Transcendentalism
Louisa May Alcott
by Jessica Parrett on Monday, August 13, 2001 12:08 pmThe second daughter of renowned education reformer Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where her father was working as a teacher.
The family would soon settle in Concord, Massachusetts, where the young girl would be exposed to the brilliant company of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the rest of the Transcendentalist crowd.
The Transcendentalists taught that each person must find their own peculiar way to contribute to the world, and Louisa May found her way as a writer of popular fiction that was both wholesome and realistic. She wrote poetry and stories for Atlantic Monthly (then a relatively new New England periodical) and other magazines. She worked as a nurse in the civil war and wrote about the experience in "Hospital Sketches", published in the journal "Commonwealth". Her first book was called "Flower Fables", followed by a novel called "Moods", and then by her most popular book, "Little Women".
"Little Women" and "Little Men" were her best known works, but she wrote many more books, stories, poems and essays. She captured the experience of living in the commune her father had founded, Fruitlands, in a fondly satirical book called "Transcendental Wild Oats".
Louisa May Alcott suffered from various ailments and physical difficulties throughout her life. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after the death of her father.
The Louisa May Alcott website is run by the organization that maintains the Orchard House, the Alcott homestead that is now open to visitors in Concord.
The family would soon settle in Concord, Massachusetts, where the young girl would be exposed to the brilliant company of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the rest of the Transcendentalist crowd.
The Transcendentalists taught that each person must find their own peculiar way to contribute to the world, and Louisa May found her way as a writer of popular fiction that was both wholesome and realistic. She wrote poetry and stories for Atlantic Monthly (then a relatively new New England periodical) and other magazines. She worked as a nurse in the civil war and wrote about the experience in "Hospital Sketches", published in the journal "Commonwealth". Her first book was called "Flower Fables", followed by a novel called "Moods", and then by her most popular book, "Little Women".
"Little Women" and "Little Men" were her best known works, but she wrote many more books, stories, poems and essays. She captured the experience of living in the commune her father had founded, Fruitlands, in a fondly satirical book called "Transcendental Wild Oats".
Louisa May Alcott suffered from various ailments and physical difficulties throughout her life. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after the death of her father.
The Louisa May Alcott website is run by the organization that maintains the Orchard House, the Alcott homestead that is now open to visitors in Concord.
Bronson Alcott
by Jessica Parrett on Sunday, June 17, 2001 07:06 pmAmos Bronson Alcott was born into a poor farming family in Wolcott, Connecticut on Nov 29, 1799. He educated himself, and soon after began thinking about how to revolutionize the practice of education.
He began as a teacher, and raised several children with his wife Abigail. He began meeting regularly with fellow New England progressives such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, who would support his endeavors. In 1834 he founded his first experimental institution of education, the Temple School of Boston.
The Temple School would eventually run into financial trouble, a pattern that Alcott would repeat with several later experiments. His most ambitious attempt was a utopian vegan commune called Fruitlands, which he co-founded with mystic Charles Lane.
Alcott was also a political activist. Thoreau famously went to prison for protesting slavery by refusing to pay taxes, but it is a little known fact that Alcott had done the same thing three years before.
Despite his hard work, Bronson Alcott's most successful creation was fashioned of her own design. His daughter was the famous writer Louisa May Alcott, whose classic novel "Little Women" describes her experience as one of several sisters in an unconventional Massachusetts family.
Bronson Alcott died in Concord on March 4, 1888. There are several websites devoted to his life and work, including the A. Bronson Alcott Society and the museum that stands at the site of the Fruitlands project.
He began as a teacher, and raised several children with his wife Abigail. He began meeting regularly with fellow New England progressives such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, who would support his endeavors. In 1834 he founded his first experimental institution of education, the Temple School of Boston.
The Temple School would eventually run into financial trouble, a pattern that Alcott would repeat with several later experiments. His most ambitious attempt was a utopian vegan commune called Fruitlands, which he co-founded with mystic Charles Lane.
