Today’s Post is Brought to You by Walt Whitman

Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching
content,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can
walk undisturb’d,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire,
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears
only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal
sanities!
These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and
rack’d by the war-strife,)
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,
Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time refusing to give me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul, you give me forever
faces;
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,
see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)
2
Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets–give me these phantoms incessant and
endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes–give me women–give me comrades and
lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day–let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows–give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching–give me the sound of
the trumpets and drums!
(The soldiers in companies or regiments–some starting away, flush’d
and reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn’d ranks, young, yet very
old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the
torchlight procession!
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons
following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even
the sight of the wounded,)
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

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I’ve been really into poetry lately which is weird for me because I’m usually sort of ambivalent about poetry. I end up attending a lot of poetry readings as part of my job and I always leave  annoyed because it all sounds the same, or envious that I don’t have what it takes to turn ordinary words and ideas into verbal masterpieces.

I spent last night reading some Whitman online and. . .wow. I read Leaves of Grass when I was about 12 because I thought it would make me super artsy and mature. Yeah, I was a pretentious 12-year-old.  This time I actually, like, understood some Whitman. I came across “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun” and it might become my Life Poem. I’ve also been reading some Robert Frost and Tony Hoagland whose book, Donkey Gospel, I first read last year as part of my creative writing course. Man he’s good. Like, every word is just so carefully chosen. There’s a song-like quality to his poems though they don’t usually rhyme. He tells real stories without wandering into melodramatic-oh-so-edgy territory. Best of all, there’s muscle in his writing. I find a lot of contemporary poets very airy and abstract but Hoagland’s poems have an athletic, sort-of masculine quality.

Who are your favorite poets? Help me expand my literary mind.