The Power of Tempos

Luis Ambroggio and Walt Whitman’s poems share many similarities such as their lengthy size and song-like quality, however Luis Ambroggio distinguishes himself from Whitman by altering how some phrases are spoken. Whitman’s poem I Sing the Body Electric, strives and pushes the reader to put their all into the poem’s rendition leaving the speaker on the brink of breathlessness or completely out of breath, but in the process of making the free verse this challenging, it carries in itself an empowering voice. This causes the human body to carry itself with a sense of respect and strength, due to the imagery that Whitman employs and with the help of the cacophony present, which causes the reader to be left breathless thus adding to the illusion of strength.

Luis Ambroggio’s poem on the other hand, while having the length and similar run-on style, does not have an aggressive cacophony, rather the run style evokes a sense of closeness and this most exemplified from line 43 to line 59, of all the different ethnicities being named one after the other in a rapping style. By having these names being said in a rapid manner as the body parts from Whitman’s poem regarding body parts, they seem to roll off the tongue with no issue as to symbolize that despite being different groups from different regions, they are all intrinsically linked to one another. Something that differed from Whitman’s use of cacophony would be that despite the stanzas being similar, Ambroggio’s poem does not cause one to be completely out of breath, since it follows a singing tempo in contrast to Whitman’s exhausting tempo. 

Another aspect of Ambroggio rhythmic enumeration would be that at the start of the poem, the tone seems to be a bit disheartened, however as the poem progresses, alongside moving to a faster tempo, the message that is being told also begins to shift in tone, having both a positive and negative outlook, but concludes with a message to empower the audience of this poem. Ambroggio poem’s  euphonic voice allows for Ambroggio to portray a downtrodden world, but illustrates that without some hardship, a person will be able to enjoy the fruit of said hardship.

We Are All Whitman enumeration: different tempos

~Jeshua Rocha~

While reading the poem in class and witnessing the amount of energy it takes to read “I Sing the Body Electric”, the tone and rhythm that Luis Alberto Ambroggio took were not how I expected to hear the poem read. Every poet interprets a poem’s sounds and rhythms differently; therefore, this new perspective inspired me to reread the poem in a slower and more euphonic tone. Right away as I read the poem, I noticed that the words and meaning were more impactful than reading the poem in a cacophony tone. Since cacophony is a chaotic, noisy sound, we readers have a harder time understanding what the meaning is, and sometimes the words when read at such a fast pace. Yet, when listened to in a euphonic tone, the words are more understandable, and the meaning gets through. Therefore since this poem is a free-verse and has no meter or no set rhythm patterns, seeing the difference in tempo does make a difference in the word’s depth and impact.

Hence the poem essentially explores and details certain parts of the human body and their functions. Whitman man also describes how these functions make an individual. He lists out several different ages and events of a body. Therefore enumeration from Whitman is more focused on the human body, an example being, “ The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping”. This line itself caught my attention when heard in a cacophony tone because when studying the human body, you realize right away how perfect we are. How every cell has its purpose, every vein is connected, every muscle has its function, and how in our genes we are all unique. I suppose that since Whitman was a poet, he didn’t study the human body, but I grasped from this line, his praise for the human body. I took the cacophonic tone perfect for his poem which describes that the body is nothing less than a miracle. The human body has a cacophonic tone because there are always signals going off, cells rushing down the veins to do their job, the heart pumping oxygen down our arteries, and muscles moving at our every twitch, therefore we ourselves are noisy in a beautiful way. Yet Luis Alberto Ambroggio elaborates more on people’s identities, which is completely different from Whitman’s enumeration. When reread in a euphonic tempo you realize the depth in which it changes the meaning of the poem for more praise towards us humans, for example, “All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female”. In all these two different perspectives both have the same impactful tempo for us readers.

Thoughts without Principles

After analyzing both Walt Whitmans “I Sing the Body Electric” and Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s “Song of/to/My/Your/Self”, I observe many mirroring aspects, not just with the rhythm and structure, but also in the meaning of the poems themselves. Ambroggio focus’ on the emotional, spiritual, and ethnic part of oneself while Whitman focuses on the physical anatomy of oneself. Though what they have in common is the structure and rhythm of their poems. They both have many moments of alliteration and assonance throughout the poem. For example, in line 13 of Whitman’s poem, he says, “Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,” and in line 17 he says, “Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,” which contains many repetitive words and phrases containing alliteration. In line 12 of Ambroggio’s poem, he says, “classes and cares,” which is an example of assonance. Throughout the poem, with phrases like “sunless silence”, “humanity’s heart” and “without walls”, he exhibits many uses of alliteration. Additionally, they both hold a similar structure in their poem which is shown very apparent in stanza 5 of Ambroggios poem, matching most of Whitman’s structure of constant listing of characteristics. Whitman’s poem alludes to the body being the vessel of the soul, and that every physical body part we have contributes to our heart and soul and is overall very poetic. Similarly, Ambroggio very clearly states how being Hispanic, Latin, blond, black, makes you who you are, inside and out, and is unchangeable. Ambroggio often refers to the topic of having free thoughts and being able to think and express without rules or conditions. He says this but refers to it as “uncaged cosmos” and says, “

with open hands, without walls,

free roots of mine and everyone’s

at the foot of the song

that now celebrates

without creeds or schools.” putting emphasis on the rules or principles.

