One Self, One soul

Reading We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self It has a lot of passion, pain, and expressiveness. The rhythm is like the pace of a heart, having moments that are quickly paced while other parts in the poem are not, but some pauses allow readers to bask in the idea the poem is trying to convey. However, I notice differences in the rhythm of the two poems. Although both have many similarities, Ambroggio has more pauses and expresses a different sort of emotion. With this poem, he expresses the deep feelings he feels for discrimination and injustice among colored people.. Like Whitman, he also lacks periods, which creates a lot of run-ons. Some things rolled off my tongue as I read the fast-paced parts, which flowed perfectly together. In Line 11, “offspring of poor and rich, of lettered and unlettered. ”  This poem, like Whitman’s, has many long sentences. But in a way, these long sentences imitate the stress in his voice, the tiredness of it all. When he goes on about the treatment certain groups of people get, he starts every chunk of text with the same word for the most part, starting with a repetition of the word from to repeating the word It from lines 43- 82. He wanted to bring the poem together and started doing it toward the end. 

This poem starts similar to Whitman’s… people are people, but things can go one way or another, but some differences set them apart; unlike Whitman, I feel he almost embraced differences, pointing them out. Whitman was getting across the point that at the end of the day, no matter what, you have your human with an oil. He uses a lot of symbolism, showing that although people might be from different worlds, certain things remain the same. He expresses his love and hate for creation… the good and bad, yes the physical world we live in, the anatomy..etc might be great but the personalities not as much. This leads to my point on his comparing things to one another. This poem is about identity, problems that certain groups of people face, and problems that Luis himself has gone through. This poem highlights that although God made humans in his image to be considered “perfect,” all are far from it. In the end, regardless of people sharing similarities in anatomy, it doesn’t automatically mean there will be respect.

A way that I saw Ambroggio’s poem translates the rhythmic enumeration of body parts in Whitman’s poem was very prominent in this specific part. I immediately noticed a connection between the two: “It suffers now, and in the next gust of wind, the discriminating smoke of random breath, for good or bad of those who intoxicated breathe ignorance or haughtiness without clusters of stars, mountains, heavenly clouds, wellsprings of gifts and meadows.” It shows similarities to what Whitman said in lines 6-10: “Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the Eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids. Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges.Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition. Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck,neck-slue.Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, Hind-shoulders, And The ample  Side-round Of The chest,” list things in the same categories to ensure the reader understands their feelings. Overall, as for the meaning of the poems, I felt the end goal was entirely different. Whitman expresses his love for the body and the music all the body parts can make, while Ambroggio sheds a dim light on the fact that creation is beautiful but discusses how the world, indeed, can be. But I could see both trying to find peace in themselves, loving themselves despite what others say, and accepting who they are.

Victoria Sasere

Rhythm and Meter

In the poem “Delight Disorder”, the author is paying really close attention to the people and things around him. In line 11 Herrick wrote, “A careless shoestring, in whose tie I see a wild civility:”. After breaking this line down I found that he is saying that if someone is walking with an untied shoelace they more likely to be a wild and free spirit. I find this poem very interesting because he is making inferences on peoples character based on their clothing, but I believe you cannot judge a book by its cover. After scanning my poem I concluded that this poem is an Iambic Tetrameter.

In the poem “Still to be neat, still to be dressed”, the author is saying that some ladies who get all dressed up for any little thing do it to hide their emotions. In line 5 and 6 he wrote, “Though art’s hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound.” After breaking this down I believe the author is saying that the ladies who have no motivations or goals in life are the ones who try to hide behind the “perfect” clothes. After scanning my poem I concluded that this poem is Dactylic Tetrameter. Both poems are similar in that both authors are analyzing people.

by Michael Davis

poetry that leaves you gasping for air

By; sofia garcia

In poetry, there are rules. Some poets follow the rules of rhyme and meter while there are others that could care less about those rules. Those rule breakers created something called free verse. They try to fool their readers by claiming they are writing “free verse”, and that of course is matter of opinion. Free verse just means the poet made up their own rules to write their poem.

Whitman in his poem, “I Sing the Body Electric” he uses free verse. He writes in run-on sentences which contain very little punctuation, and literally leaves the reader breathless. There is no name for that, but it inspired poet Luis Alberto Ambroggio to write “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/ to/ My/ Your/ Self” and “Song of Myself:  Walt Whitman in Other Words” which are just as breathless as Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric”.

