Children of Adam is another great example of Whitman’s artistry. I have a couple of passages i choose to write abou tthat really stuck out to me! first one is from I Sing The Body Eleteric. He depicts an image of this man going through his city like something out a Disney movie. The way he goes about to describe the man and his sons is a very unique way. I’m getting a little homo-erotic tension between them. The fact that he wants to touch this man, this stranger strikes me at a bit odd. I may be only reading this as literal but I’m a literal kind of reader. I always felt like he has some homosexual undertone to his writng.
“I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons. This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the
clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he
had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.” (Whitman).
The next passage that peaked my interest is Spontaneous Me, i feel like i’m going looking at a picture or I’m actully there. I don’t have that big of an imagination but reading Whitman has really opened my eyes and I’m takin git ang enjoying it very much!
“Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and
light and dark green,
The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private
untrimm’d bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after
another as I happen to call them to me or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me our lusty lurking masculine poems,)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers,
and the climbing sap,,…”(Whitman).
I just love the way Whitman describes everything as if it has the most significance in the world. To the tiniest of pebbles to the mysteries of love! I didn’t want to use the entire section of this poem for my writing but it just amazing. I’m a pretty simple girl and the little things in life grab my attention also. I love the imagery also, I always say that but, I can actually see myself in the wild when he describes that scene. Nobody really takes the time to smell the roses so to speak and to even read about it is wonderful!!