I met a seer…

It’s really remarkable that Whitman has eased his way into modern society through Levi’s and US!  Good timing!

“The friendly and flowing savage. . . .  Who is he? Is he waiting for civilization or past it and mastering it?” (71)   These lines by Whitman were remarkable to me.  I don’t know this to be fact, but I’d imagine that our fuller understandings of the complexities of Native American culture came after Whitman.  […]

Studying Whitman in the 21st century has made me hyper-aware of just how much Whitman represented the enduring image and values of America. It is evident that the things that Whitman extolled in “Song of Myself,” are the same things we value as Americans today. Granted, Whitman wrote during the American Renaissance, which is considered […]

Tags: Hoffman

As I was reading Chapter 15 of Reynold’s Walt Whitman’s America, I realized that he’s following me… or maybe I’m following him (rather unconsciously I’ll admit).  During his Camden years, Whitman befriended the Stafford family, who owned a farm outside of Camden.  This family still has living members today, all of whom live in or […]

Tags: Camden, Stafford, Timber Creek

My ties and ballasts leave me . . . . I travel . . . . I sail . . . . my elbows rest in the sea-gaps, I skirt the sierras . . . . my palms cover continents, I am afoot with my vision. By the city’s quadrangular houses . . . . […]

Tags: Hoffman, imagegloss, ww20

Whitman was heavily interested in and influenced by music – so I think it’s sufficient to assume that if Walt were around today, he’d be bumpin’ to his ipod just like the rest of us.  As I hear songs that sound like they’d rock Walt’s world, I’m going to add them to his “Songs of […]

Tags: ipod

“Song of Myself” – Constructed or Recorded-as-discovered? I began this blog thinking about how the text is constructed in a way that suits Whitman, his beliefs, and his focus.  It seems, after all, that Whitman constructs his text around the same philosophy around which he constructed his life (or the life he wished to live).   Self  […]

Tags: Hoffman

Do I contradict myself? Very well then . . . . I contradict myself; I know I have the best of time and space — and that I was never measured,  and never will be measured. I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable I tramp a perpetual […]

Tags: Frontispiece

Levi’s & Whitman’s Americas converge

                  “I met a seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,                   To glean eidolons…                            Thy body permanent, The body lurking there within thy body, The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,                   An image, an eidolon.”   “Eidolons”, […]