Alcott was also a political activist. Thoreau famously went to prison for protesting slavery by refusing to pay taxes, but it is a little known fact that Alcott had done the same thing three years before.
Despite his hard work, Bronson Alcott's most successful creation was fashioned of her own design. His daughter was the famous writer Louisa May Alcott, whose classic novel "Little Women" describes her experience as one of several sisters in an unconventional Massachusetts family.
Bronson Alcott died in Concord on March 4, 1888. There are several websites devoted to his life and work, including the A. Bronson Alcott Society and the museum that stands at the site of the Fruitlands project.
Thoughts On God
by Bill Ectric on Monday, May 7, 2001 07:02 pmTranscendentalism. What does it mean? According to a book called 'Masterpieces of Literature', edited by Frank N. Magill, the Transcendentalists had "a healthy irreverence for secondhand customs and beliefs, especially those transplanted to America from England ... a desire to mend the supposed split between God and man in order to glorify God-man, and they insisted that Christ be seen as a historical personage, a man ..." This was around the 1840's.
In the article written by brooklyn on this same website, Ralph Waldo Emerson had this problem: "Emerson's inability to serve as a traditional pastor caused him serious distress. Stumbling for appropriate words at the bedside of a dying veteran of the American Revolution, he was famously told by the irritable patient, 'Young man, if you don't know your business you had better go home.'"
There are many variations to what people believe in Transcendentalism. You don't have to be an atheist, for example. The beauty of Transcendentalism is that we can discuss these things without fear of judgement. I had the good fortune to discuss the meaning of God with a number of people on this website. I will refer to these fellow travelers by their screen names.
joshuagriffin writes: "Okay, so, to answer the question of 'God': I believe in the prime catalyst; that is to say that the "thing", for lack of a better term "god", that was the mechanism for the first chemical reaction that began evolution ... not necessarily of Humankind, but of everything. I'm against organized religion, because it only offers close-minded regurgitations of texts written centuries ago. Unfortunately, I'm basically ignorant in the details of every major religion; however, I believe that I know enough about the basics of Religion in general to write/speak my opinion. I feel that one should have ideas of their own, rather than memorizations of the all-encompassing book of whatever religion. In closing, Ideas lead to Spirituality and memorizations lead to meaningless conversation. Remember this, ideas are better conversation topics."
Then there was a response by jamelah, which said, "what about the issue of faith? i think faith transcends religion."
Then there is microknee finger, who responded to a question about brain synapses, that mysterious moment in the brain when thought sparks like electricity, who said, "Actually, electricity is made of electrons, I believe (I think it's time to dip into my Feynman's Lectures on Physics again), which are subatomic. But yeah, the idea that conscious thoughts are physical I find incredibly fascinating that subatomic particles can mingle in just such a way to create and sustain life and consciousness is nothing short of mind-bogglingly beautiful ..."
And popejoebaby says: "Native Americans have it right as far as i'm concerned. They worship that which gives, and sustains our lives. Air -- the first breath we take feeds life to our presense. It is present all around all that is present. Water -- we come from water, the water of our Mothers. Water gives us spiritual cleansing. That's why it comforts us when we hear it, see it, feel it. Earth -- our true Mother. We live upon her, feed from her, die upon her, and in the end, return to her unbounded by human frailties. If we have hunted, been brave, been kind, been with the spirit of life, we will live again."
There is a theory that when we first noticed our thoughts, we thought it was God speaking to us. Like when an idea pops into your head from somewhere, they thought, "God is telling me this." And you can always find someone, like my friend Jim Westcott -- and no one can prove he is wrong -- who will say, "I was thinkin' about the brain speakin' to itself and I heard God say, 'Of course I speak through your brain, you moron, how else would I speak to you?'" and if you think about it, it makes sense that all we can know is what our senses and mind can grasp; the physical realities of our world -- planets, atoms, protons & electrons; carbon and oxygen, iron & orange juice, and whatever. Am i a robot? (ooh, that would be kind of cool).
