"all that blab"

Reading: Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

Brief Intro: I decided that Leaves of Grass is too rich and varied to post upon the work as a whole without overgeneralizing or summarizing. Instead, I thought I'd post a close analysis of poems that I found particularly interesting or moving this time around. Not surprisingly, the poem I had the most to say/think about was "As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life," namely as it feels so modern and theoretically connected to 20th C. poets and their projects. So here I reflect upon the conflated voice(s) of that poem:

Whitman's Sound Poetry?

As a poem that begins amid contemporaneous motion and documentation, “As I Ebb’d With the Ocean of Life” flows into and out of the consciousness of the speaker. The poem moves as both component and product of this greater consciousness, just as the poet-speaker considers himself a distinct individual and also part of some greater whole. One manifestation of this conflict seems to be in the poet’s understanding of his own voice, of its quality and significance. The tension here builds, appropriately, as the poem progresses: the “pride” of the “electric self” (7) diminishes as the poet feels helpless finding the “real Me,” and the poems he utters become “arrogant” and foolish (34). As the poem delves in to these complexities and conflicts of self-awareness, the poem charts the dissolution of distinct sound articulation, and considers the obvious paradox of poems as silent songs. That is, this poem shows the reality that poems are merely words on a page meant to represent sounds that are then meant to represent consciousness of some kind, but it more importantly wonders whether this distant representation of reality really documents some song of the poet or song of life.

In the first section of the poem, the poet exists as part of the “ocean of life” (1), but he hears distinct sounds that are not his. As the ocean meets the shore, its voice is composed of the sounds of the “ripples” and these components’ voices are “hoarse and sibilant” (3). In other words, the voice that the poet hears emerging from this ocean of life is made up of smaller voices that are rough and deep, raucous and husky, hissing and whistling. They are unclear, indistinct – the voice of the ocean cannot be discerned as clear sounds. This ocean’s roar, like white noise, moves with the “sound of breaking waves” (16), but it also hints at disapproval with its harsh, hissing tones. Even when he considers himself to be a part of this ocean, then, he hears judgment in its voice(s).

In contrast to the indistinct sounds that surround him, the poet utters. He sends out his words to articulate some clear message amid the muddled musical background. The second section moves to point out his foolishness – his attempt at clarity becomes an “arrogant” failure, for no “real” articulation exists “amid all that blab” (33-34). He hears “peals of laughter” at his “every word”: the disapproval now definite, though still not from a singular source (38). Disapproval moves him to silence, to run from the oppression caused when he “dared to open his mouth to sing at all” (43). The third section begins with the poet in close proximity with these “oceans both” (44). The image of the open mouth at the end of the second section, however, forces the double pronunciations and meanings of the homograph “close” (44). In other words, the image is one of the poet becoming close in proximity with the oceans, but it can also be the poet closing his mouth. In the latter option, the poet closes his mouth with the oceans and gives himself over to become a true part of it, an indistinct sonar component that contributes without pride. All components “murmur alike” in one low and continuous voice, each ego subdued. This murmuring, the “murmuring / I envy”, communicates the “secret” sounds that the poet longs to understand, to translate (61-62). These sounds are also the ones he fears, however, as the murmurs seem to also be sounds of accusation or complaint. The final section mourns, then, that the poet must lose his distinct voice to become one with the ocean of life. As the mutable world rushes around him, though, the poet opens his mouth and sings his song – he gets the distinct voice until his “I” (1) becomes the “we” that “lie in drifts at your feet” (77).