observant, have a great sense of smell, touch, taste, or hearing based on how we respond and assign meaning to those stimuli. Walt thirsts (I didn’t mean that to be a sensory pun!) for his truth, which is to convey the essence of America. It’s a country whose very basis requires an awakening to heart and core Self in order to fully participate in the spirit of its foundational truths. Walt communicates that through his masterful interpretation of sensory images. Any poet, any great poet, understands the significance of sound in communicating the snapshots of emotion or story. Meaningless sound, like in trifling rhyming poems, are like an annoying droning to me. However, well-employed patterns of sound, the words, their phonemes, and how those work together to help communicate the message, that is a sensitive understanding poet. And the same is true of musicians. God, how I love music. If I truly had a choice, I think that I would choose to be a vocalist and play instruments. Music moves my soul deeply, in so many directions. What power! The same is true of masters of words, though, spoken or written. Even as I write this, I’m listening to a YouTube musician, Adrian von Ziegler. Un-freaking-believable talent because he taps into those energies of life that I write about. In fact, I wrote my whole first novel, The Fellowship of the Heart, while listening to three different twenty-minute compositions of his. Returning to the creative genius of Walt Whitman, I will limit myself. Why start now? Because Walt’s work is filled with sound imagery, containing 28 out of 383 poems that have song, sing, or chant in the titles — at least based on a quick count. So, I will start with the first one, which is also the very first poem in his epic work, Leaves of Grass. The poem is “One’s Self I Sing:” (All quotes from Leaves of Grass: 1855 and 1891–92 Editions. John Hollander, editor). ONE’S-SELF I sing, a simple separate person, You utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Nor physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worth for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing. Look at the sound words (ironic, isn’t it?!): the alliteration/consonance in the very first line creates a song — self, sing, simple, separate, per-son. Repetition in the second line: “the word.” The alliteration in the first line of the third stanza: passion, pulse, power. I could go on, but the point is that Walt sets up a song in a poem about singing, and we remember songs. He sings, in poetry, a song about the value of democracy in America, a value that can only truly be realized by the I, the individual, but the benefit of it is known in power when those I’s can coexist in their own truth. How? Through the sorts of ideas that I have been sharing for a long time now, but, specifically here in these posts for the last 157 days. When we awaken to our hearts, discover core Self, and create a life purpose consistent with that self, the result is a healthy, expressed love for Self and for the world in which Self functions. This is what we need now — not politics, not a social stance that creates animosity, not stubborn inflexibility, but living personal truth that spreads love to others. Yes, Democracy, One’s-Self, En-Masse — these three words alone capture that very thought! And then Walt goes on to say that the whole person, “the Form complete,” is necessary to consider for his poetic inspiration, and no sexism with Walt — “the Female equally with the Male, I sing.” Then, I note the third stanza’s alliteration that brings together this idea of heart, purpose, and vibrational energies of life: “passion, pulse, and power” that produces a cheerful heart and song of “Modern Man” (all-inclusive man and woman!) functioning in “freest action.” May I just leave you with a few questions (that’s one!)? Do you know yourself so well that you could sing a song about You? Have you discovered your Heart and core Self so that you know how to express love for Self and the world? Can you feel those vibrational energies that result from that wonderful You? Are you a Modern Man — or Woman — that Walt was singing about? Hear yourself; sing yourself — what a lovely song you are! Liberty, freedom to be ourselves, express ourselves, move ourselves, connect ourselves — it covers so many things. As time progresses, liberty and calls for liberty express themselves in new ways as we have new needs. Yet, in some ways, the basic needs don’t change, only our perception of them. What we don’t want to or need to do, though, is get stuck in the past, stuck in the way things were done before. That’s just not who and what we are as human beings.