Both poems have similarities and differences but overall hold the same structure and audible intensity when the poem is read aloud. Both poems cannot be properly understood unless they are read aloud and you experience the loss of breath, euphonies, and cacophonies throughout the poems. Luis Ambroggio translates the rhythmic enumeration of the body parts in Whitman’s poem by mirroring the meaning of the physical self to the emotional self, using many similar rhythms and repetitions. 

Sarah Rix

Jarring Recitation

Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s poem “We are All Whitman: #2 Song of/to/My/Your/Self”embodies similarity of the rhythmic enumeration to Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric” through the aspects of recitation of poem, punctuation and the grammatical structure. Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” has an enumeration of body parts which causes a very cacophonous sound when the reader is reciting the poem. It all involves the emphasis when reading the high use of repetition, punctuation, and the listing of body words that allows the poem to continue with a very harsh flow. 

Ambroggio’s poem follows this Whitman style of poetry as it also involves similar aspects that could be pinned back to Whitman’s poem. Whitman uses the the long list of body parts to signify the founding over the human body through, “O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, / O I say now these are the soul” (267), as he concluded to list off the the different parts of the body. While in Ambroggio’s poem, he explains the nature of an individual by looking back towards their roots from their skin color, religion, etc as they all come from somewhere. 

While closely looking Ambroggio’s poem, the sound the poem flows through while even having the listing of features. Whitman gave this very cacophonous sound as it involved harsh wording that Whitman purposely placed to be properly pronounced and articulated to support this main idea. However, Ambroggio’s poem had more of a graceful euphonious sound while also incorporating the enumeration. When both poems involve listing off words, the poem designs it to be recited in a particular way such as in Whitman’s case, the reader is needed to rapid fire the list of body parts that as the reader is reading the poem it intensifies them without much of caesura or end stop punctuation. Ambroggio follows the similar structure when further describing the individual’s identity through a list as without much a stop for a breather makes the reader recite the poem quickly. With both similar parts of the enumeration, they change the rhythm of the poem while having the reader recite it quickly as they do not have an intended meter, rhyme scheme, and punctuation that makes the reader pause and reflect on the text.

Naraint Catalan Rios

Translation

In Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric,” Whitman employs sound to hammer home his message. He begin euphonically before becoming more cacophonic when listing off the body parts. The cacophony creates a feeling of building energy that is then released when Whitman returns to euphony at the end. This is very similar to the idea in music of going from order, to disorder/chaos, then back to order at the end of a piece.

In Luis Alberto Ambroggia’s poem “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self,” he “sings” about his “soul” rather than about his physical body. He opens with a list of characteristics of “the self” to set the tone of the piece. Through the first two stanzas, Ambroggia doesn’t list as distinctly but uses punctuation to simulate the staccato, cacophonic rhythm of Whitman’s lists and building up that energy before releasing it with euphony at the end of the second stanza; unlike Whitman’s poem, Ambroggia’s version is split into sections. In the third stanza, he starts with a short but intense list of races before releasing the energy again. Ambroggia then goes into full list mode with the next two stanza listing characteristics, then places and builds up the energy to a climax before releasing in the fifth stanza. After this point, the tone of Ambroggia’s poem seems to shift markedly and become more euphonic when it begins to address more abstract ideas as opposed to describing things in the concrete. All in all, the sound of Ambroggia’s poem highlights how the body and the soul are and aren’t alike; the concrete aspects of the soul as listed like body parts while the less tangible aspects are illustrated in a more euphonic, lyrical way.

Evan He

The Order in Chaos

In “I Sing the Body Electric”, Walt Whitman uses the elements of cacophony, sound emphasis, and juxtaposition to get across his message. He includes cadenced verse by not rhyming lines or allowing scansion to be possible in the poem. He spends his poem describing the body and its importance but yet at the end believes it to be less than the soul. And as though the body is APART of the soul, thus making it less significant. Although Whitman juxtaposes both the elements of feminine and masculine body parts in the poem, he shows later that while he sees that while there are similarities between them he sees them to be completely different. He describes women by saying, “This is the female form, A divine nimbus… It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction” and separates them to be seen as a gorgeous object to be worshipped. He also believes that “Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman, The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk,…” Whitman additionally places a hyperfocus on womanhood being about bearing children purely by mentioning the elements normally associated with nursing and birth. Whitman by placing emphasis on the sound of these labels in womanhood and manhood aims to show that he sees the two of them being nothing without their parts of the body. Like how he sees a woman to be nothing without bearing children. He finds them to be the most important. But by doing this, he objectifies more specifically that women seem to be nothing without what they have to offer physically or their assets. Whitman talks highly of men by using free verse to be much more than women. He uses cacophony making the lines hard to read thus creating chaos within his poem to create these feelings of liberation through expressing this passion. Yet at the same time, while creating this chaos, he has an order to how he approaches it. The order within the poem IS the chaos.

In contrast, within a similar poem in terms of methodology, “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self” by Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Ambroggio highlights chaos as well, but in a different light. He instead focuses more on the chaos within diversity and how within this chaos of being exposed to different people and ideologies, we are actually brought together. Through the highlighted differences between us, we become more than just ourselves. Ambroggio writes, “It is expressed and is not expressed by welcomes,/ the yowls of rejection and the sunless silence/ of indifference, every day, gray hands.” He wishes to remind us in the cacophony of these sentences being hard to pronounce that while everyday existence is hard, we go through the same struggles. We struggle through it and live on. Through both of these poems, we are exposed to varied points of view in life and two different viewpoints on humans. But it is important to remember that it is only through the meticulous work of each poem using rhyme and rhythm, experimenting with sound that we are able to stumble upon these messages.