Evolution of age and readership

I am so absolutely embracing this new evolution.

If there is one thing about this class so far that I can pin point as my favorite feature, it would have to be the way with which this class has allowed me to observe the way that my preference to literature has evolved.

It started with the transcendentalists. In class I mentioned that I really enjoyed reading transcendentalist literature in high school. I remember buying a hardcover of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature in high school and reading it in my bed late at night after finishing homework. I remember being so into it, though now as I look back I can see that I might not have understood the book quite as well as I thought I did. When we read the transcendentalist literature in class, I quickly realized just how much my preference has changed. While I still really enjoy the idea behind the books, I assimilate it to Alexander Supertramp's journey in Into the Wild which I respected and truly enjoy but couldn't really relate to, I would argue that that same relation was absent from my reading of the transcendentalists.

That being said, this evolution was also present in my reading of Walt Whitman. In High School I really did not like poetry or poets that I saw as "traditional". I was never a big fan of Shakespeare as a playwright or a poet, nor was I fond of Keats or Lord Byron or even Robert Frost. When I chose poetry collections to read I looked for only modern collections. I can recall my favorite poets being writers like Andrew Motion, Billy Collins, and Ekiwah Alder Belendez. While I can still say that I prefer the style of new age poetry, I think at the time I only sought out poets who were 'new' because they were young and I felt as though I could better relate to them.

This year I had the opportunity to read Walt Whitman in two of my classes. In my other class, Reading in Forms: Poetry, we discussed Whitman's historical effect on poetry. In this class, we've been given the chance to actually read Whitman's work. The best part about reading Whitman? I have really enjoyed it.

So far in my blog posts I have written several times about Walt Whitman. Whitman was an extraordinary abolitionist and has inspired me in so many ways through story alone. Reading his work, a collection of poems that a few years ago I may have just refused to read based on assumption alone. That being said I have come to find Whitman's work to be extremely organic and because of that, I have really enjoyed it.

My favorite poem from the collection would have to be I Sing Myself Electric. In the poem Whitman writes, "The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account, / That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect." In this poem, I felt Whitman's appreciation for nature in its organic form (much like the transcendentalists). Whitman continues on to write "It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist / and knees, dress does not hide him, / The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth, / To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more," here Whitman expresses that man's remarkable form is apparent through whatever garb he may wear. To me, this was strongly abolitionist. That all man is equal under whatever clothes they wear, color of their skin, etc...

I am happy that this class was able to get me out of my comfort zone, after all, we all know I can be stubborn at times. I look forward to reading more.