Surprisingly enough, Ambroggio actually writes in “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/ to/ My/ Your/ Self”, “In everyone’s Self,/the poem’s universal soul,/in each innumerable Walt Whitman,/cosmos without rubrics,/”, in which he references Whitman which led me to assume that he was Ambroggio’s inspiration to write theses poems as long as the tittles themselves.

When Professor Humberto Garcia, read “I Sing the Body Electric” to the class, he was out of breath by the time he was finished reading it. In contrast, when Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Christopher Merril, and Sholeh Wolpe read “Song of Myself:  Walt Whitman in Other Words” they sound like they are reading a book to the audience. The three narrators have their breathing composed.

In “I Sing the Body Electric” Whitman talks about how his poetry affects the body and proceeds to break it into parts in his poem. He goes on about this without stopping. He even says it in his poem, “I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with/my poems and that they are my poems” (Whitman lines7-8). This poet believes that poetry should reach every country so he goes on to list every country. It leads Ambroggio to have the same rhythmic enumeration. On the subject, translator and poet Sholeh Wolpe says that when you translate poetryyou get “into the bone of poetry.”

Breathless

The poem “We are All Whiteman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self” by Luis Alberto Ambroggio I believe does have rhythmic enumeration to “I sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman both in my opinion have a sense of euphony that make both the poems sound very poetic even though in both poems readers are most likely going to run out of breath reading the poems. The huge similarity to both of these poems was the notion that they were both free verse poems. While reading the poems I did feel like I had to rush through it which was actually making me lose my breath and seeing Ambroggio’s poem being read outload was exactly how I imagined it is like when reading not only Ambroggio’s poem but as well as Whitman’s poem. Both poems were similar in length as well and I heard the euphony coming from them because when you rhyme in poetry it is almost like a song so it’s nice to listen while you are reading it out loud. However, when reading Whitman’s poem, I felt like I could slow down in certain parts of the poem “in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you” (lines 2-3). In the parts of the poem that seem to be shorted I felt the poem slow down and allowed me to catch my breath. That’s the only real difference that I saw when it came the rhythmic enumeration.

Maria Mendiola

Free verse is limitless

By: Jasmine Carrillo

Both Luis Alberto Ambroggio and Walt Whitman use descriptive enumeration in their favor throughout their poems. The lists in Amroggios “We are all Whitman: #2 Song of/to/MyYou/Self” are what establish the rhythm throughout the poem. Specially, the run-on sentences are what causes the rhythm to sound as if it is somewhat speeding up. When lists are longer, it causes one to lose their breath due to us speeding through them when reading. This fast paced rhythm also causes the shorter lists in the poem to sound longer than they actually are. This is exactly what Whitman did in his poem but instead of listing body parts, Ambroggio translated this method in his own way and made many lists of numerous things.

For example, Ambroggio lists “It comes from Mexico, Central America, from Costa Rica, Tikal, Guatemala…” When one is reading this extremely long list we tend speed up through it the further down the list we go. This goes hand in hand in how Whitman lists “This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard…” Whitman has list after list making the reader want to speed up like they would do in Ambroggio’s poem.

Both Ambroggio and Whitman use the similar strategy of using rhythmic enumeration. They use this in their own way to make their poems flow the way they want them to.

“You Cannot Erase Me, I am You.”

By Mitaya La Pierre

Walt Whitman made a statement the day he decided to write “I Sing the Body Electric”; the statement being that poetic form shouldn’t be restrictive. And by having his poem be comprised mainly of listless body parts, and nonuniform speech, he conveys the uniqueness of going against that grain. As well as show boating what it means to be American; to do things differently. This was significant because it detached itself from the former British way of writing poetry; with calculated beats, and rhythms. Now it goes without saying that Walt Whitman’s poem does have rhythm, but it’s faster and far more provocative than poems before it. This “Free Verse”, as it has been coined, inspired Luis Alberto Ambroggio to write his own version of “The Body Electric” called, “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self”. The rhythmic enumeration of both of these poems is very similar, especially the repetitive ‘listing’ and song; but there are also some key differences.