Walt Whitman addresses this directly in his short poem “Turn O Libertad.” If you aren’t aware, Whitman is considered the poet who represents the voice of American democracy, the one who embraces all of the diversity that makes up the nation. I think that at our present juncture of history, we may need to hear his words now more than ever. One way that he incorporates, symbolically, the diversity is by using foreign words in his poetry. Libertad is the Spanish word for liberty. And Whitman is truly all-inclusive in his poetry. He understands the need for liberty for all people. Thus, he speaks to Liberty in apostrophe, a literary device in which an imaginary someone or something is spoken to directly, like “O Libertad.” Why is this significant? Whitman understands and knows the deepest meaning of liberty. He can speak to it as if it’s a friend. And on behalf of all those friends, whoever, wherever they are, whatever they do, he wants them to experience liberty. In what way? What advice does he give Liberty? From what does Liberty need to turn? When Whitman writes this, the Civil War had recently ended, and fittingly, he tells her “the war is over.” He goes on to say that such struggle for liberty for a whole race of people who comprised a substantial subculture of America should be a done deal: “From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute sweeping the world…” Whitman is ever the idealist, for he sees the power and energies of the Universe, sees what humans possess, knows that life can progress in an ever-upward spiral. Therefore, he tells Liberty to turn “From the…past, / From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past, / From the chants of the feudal world…” All of that shit that kept humanity in bonds, kept them from walking in the fullness of their powers and hearts, kept them from being able to express life force and life purpose, which is required to grow, advance, rejoice, glow in the new glory of a hard-won freedom. Then, Whitman tells Liberty how to proceed positively: “Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come — give up that backward world [my emphasis]… / Then turn, and be not alarm’d O Libertad — turn your undying face, / To where the future, greater than all the past, / Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.” He tells her that she has more work to do in order that new needs can be addressed in new expressions of liberty. If that doesn’t happen, then a falling back is possible. This, then, presents the reader, you and me, with the reality that if we do not seek Liberty, we as a people risk falling back to an inglorious past of tyranny and slavery. What choice do we make? Do we even see the need for liberty? Do we understand where freedom is being threatened? Do we know how to appropriate and use her? Do we know what the basic requirement of true freedom, liberty really is? I ask these questions especially tonight because of the turmoil in the world and, specifically, in America. True liberty must begin in the soul of the individual, no matter the state of everything and everyone else in the world. It depends on me, and me alone. If it doesn’t, that is where the source of the real threat comes from. We must hear our heart and know liberation from ego; liberty is no friend to ego. We must choose to know Self and create a life purpose in the freedom of the Spirit of the Universe. Sound too impractical and high-falutin’? Well, what are the alternatives, folks? You tell me that I have to choose a side over an incident which I did not see in total? You make me a slave to your opinion. You tell me that I have to yield to whatever someone with a uniform says, no matter what? You make me a slave to tyrannical authority. Don’t tell me I have to choose anything except to know myself. Why? While I simplified the scenario above, reduced it to its least common denominator, those are exactly the scenarios of that “backward world.” It’s a world that Whitman — who was in the midst of the destruction and devastation of the stupidest and bloodiest war in our history, considering our foundations — experienced and thought was past, thought that that particular work of Liberty had past, thought that Liberty was ready for new expressions. Knowing the work of Liberty in my soul frees me to express my love to the world, frees me to be significant, to matter to others, to grow in unity. Oh, you don’t want to love others or any of those other things. Then, don’t tell me that you are fighting for or representing liberty, because you are not. You are representing the old world of “I want things my way and my way only and I’m going to defeat anyone who stands in the way of that.” Be careful that you don’t call that kind of idea law and order. Be careful that you don’t call that being freed from centuries of oppression. If the motive isn’t love, it isn’t valid, not in our world today. I can’t say it any clearer. It’s my opinion, and I would love you whatever your opinion is. I will love you by helping you discover, because that is my created purpose, being carried out presently in this form of writing. O Liberty, we need you now more than ever. Turn us to loose the freedom available in ourselves. Walt Whitman enjoyed the many simple things of life, I think, because he sensed the grand energies bound up in them. He had this incredible capacity to lay hold of the essence of the Universe through his work.
His observations, analysis, and synthesis allow him to create, evoke, and question the grand schemes of the Spirit in simple things — simple things like leaves of grass or a lake or a child or a prostitute or … . He defines and characterizes qualities of people, nations, Nature, the Universe, concepts (liberty, democracy, jobs, love, connections) in such a way that he devolves their essence to the ultimate goal of his work: the individual, the “I.” Whether he engages his words to work towards himself, you, me, or some stranger, he makes all applicable to his reader; he creates an identity, a connection of simple things to the Universe itself. This is the spirit that is offered through that amazing document I have examined with you over the last few days, the Declaration of Independence. He expands and personifies those concepts; he knows that the work of the liberty of souls that make up nations, America in particular, is never finished, always facing new challenges, but it has been offered so wisely as to always be able to adapt. Again, that adaptation must take place in masses of individual souls before any nation will know the effects of such freeing, loving self-awakening. And W.W. knew that self-awakening; he heard his own heart, knew his core Self, and created his life purpose with such focus that doubt never deterred him from moving forward. How would we know this? In the words of the poem “L. of G.’s Purports” (Leaves of Grass — Title of his expanding lifelong work), he says, “Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them) / But add, fuse, complete, extend — -and celebrate the immortal and the good. / Haughty this song, its words and scope, / To span vast realms of space and time, / Evolution — the cumulative — growths and generations. / …Wandering, peering, dallying with all — war, peace, day and night absorbing…” He knows what he is creating. Yet in his poem, the one from which he plucks the title of his lifelong work, he conveys this in such ease and simplicity. In the 52 section long “Song of Myself,” Section 6 contains these words: “A child said ‘What is the grass?’ fetching it to me with full hands; / How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.” And Whitman goes on from there with many insightful analogies. He sees the grass embracing the concepts of creativity, universality, and equality: “Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, / And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, / Growing among black folks as among white, / Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive the the same.” He sums it up with the idea that the grass is “the beautiful uncut hair of graves.” And in that he sees encompassed everyone, everything — equality, eternity, the eternal life force of those who have died: “They are alive and well somewhere, / The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, / And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, / And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. / All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” No, he is not a fatalist with a death wish; Walt Whitman is a man who sees eternity bound up in blades of grass — equality, hope, unity, democracy, liberty — a simple handful of grass that a child brought to him. I had not planned this direction when I began this. I wanted to end up commenting on a short poem about liberty. Maybe tomorrow. For this evening, though, I will end up with these questions. How sure are we of our core Self identity? Are we sure enough that we choose to create our life purpose and go forward with determination and joy, no matter what anyone thinks of it? (Whitman did; he had a crap load of negative criticism). Does our life purpose allow us to see the essence of eternity, unity, the Universe and Spirit in our daily actions and observations? Do we have a sense of the value and eternal nature of life, our souls? Do we have it to such a degree that Death is just part of it all, nothing to sorrow over for long, nothing to depress us to stop living, something that shows the value of that for which we lived? Today, I turn back to a trusted poet, one whose work amplifies my messages of the past week, one whose heart laid claim to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. He expresses that heart-spirit through his life. No matter what the critics said or the public thought, he wrote. He pursued happiness; he lived life; he laid claim to liberty to say what he wanted to say, to create how he wanted to create, to expand the spirit of America. Walt Whitman.
In 1874, Whitman wrote a poem, “An Old Man’s Thoughts of School,” for the inauguration of a public school in Camden, New Jersey. Whitman has the unique insight to see the foundational spirit of America and to know that the grand scheme was originally authored to be an ever expanding, evolving concept, always based on those “unalienable rights.” In a similar way, he looks at those students in 1874 and sees the same possibilities in them: “And these I see, these sparkling eyes, / these stores of mystic meaning, the young lives, / Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships, / Soon to sail out over the measureless seas, / On the soul’s voyage.” This is the great “mystic meaning” he sees in America, not just a nation but an organism, a living, breathing child full of possibilities. In another short poem, “Long, Too Long America,” Whitman, having witnessed the Civil War, still sees the promise, as if the nation had come through the pangs of a new birth, perhaps the “new birth of freedom” that Lincoln referenced in the Gettysburg Address. He says, “But now, ah now, to learn from cries of anguish, … / And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are…” He sees the events in America’s history as children who will grow into the amazing possibilities that real children hold. He could see those things bound up in a child, what futures, what power, what insights, talents, abilities — those “stores of mystic meaning.” To develop all of that potential energy, to convert it to kinetic energy, requires education, and that is where Whitman sees that power of conversion. In “An Old Man’s Thoughts of School,” he asks if education should be allowed to be defined by “Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering, classes? / Only a public school?” No, he claims in one of those mystic meaning ways that America’s present and future is tied directly to education. Education must be “infinitely more,” and that to know why America is what she is and what she will be, our gaze must “To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.” It better be a dynamic experience, not rooted in old-school school, which is why I demand that education must be redefined, because, in case we haven’t noticed, we got a shit load of problems. Whitman held immense hope for the future of America. In his time, he knew that America was still evolving and would always be so. The tough times, events like the Civil War, were like children who held possibilities and could be transformative for us, but NOT if we do not have the ability to think and create freely, and to learn from such. After the recent situations of death and destruction due to racism, bigotry, prejudice, whatever, the ego-nurturing that occurs in schools and society, that forced conformity in so-called faith and values, that shit needs to go if the spirit of this nation would grow. Hearts need to be heard, and as far as I’m concerned, the only answer to all the ugliness is the grassroots groundswell of individuals choosing to hear their hearts, discover core Self, and create life purpose. A life purpose borne of the heart is one that benefits Self and others. “An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.” See the possibilities! |
Questions to consider:How many times have you asked yourself or simply thought about the following questions?
Who am I, really? What is my truth? How do my actions reveal what I really feel and believe? What would I do with my life if I could do anything? What is my passion? Why am I here? How can I discover answers to any of these questions? If you have considered any of these questions, I hope that my experiences and writing will give you some guidance. Please read my blog and comment and share your thoughts. I would love to hear from you! Archives
December 2019
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