Come Listen all!: Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself

“Song of Myself” is Walt Whitman’s story of himself and America, nature and humanity, the body and the soul. It calls to us, challenges us, encourages us, and invites us to a better understanding of Spirit and of ourselves. Teens: Walt would have loved you. Please consider joining us. “Song of Myself” is a long…

Workshop Description

“Song of Myself” is Walt Whitman’s story of himself and America, nature and humanity, the body and the soul. It calls to us, challenges us, encourages us, and invites us to a better understanding of Spirit and of ourselves. Teens: Walt would have loved you. Please consider joining us.

“Song of Myself” is a long and complex poem, and my objective for the week is, first, simply to help people feel up to the challenge of reading a work of this kind, to offer a space for the reading and an assurance from someone who has been through the poem before–many times–that it can be done, that the poem is intelligible, coherent, meaningful, faithful, and lovely.

More deeply, I hope that through reading together in a spirit of worship people may see some of what I see in this poem: the value of Whitman’s struggle to reconcile the degrading and the evil with the goodness of creation, the beauty of his expressions of faith in God, the power of his portrait of ecstatic mystical union. I hope that the poem will call to people’s own struggles, their own faith, and their own answers.

The themes of listening and speaking, silence and speech, weave through the whole poem.They are in a fascinating tension Whitman wants us to listen to him, to hear his story, but also, and more importantly, to listen to ourselves. He offers himself as a companion in exploration, not a lecturer. I am also your companion in exploration. I am also not a lecturer.

There is no need to read the poem before arriving at the Gathering, as we will read it together. But you may, of course, read it ahead of time if you wish.

I will bring copies of the poem for each participant.

A note on race and racism:

As part of becoming an anti-racist faith community FGC asks us to consider how our work together can address that goal. Questions of race always come up when we read Whitman, as this poem includes enslaved people, both those still in bondage and those seeking their freedom, as well as at least one image of what is likely a free Black man. He also speaks in multiple places, respectfully, of Native Americans, and includes a scene that has been called “the first inter-racial marriage depicted in American literature.”

However, his attention to race in the poem is fragmentary and somewhat ambivalent, despite his emphasis on freedom. Here, as elsewhere, he evokes sometimes our admiration and sometimes our disappointment.

More interesting, perhaps, is the way that American poets of color have embraced, rejected, and wrestled with Whitman. Black poets like Langston Hughes and June Jordan, as well as Native writers like Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, and many others, have written poems and essays responding to his work, often with a mix of respect, affection, and disappointment at how partial his commitment to racial equality was.

I’ll provide a reading packet with a selection of some of these works, and we will find time during the week to refer to it, perhaps as part of our discussion when we reach relevant sections of the poem. I don’t want others’ reading of the poem to eclipse our own; our primary task is to let the poem work on us. But we can judiciously, and fruitfully, draw on others to enhance our appreciation, understanding, inspiration, and rightful criticism.

Leader Experience

Su has been leading workshops of various kinds, both in person and online, for decades. She leads workshops on poetry, on generative writing, and on books. Su is a very good facilitator who encourages participation but understands and respects people’s different ways of participating. She is assertive when needed to make sure everyone who wishes to speak has the opportunity. They are always excited to hear participants’ thoughts and ideas and learns something new every time they lead a group.