My favorite book of the bible is Ecclesiastes, because it's so much written from the physical, down to earth, mortal viewpoint -- trying to find reason and meaning and satisfaction in work, play, sleep, sex, money, wine, knowledge. To me it has a zen quality to it. Balance.
It's funny how humans almost have to believe in something. In Communist Russia, where they officially didn't believe in god, up until the 80's they were studying psychic phenomena like someone bending a car-key or spoon just by thinking about it, or a medium with a crystal ball solving a murder.
My friend Richard Phelps, who was a seminary student, kept asking questions of his teachers, until one professor finally said, "If a frog had wings it wouldn't bump it's ass on the ground." Apparently the boy had been asking a lot of "if" questions, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's nice to know that even a seminary professor can get to the point where he can talk about a frog's ass.
In the article written by brooklyn on this same website, Ralph Waldo Emerson had this problem: "Emerson's inability to serve as a traditional pastor caused him serious distress. Stumbling for appropriate words at the bedside of a dying veteran of the American Revolution, he was famously told by the irritable patient, 'Young man, if you don't know your business you had better go home.'"
There are many variations to what people believe in Transcendentalism. You don't have to be an atheist, for example. The beauty of Transcendentalism is that we can discuss these things without fear of judgement. I had the good fortune to discuss the meaning of God with a number of people on this website. I will refer to these fellow travelers by their screen names.
joshuagriffin writes: "Okay, so, to answer the question of 'God': I believe in the prime catalyst; that is to say that the "thing", for lack of a better term "god", that was the mechanism for the first chemical reaction that began evolution ... not necessarily of Humankind, but of everything. I'm against organized religion, because it only offers close-minded regurgitations of texts written centuries ago. Unfortunately, I'm basically ignorant in the details of every major religion; however, I believe that I know enough about the basics of Religion in general to write/speak my opinion. I feel that one should have ideas of their own, rather than memorizations of the all-encompassing book of whatever religion. In closing, Ideas lead to Spirituality and memorizations lead to meaningless conversation. Remember this, ideas are better conversation topics."
Then there was a response by jamelah, which said, "what about the issue of faith? i think faith transcends religion."
Then there is microknee finger, who responded to a question about brain synapses, that mysterious moment in the brain when thought sparks like electricity, who said, "Actually, electricity is made of electrons, I believe (I think it's time to dip into my Feynman's Lectures on Physics again), which are subatomic. But yeah, the idea that conscious thoughts are physical I find incredibly fascinating that subatomic particles can mingle in just such a way to create and sustain life and consciousness is nothing short of mind-bogglingly beautiful ..."
And popejoebaby says: "Native Americans have it right as far as i'm concerned. They worship that which gives, and sustains our lives. Air -- the first breath we take feeds life to our presense. It is present all around all that is present. Water -- we come from water, the water of our Mothers. Water gives us spiritual cleansing. That's why it comforts us when we hear it, see it, feel it. Earth -- our true Mother. We live upon her, feed from her, die upon her, and in the end, return to her unbounded by human frailties. If we have hunted, been brave, been kind, been with the spirit of life, we will live again."
There is a theory that when we first noticed our thoughts, we thought it was God speaking to us. Like when an idea pops into your head from somewhere, they thought, "God is telling me this." And you can always find someone, like my friend Jim Westcott -- and no one can prove he is wrong -- who will say, "I was thinkin' about the brain speakin' to itself and I heard God say, 'Of course I speak through your brain, you moron, how else would I speak to you?'" and if you think about it, it makes sense that all we can know is what our senses and mind can grasp; the physical realities of our world -- planets, atoms, protons & electrons; carbon and oxygen, iron & orange juice, and whatever. Am i a robot? (ooh, that would be kind of cool).
