{"id":261,"date":"2021-02-18T01:15:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T06:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/?p=261"},"modified":"2021-02-18T01:15:59","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T06:15:59","slug":"the-paradoxical-singularity-of-the-american-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/2021\/02\/18\/the-paradoxical-singularity-of-the-american-people\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paradoxical Singularity of the American People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself<\/em> is an American classic. The poem’s attention to the various iconographies of America, its natural beauty and its people alongside Whitman\u2019s own reputation have cemented it and him as a centerpiece of classic American literature.<\/p>\n

Yet it cannot go without saying that Walt Whitman\u2019s attempt to condense the American experience into a singular monolith, as portrayed in one of the most famous lines of the poem \u2014 \u201cI am large, I contain multitudes\u201d (Whitman section 51) \u2014 creates an odd, paradoxical singularity of America. Walt Whitman\u2019s whiteness in an era where segregation and slavery was still legal cannot go without saying. Whitman\u2019s poem references many comparisons to slavery, such as <\/p>\n

\u201cThe hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, cover\u2019d with sweat,
\nThe twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets,
\nAll these I feel or am.\u201d (Whitman section 33)<\/p>\n

So when we revisit the \u201cI contain multitudes\u201d line, we are made aware of how Whitman attempts to not only contain his own identity, but the identity of other Americans, including the enslaved into a uniform line representing them all.<\/p>\n

In The Work of a Common Woman <\/em> , a poetry collection from Judy Grahn we are treated to a different experience of America. Grahn\u2019s poems about common women are anything but common\u2014 in direct opposition to Whitman\u2019s singular multitudes we are treated to the unique common experience, poems about specific people and their specific lives and personalities. We get names of women like Helen, Vera and Ella. We are told they and others Grahn writes about are the common women, yet we also get lines that emphasize anything but common. Ella\u2019s poem has a line that goes \u201cOnce she shot a lover who misused her child. Before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced and given the child away.\u201d (Grahn 63). <\/p>\n

It is lines like this that make us wonder what \u2018common\u2019 here is to mean, when Ella\u2019s experiences aren\u2019t the same as the next poem\u2019s subject Nadine, \u201csitting on the doorstep counting\/rats and raising 15 children,\/half of them her own.\u201d (Grahn 64). Common here is anything but common, and Grahn brilliantly avoids the same trap Whitman set for himself trying to lump America into one bubble. One might feel like this is Grahn\u2019s answer to Whitman\u2019s famous line, her own way of trying to inform Whitman that his experience isn\u2019t representative of everyone, and that each person is their own unique identity, even with similar experiences and commonalities this uniqueness makes them their own individual being and they deserve to be seen as such. Grahn\u2019s poems end up thus affirming America, and America\u2019s women as a nation of different peoples, alike but never the same. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself is an American classic. The poem’s attention to the various iconographies of America, its natural beauty and its people alongside Whitman\u2019s own reputation have cemented it and him as a centerpiece of classic American literature. Yet it cannot go without saying that Walt Whitman\u2019s attempt to condense the American experience … Continue reading The Paradoxical Singularity of the American People<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3888,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3888"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}