A Change of Pace

While reading the first substantial amount of poetry that I have read since coming to college, I could not help but thinking what a change of pace it has been for me. Though this whole class in general is a change of pace because it is reading intensive as opposed my normally math intensive courses. But the poetry was especially different from everything we have been reading in class. While I think we've come a long way from Thoreau, through Transcendentalism and then reading novels and slave narratives, this was something completely different for me. This put me at ease and really helped me to relax. Though Whitman's topics are not those that I generally prefer in poetry, some of his works still really struck me. He was able to paint of picture of his time and I really felt as thought he gave great insight into the daily lives of people at his time. My favorite passage by him was in the "I Sing the Body Electric" poem, the second part. When he says:

“Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,

The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open

dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,

The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or

cow-yard,

The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six

horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,

good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work.”

This passage for me really painted a picture in my head and it was something that I could appreciate. It shows a family dynamic and also a strong work ethic. It shows workers at lunch time, wives and daughters working on the farm at home and then young boys playing together after work. I can actually picture two young men, in an open field with a red sky and a setting sun just playing together and laughing after a hard days work. Though most of Whitman’s poetry that we read dealt with the human body and his extreme passion for the human body, I really liked this piece. Though in his poetry about the body I was really impressed by his use of detail (though he uses detail in much of his poetry). He really possesses an extraordinary ability to notice small, but important details that separate you from liking his works to really loving them and being able to relate to them. I had not read much of him before this, but I really liked the way he forced me to notice details the way he does, as well as appreciate humans and their nature the way he does.