My favorite book of the bible is Ecclesiastes, because it's so much written from the physical, down to earth, mortal viewpoint -- trying to find reason and meaning and satisfaction in work, play, sleep, sex, money, wine, knowledge. To me it has a zen quality to it. Balance.
It's funny how humans almost have to believe in something. In Communist Russia, where they officially didn't believe in god, up until the 80's they were studying psychic phenomena like someone bending a car-key or spoon just by thinking about it, or a medium with a crystal ball solving a murder.
My friend Richard Phelps, who was a seminary student, kept asking questions of his teachers, until one professor finally said, "If a frog had wings it wouldn't bump it's ass on the ground." Apparently the boy had been asking a lot of "if" questions, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's nice to know that even a seminary professor can get to the point where he can talk about a frog's ass.
Transcendental America
by Levi Asher on Saturday, April 28, 2001 03:58 pm
America hadn't created many literary movements by July 1840, when Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller began publication of an idealistic journal of social criticism and poetry called "The Dial".
Based in Concord, the journal was published on a quarterly basis between July 1840 and April 1844, and helped to create the sense of an exciting movement of writers, theologians and intellectuals working together to promote their ideas. Other key members of this group included Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, James Greeman Clarke, George Ripley, W. E. Channing and W. H. Channing. This movement became known as American (or, New England) Transcendentalism.
The term 'Transcendentalism' had earlier referred to a group of German philosophers such as Fichte and Schelling who espoused similar ideas. Schelling's 'System of Transcendental Philosophy' is highly abstract, and in fact the younger New England thinkers had most likely encountered this philosophy in literary treatments by advocates of the movement such as Goethe, Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle.
Transcendentalism has also been seen as an American outgrowth of the British Romantic movement and other European progressive trends.
Margaret Fuller
by Jessica Parrett on Thursday, April 26, 2001 07:05 pmSarah Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts on May 23, 1810. Her intellectual journeys began with a rigorous education conducted by her father, a lawyer named Timothy Fuller. She had tremendous enthusiasm for classical learning, and fought for admittance to the male-only Harvard Library.
She corresponded with many of the top writers and academics of her time, and became especially smitten with the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who she sought out and eventually became close friends with. She was one of the core members of the circle of spiritual-minded Concord intellectuals that became known as the Transcendentalists, along with the educator Bronson Alcott, who hired her as a teacher at his progressive Temple School.
Fuller's activities included conducting a series of public "conversations" on lofty philosophical subjects with other women, which generated much attention in these pre-liberated years. These sessions violated a law against organized speaking events for women, which seemed only to have increased their appeal (nobody was ever arrested). Fuller worked closely with Emerson in founding "The Dial", the flagship publication of the Transcendentalist movement, in 1840.
She wrote book reviews for Horace Greeley's Herald Tribune, and used this platform to promote American literature at a time when Europe completely dominated the literary scene. She published several books, including the proto-feminist classic "Woman in the Nineteenth Century."
The first several decades of Margaret Fuller's life were lived in the lofty realm of words and philosophy. This changed in 1847 when she fell in love with the noble-born Italian revolutionary Giovanni Angelo d'Ossoli. She became pregnant, gave birth to a son, and married d'Ossoli, who participated in the wave of violent revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848. Her husband was a Marchese, or "Marquis", and so Margaret Fuller was now a Marchioness, though this may not have mattered much during these stormy years of political change. They remained in Rome until it fell to the French in May 1850, and then boarded a ship bound for America.
Their most primal and horrible moment awaited them. The ship floundered and was wrecked off the Long Island coast during a hurricane on July 19, 1950. A member of the crew tried to swim for safety with their three-year-old son and failed to reach shore. Both Margaret and her new husband were drowned in the wreck.
Henry David Thoreau rushed to the Fire Island beach and saw the wrecked ship where his friend had died. He tried to salvage her last manuscript but was unable to do so.
