Hello Lovely listener I'm your host Lindsay and you’re listening to 2cents podcast, Your audible anthology. As this is a series, we shall be analysing another section of Walt Whitman’s song of myself as recited by Guy Mulinder. Without further ado cue the intro.
9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn
wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.
I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.
Section 8 ended with the poet saying “I come and I depart” after detailing all he had seen in the city. Section 9 takes place in the countryside, Whitman has departed from the urban to the rural and by extension from adulthood to childhood. This section is 8 lines long and is one of a few short sections in Song of Myself. In Whitman’s final revision of the poem, in his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass, he divided the single eight-line stanza into two end-stopped quatrains (which consist of 4 lines btw) this gave section 9 the appearance of poetry from the past. An end-stopping line is a line in a stanza which ends with punctuation, either to show the completion of a phrase or sentence. Section 9 is a unique take on the poetry Whitman grew up with; the ballad style of old characterised by; storytelling, simple language and a concentration on a single episode. Ballads also have a specific rhyme scheme, metre and format consisting of three main stanzas and one concluding stanza called an envoi. Each of these stanzas end in a repeated last line known as the refrain line. The first three stanzas have eight lines and the envoi has four lines and is alternatively referred to as a quatrain. You can check out the episode transcript for the rhyme scheme.
ABABBCBC / ABABBCBC / ABABBCBC / BCBC
*C- the refrain line
So Whitman takes some elements of the ballad and creates an unrhymed version. In this section he recalls his time in the country as a child and in my research I came across a comment about how his recollections are pre-imagist. This is referring to a type of poetry before the imagist movement. Briefly, the imagist movement was a literary movement of the early 20th century whose poetry is characterised by directness, an avoidance of generalities, placing importance on precise phrasing over sticking to poetic metre and economy of language. Economy of language in poetry is a technique whereby a poet evaluates each of their words critically because the main idea is fewer words lead to greater clarity, so each word is examined for meaning, melodic value and emotional quality. The imagist movement was a revolt against Georgian Poetry which was a poetic movement in England during the reign of George V it is defined by romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism, and was started to revive public’s interest in poetry here are some examples of Georgian poetry:
An excerpt of Storm in the Black Forest by D.H. Lawrence
Now it is almost night, from the bronzey soft sky
jugfull after jugfull of pure white liquid fire, bright white
tipples over and spills down,
and is gone
This poem is a description of a storm Lawrene saw in Black forest, I'm sure you can pick up the romantic quality in his use of words. Second we have
The Great Lover by Rupert Brooke
I have been so great a lover: filled my days
So proudly with the splendour of Love’s praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
Here the poet talks about how he was a great lover throughout his life in all aspects, experiences, and physical objects.
For comparison here is
Above the Dock by T.E. Hulme an Imagist poet
Above the quiet dock in mid night,
Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.
The poet is describing their view of the moon from the dock.
So there’s definitely a stark contrast between Georgian and Imagist poetry rooted in their use of words. Going back to the comment about Whitman’s style in section 9, I definitely see how it is pre-imagist in that his descriptions aren’t direct, however they are clear. We can imagine the big doors of the country barn standing open and ready, the pale brown and green tinge of the dried grass illuminated by the sun. We can see him harvesting or “sagging mow” and jumping from the cross beams and tumbling into the clover and timothy where his hair gets tangled with wisps. There’s somewhat of a romantic quality to this section, not that I’d say that it's Georgian, I actually don’t see any need to categorise it, but it shows Whitman’s feelings about his childhood and rural America at large. For reference, he moved from the Long Island’s countryside to Brooklyn at the age of four and his life growing up was defined by much restlessness and unhappiness mainly for financial reasons. But we left section 8 with a similar image of restlessness and unhappiness. Remember the “howls restrain’d by decorum”. In contrast, the countryside is more wholesome and even idyllic through the lens of Whitman’s recollection.
Outro
Thank you for listening to this segment, I appreciate you giving your time. If this is your first listen, I hope this was impressionable enough for you to join me again for another episode. if you’re returning your loyalty is unmatched and received with much gratitude. As always my email is open for any further discussion on a topic, episode suggestions and even submissions;
Till next time :)