I just finished reading the Preface to the 1855 Edition of “Leaves of Grass”. A piece of writing has never brought me a sense of pure joy quite like this. It moves me and warms my heart. Every word and line breathes life into ideas that I could never dream to articulate.
I realize this might be an immature reaction due to my general ignorance of poetry. I'm only 16 and generally stick to more topical readings. But, I want more of this feeling Whitman has provided me with.
Dopers, if you could, point me in the direction of more literature like this. Thank you :D
I’m sorry to tell you that there’s nobody quite like him, though I’ll give you a couple of recommendations and you can check them out for yourself.
One of them is Carl Sandburg. He’s a little less exuberantly optimistic in his tone than Walt Whitman, but there’s a similarity there.
I’d also suggest trying e. e. cummings - though best known for his unorthodox typography and idiosyncratic layout, there was also a spirited, disciplined poet in there.
You might enjoy listening to how Walt Whitman’s words have been set to music. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A Sea Symphony”, for instance…
Also, I have to recommend an almost unknown film about Walt Whitman’s time in London, Ontario. Beautiful Dreamers features a stunning performance by Rip Torn as Walt Whitman…
You might want to try reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I don’t know that it has the same optimism as Whitman, but it has the same sort of soaring poetry of ideas in prose as the Preface to Leaves of Grass.
A couple of years ago my chorale did Vaughan Williams’s setting of Whitman’s Dona Nobis Pacem—what a wonderful work. Start here, but be sure not to miss “Beat! Beat! Drums!” in the next section.
As for writing, if you enjoyed Whitman’s “Preface”, you might like his Letter to Emerson touching on some of the same themes. In fact, you might try some of Emerson’s essays themselves, for instance “Self-Reliance”. Emerson’s positive response to Leaves of Grass significantly boosted Whitman’s popularity and prestige.
Le Ministre, I like the shorter poems of Irishman William Butler Yeats as well as Whitman. Try Yeats’ poem that begins “When you are old and gray and full of sleep and nodding by the fire…”
But may I suggest a book compiled by Garrison Keilor? It’s called Good Poems and it has a lot of them to keep you busy.
There is a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay that I think you would like. The first line is “O World, I cannot hold you close enough!”
I agree with the suggestion of the works of e.e. cummings. My favorite of his begins, “Anyone lived in a pretty how town, up so floating many bells down.” (You have to sort of float along on the way he says things.)
You are a child of my own heart. I taught Junior English for twenty years. I particularly like Whitman’s poem that begins with a line or two about the “learn’d astronomer.”
I’m sure that you can find many of these with a Google search. And one poem or poet leads to another…
Emerson’s essays and journals are transcendent. Full of soaring ideas. Battle cries of the soul.
HELL YEAH there is!
If you can put up with not knowing what she’s talking about some of the time, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is deep and beautiful and stirring in a way that reminds me of Whitman. When I first read (a library copy of) A Room of One’s Own, during that passage where Virginia Woolf says there’s never been a female Shakespeare, and if there were, she would have killed herself (:(), I wrote in the margin in all caps EMILY DICKINSON, and meant it with all my heart.
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar never gets enough credit. It’s really not as life-affirming as all the others mentioned, but the amount of poetry and meaning jam-packed into his prose is astounding and exhausting.