There is a Margaret Fuller Society, complete with by-laws, newsletter, and listserv, hosted at Texas A&M University.
She corresponded with many of the top writers and academics of her time, and became especially smitten with the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who she sought out and eventually became close friends with. She was one of the core members of the circle of spiritual-minded Concord intellectuals that became known as the Transcendentalists, along with the educator Bronson Alcott, who hired her as a teacher at his progressive Temple School.
Fuller's activities included conducting a series of public "conversations" on lofty philosophical subjects with other women, which generated much attention in these pre-liberated years. These sessions violated a law against organized speaking events for women, which seemed only to have increased their appeal (nobody was ever arrested). Fuller worked closely with Emerson in founding "The Dial", the flagship publication of the Transcendentalist movement, in 1840.
She wrote book reviews for Horace Greeley's Herald Tribune, and used this platform to promote American literature at a time when Europe completely dominated the literary scene. She published several books, including the proto-feminist classic "Woman in the Nineteenth Century."
The first several decades of Margaret Fuller's life were lived in the lofty realm of words and philosophy. This changed in 1847 when she fell in love with the noble-born Italian revolutionary Giovanni Angelo d'Ossoli. She became pregnant, gave birth to a son, and married d'Ossoli, who participated in the wave of violent revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848. Her husband was a Marchese, or "Marquis", and so Margaret Fuller was now a Marchioness, though this may not have mattered much during these stormy years of political change. They remained in Rome until it fell to the French in May 1850, and then boarded a ship bound for America.
Their most primal and horrible moment awaited them. The ship floundered and was wrecked off the Long Island coast during a hurricane on July 19, 1950. A member of the crew tried to swim for safety with their three-year-old son and failed to reach shore. Both Margaret and her new husband were drowned in the wreck.
Henry David Thoreau rushed to the Fire Island beach and saw the wrecked ship where his friend had died. He tried to salvage her last manuscript but was unable to do so.
There is a Margaret Fuller Society, complete with by-laws, newsletter, and listserv, hosted at Texas A&M University.
Henry David Thoreau
by Bill Ectric on Sunday, April 22, 2001 06:50 pm
Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College. From 1841 to 1843 he lived in a cabin near Walden Pond on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He chose to live there to get back to basics; to strip away all the unessential claptrap that clouds our daily lives; to meditate and find God in nature. Because "finding God in nature" has become something of a cliche nowdays, many people do not realize this was a unique idea in the place and time Thoreau lived.
During the time he lived at Walden Pond, Thoreau was arrested for refusing to pay taxes. He said that one must not obey a law if that law is bad. He pointed out that the taxes would help finance America's war with Mexico and also support a government that believed in slavery. He spent one night in jail and someone paid the tax for him. No one knows for sure who paid it but they believe it was his aunt. He was angry and wanted to stay in jail but they kicked him out. He called his refusal to pay the tax "Civil Disobedience" and this was a model for the 60's anti-war protestors and Black leaders like Martin Luther King.
During the late 1960's and early 70's, conservation of our natural resources became very popular, and Henry David Thoreau has been cited by some as the "Father of Conservation." His book 'Walden' was the first book about what would later be called "ecology".
Thoreau died at the age of 44 from tuberculosis on May 6, 1862. It was a short life, but then, he had written his first poems when he was around 12 years old.
Something that stuck with me when I was in the 10th grade was that Thoreau was always walking. He would be seen walking all around Concord, Mass and sometimes talking to his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. I could walk for miles as a kid. I walked across my small home-town in Virginia and across Interstate 81 and into the fields and woods beyond. I breathed the delicious air and marvelled at majestic clouds and intrigued at furtive little animals and bugs in their holes and hiding places. I believe the Virginia countryside and climate is a lot closer to Concord, Mass (with it's changing seasons and rich soil) than where I live now in Florida (with it's thorny alien plant-life, flat sandy soil, and jaggedy-aztec sun). I have recently started going for walks again. There is something about physical activity that releases something in the brain which elevates ones mood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
by Levi Asher on Sunday, April 1, 2001 04:48 am
Born on May 25, 1803 into a lineage of esteemed Boston clergymen, young Ralph Waldo Emerson initially aimed for a career as a Unitarian minister. He studied divinity at Harvard and became pastor of Boston's Second Church (his father, William Emerson, had been the pastor at the First Church).
