Essay on "American Poetry Is Dependent"

Quoted Instructions for "American Poetry Is Dependent" Assignment:

please read the essay my class mate wrote and write a response.

1.  responses should be at least two developed paragraphs 2.  You should conduct yourself as you would in courteous conversation by responding directly and specifically to what the post communicates. 3. Say what drew you to the post to which you are responding--a particular insight, way of writing, or question being asked. 4. Be generous and name what you find engaging about the post. 5.  Ask questions that invite clarification or further discussion. 6.  Contribute your own thoughts and experiences where appropriate. 7.  Make friends as best you can.

Essential to an understanding of contemporary American poetry is a firm grasp of Walt Whitman’s understanding of democracy and the political role of the poet. All creativity is a political act for Whitman, because the poet must allow the boundaries of his personality to open up to the world around him in order to become inspired. However, inspiration is not politically charged necessarily for what it yields as a final product, but for the revolutionary nature of the process in itself—a level of interconnectedness is established between the poet and the land, plants, animals, and other people in his or her surroundings which is sufficiently democratic in itself, regardless of the aesthetic outcome of this non-hierarchical relationship:

“[T]o speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art. If you have looked on him who has achieved it you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times,” (Whitman “Preface” Leaves of Grass, First Edition).

Whitman is bold enough to claim that this harmony is the primary accomplishment of the artist, and that the integrity of the final product simply follows it as a matter of course. It is in this regard which poetry becomes a religious force—the poet is idealized as a supreme state of being, and his or her eloquence as the force which transforms the structure of society, as a product of the totally selfless process of inspiration. America itself, despite Whitman’s propensity for listing its very real places and features, functions in his writings as an ideal as well—it is a heavenly promise, the distant and yet so within-reach possibility of a nation of poetic beings. Despite the relative remoteness of his era from our own, Whitman’s fanatical inclusiveness continues to inform American poetry—the poet as a fundamentally political force and the dream of America as a cultural zenith can still be read in the work of our contemporaries. In Heather McHugh’s “What He Thought,” we encounter the martyrdom of a 16th century Dominican friar, a very foreign scenario to us as Americans, only to have the essence of this archetypal Italian figure incorporated into our own—a rehashing of the promise of the New World, where the cultural progress of Europe could flourish unabated by the ghosts of dark-age feudalism. Note the similarity to Whitman’s views in those attributed to Giordano Bruno:

the universe does not revolve around the human being: God is no fixed point or central government but rather is poured in waves, through all things: all things move. ‘If God is not the soul itself, he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world,’… (McHugh “What He Thought”).

This passage completely refreshes the poem, a testament to the tremendous importance of European intellectual achievements upon which our country was founded. The legacy of the Old World is qualified however, by the brutal situation from which these remarkable sentiments are borne—the man is being tortured to death because his beliefs are viewed as incompatible with the authority of the Church. This is how Bruno strikes us as both a familiar and foreign character, for his ideas are readily assimilated to the inclusive patchwork of the American intellect, while his persecution for such ideas by the state seems totally incongruent with the ***** of the Constitution.

“The American bard shall delineate no class of persons nor one or two out of the strata of interests nor love most nor truth most nor the soul most nor the body most . . . and not be for the eastern states more than the western or the northern states more than the southern,” (Whitman “Preface” Leaves of Grass, First Edition).

As Bruno is reported to have believed, even the soul is unworthy of preferential treatment. There is somehow a “soul OF THE SOUL,” which we can access only through a total commitment to democratic inspiration. In this sense, Hugh’s description of the conservative administrator is on point:

Of all he was most politic-- and least poetic-- so it seemed.

Only in the most cursory examination is the poet an apolitical figure. The seemingly withdrawn work of the poet is however an illusion—the inspiration upon which the poet’s work depends is entirely founded on his or her amity with every element of the surrounding world.