This is the assigned reading from last week.

Mother, Father, Wather, Earth, Me

I think Whitman can wrote those influential and innovative poet because his life experience. Whitman moved to Brooklyn in 1823, and Brooklyn grow quickly in 1855.  He was seeing the changes of Brooklyn.

Unlike Walt Whitman has a ” restless and unhappy childhood”, I am happy that I was born in today and live with my lovely family with no war and financial problem.  Whitman has brothers and sisters, but he said ” we are not alike, that’s a part and whole of it”.  Jeff was a “real brother” to him rather than Eddy who had physic disease and “mostly like a son to him”.  Whitman and his family kept moving from one place to another place, he needed to take care his family because he was the second eldest son in his family. After his father was died, his mother Louisa Whitman loved to ask Whitman to take care the family with her.  Louisa Whitman said Whitman ” was a very good, but very straight boy”.  This is his role and responsible to take care his family after his father was dead.  I think this is why he said he has a restless and unhappy boyhood.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious
you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

                                                                               by Walt Whitman

this is how the Fulton Ferry Landing looks like in 1880s and the ferry croosing over the sea.

compare to present:

We still can see the Brooklyn bridge still standing here. Now the ferries are more faster and looks more pretty than before.  People are taking the ferries everyday as the people did in the past.  As Whitman say ” And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”

sources:

 http://fultonferry.org/history/

http://nicole.lookingforwhitman.org/files/2009/09/brooklyn_bridge_new_york.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/CBF/closereading/imageside/images/ferry1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/CBF/closereading/closereading.html&usg=__Jwo-BmCZNrORXht2XcMDxPb8740=&h=321&w=500&sz=90&hl=en&start=18&um=1&tbnid=JxPWhJZ_cc0XJM:&tbnh=83&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcroosing%2Bbrooklyn%2Bferry%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUS346%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1

Walt Whitman’s works made me confused.  It does not mean I do not like his writing, but I’m frustrated and tired  with all the reading.  Everytime when I read passages, books or especially poems, I CANNOT read those without using the dictionary.  I love reading, only in my native lanugage.  Because English is not my first language, those vocabulary words gonna kill me .  I just can say ” They know I, but I dont know Them”.  Then, I hate reading a lot….

I read Whitman’s work, ” Song of Myself”, and I do some research online.   Whitman ‘s works are powerful, many people love his works.  I love reading poems and try to understand what the writters wants to tell and touch his readers. Different people read the poem, even those they are reading the same poem, they have different feeling.  I love go to class because professor will discuss Walt Whitman’s works with us, and my classmates love to share their feeling too.  During the class, I hear and learn and know more than I read by myself. 

In the new reading assignment ” Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman,

I am with you,, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;

I project myself – also I return – I am with you, and know how it is.

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky so i felt;

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

Whitman assumes that they feel and see things as he does, and they react in the same ways as him.  You may have the same feeling as me when we are taking subway, looking in the same sky or walking on the street…..

After a class on tuesday, I learn more about Whitman than before.  Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819 and he was the second of nine children.  Walt Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk and his major work, Leave of Grass, was first  published in 1855.  Although his childhood was unhappy due to his family’s issue and economic status, he had written many  influence poets.

When I read ” Song of Myself”, I was not quit understand what does it mean because there were too many vocabulary that I do not know.  After I went to the class on last thursday, this poem is meaningful but I did not think when I read it by myself at home.  When the professor discuss in class with us, I learn more about Whitman.

In the poem ” Song of Myself'”,

I celebrat myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

from I to You, he wants to touch his reader.  This “I” and ” You” in his poem has a connection.  Each people has different stories, they are unique; however, we share everything in this world.

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