While Whitman talks about parts of the body, Ambroggio’s ‘lists’ are that of actions rather than parts. An example of this in lines 10-14,

 “Child with the wisdom of questions,

offspring of poor and rich, of lettered and unlettered,

of rails, planting times, classes and cares,

which will sprout, embodied, with nothing forgotten,

seed in its newly bloodstained earth,-”

While here he is describing objects; ‘Child with wisdom of questions’, ‘offspring of poor and rich’, ‘lettered and unlettered’, he is also listing these things with as much fervent effort as Walt Whitman did in many of his lines, 

“Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears, 

Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,” 

And stanza 9, line 7 is just one example. But this isn’t the only thing both of these poems do. In “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self”, while he is listing these objects, he gives the exact same cadence that Whitman’s does. Lets take a look at line’s 43-47 in Ambroggio’s poem.

“This Self is Puerto Rican, Chicano,

from Cuba free dancer of merengues,

from Santo Domingo and all the Caribbean,

from El Salvador and Nicaragua.

It comes from Mexico, Central America,-”

Here he is explaining the areas of which he came from, in turn stating that these are the parts of his body; these of which being lyrics that he sings, that completes him as a human being. “-is Puerto Rican, Chicano, from Cuba free dancer of merengues, from Santo Domingo-” every pause or comma we see here is a new part of himself he lists in constant cadence, just like;

“Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, 

Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,” (lines 9-10)

  this line in Whitman’s Poem, ‘Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition’; go up and down–much like a heart beat. ‘Of, the’, ‘and, the’ are syllables swoon down very quickly and then pick up right after the fall– ‘Nose, nostrils of the nose, partition’. Now looking at this, we can see the exact same method in previous lines of Ambroggio’s poem, “Santo Domingo and all the Caribbean, from El Salvador and Nicaragua.” Did you see that? ‘And, all’, and  ‘from, and’ are all typical falls that don’t have as much ‘oompf’ to their sound, and thus end up being picked up by very strong nouns, like ‘Santo Domingo, Caribbean, El Salvador.’ Carrying a beat much like a heart would, what with it having a constant rise and fall of cadence, just like Whitman’s poem.

And that is the true translation of Whitman in Ambroggio’s poem, is that they both have an upbeat, constant rhythm of syllables that don’t stop and in their own way move the body into ‘dance’. The most precise thing about Ambroggio’s poem though, isn’t that he lists off things as Whitman did; its the context behind it. Whitman indirectly was saying something about America, about it’s stubbornness and how we choose things our own way–but, so was Ambroggio. Allow me to transcribe a line found in the poem, 

“They will not manage to deny me or ignore me or declare me undocumented:

I am written in you, in all,-”

Here the poet is declaring he will not be undermined for his culture, for any culture as a matter of fact. Simply because his culture MAKES America; ‘I am written in you’ he states. When he is writing the descriptions of culture, the actions of people, and the culture that compiles him; he is also describing the metaphorical “body parts” that make up “America”;  much like Whitman does with his poem having body parts describe “the person”.  

Take a closer look

The poem “Sea Rose,” by H.D., uses an allegory of the sea rose to represent the idea of inner beauty.  This idea of inner beauty is portrayed through the comparison of the sea rose with the wet rose and the spiced rose; however, the overall lesson that we learn from comparing the 3 roses can also be carried over to human society—which is what we truly care about.  By utilizing a short, free-verse style and by sprinkling in vivid adjectives that paint a sense of descriptive imagery, H.D. compares the 3 roses and teaches the reader a dont-judge-a-book-by-its-cover message.

H.D. begins the free-verse style in the first stanza by outlining the blemishes of the sea rose in a list like form.  Line 2 in particular, “marred and with stint of petals,” as well as line 3, “meager flower, thin,” tell the reader that the sea rose is not the typical romantic rose that one gives to another on Valentine’s Day.  The sea rose is lacking the pizzazz and the allure that is visualized when one thinks about a rose because the sea rose’s thinness and imperfect petals make it seem worthless.  Despite the sea rose’s flaws, H.D. shifts the tone in the second and forth stanza and places the sea rose in a pedestal above the picturesque wet rose and the smell-pleasing spiced rose.  In lines 4 and 5, “more precious than a wet rose,” and lines 14 and 15 “can the spiced-rose drip such acrid fragrance,” H.D. expresses favoritism towards the sea rose.  In the third stanza, “Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted, in the crisp sand, that drives in the wind,” H.D explains that the sea rose is more beautiful then the other two roses because the sea rose has the ability to flow in the wind by itself.  The broader meaning of the poem is that the so called on-the-surface beauty is not beautiful, but, rather, the beauty that comes with being independent and loving oneself is what is truly beautiful in this world (somewhat paradoxical if I must say).