His sermons were well liked. But it didn't take long for the parishioners, and for the young preacher himself, to realize that his teachings were straining at the boundaries of conventional religion. He would begin his sermons with words from the Bible, but would gradually find himself discussing the unfathomable ideals found in nature, or the irony that wealth made men unhappy, and he would have trouble finding his way back into the Bible to close the speeches. Some of the parishioners loved this -- and the young man had early inklings that he was destined for wide acclaim and fame -- but many of the parishioners did not.
His inability to serve as a traditional pastor caused him serious distress. Stumbling for appropriate words at the bedside of a dying veteran of the American Revolution, he was famously told by the irritable patient, "Young man, if you don't know your business you had better go home."
When his beloved wife Ellen died from tuberculosis (which was then called 'consumption'), a full life crisis began and Emerson began stubbornly refusing to perform the prescribed rites of the Unitarian Church. It was agreed by all that he should resign. In 1832 he was 29 years old and needed to find a new path in life. He travelled to Europe to meet several liberal intellectuals he'd been corresponding with, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Stuart Mill and the historian Thomas Carlyle.
He returned to America energized with new ideas. Settling in Concord northwest of Boston, he remarried and began a family. In 1836 he began publishing his essays. Inspired by the literary Romantic movement that had already swept through Europe, he wrote freely of the great potential of the human spirit, and of the importance of breaking with tradition. One of his greatest essays, "Self-Reliance", urges complete individual freedom as a moral necessity: "Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist." Sarcasm and anger bubbled beneath the calm and dignified surface of his words as he exposed the cowardice and intellectual sloth that shielded the conventional wisdom of his time.
He co-founded a journal called the Dial, and gathered around him a group of like-minded men and women, including Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott (the father of Louisa May). They became known as the New England Transcendentalists. Emerson's two greatest literary discoveries, though, originated outside the original circle.
First was a young neighbor named Henry David Thoreau, who asked Emerson for a letter of recommendation to Harvard when Thoreau was eighteen and Emerson was thirty. Emerson would gradually come to understand the talent of this eccentric neighborhood schoolteacher, who lacked Emerson's graceful personality but made up for it in sheer dynamism. Emerson was a family man and a famous public citizen who could take few risks, but Thoreau, fired with similar ideas, could put these ideas to the test by spending two years in a cabin observing the flow of nature, and allowing himself to go to jail to protest the institution of slavery.
Two decades after Emerson met Thoreau, he received a self-published book of poetry in the mail from an unknown admirer from Brooklyn, New York. Emerson immediately understood the odd genius of Walt Whitman and mailed a letter back to Brooklyn with a famous endorsement, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career" (exactly a century later, Lawrence Ferlinghetti would echo the same words to Allen Ginsberg after hearing Ginsberg perform his new poem Howl).
Along with Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, Emerson fought vigorously against slavery and other forms of prejudice throughout his life. He was also one of the first Western intellectuals to treat Asian religions, such as Buddhism, with respect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson lived a long life devoid of scandal and high drama. He died of pneumonia on April 27, 1882.
It is unfortunate that Ralph Waldo Emerson is only vaguely known among those interested in today's alternative culture. While his writings are universally acclaimed in literary circles, his name seems to induce boredom among everyday readers, who often confuse his refined-sounding name with those of other lofty Anglo-Saxon eminences like Wordsworth or Longfellow. These were all important writers. But Emerson's "Self-Reliance" is to today's indie scene what the Declaration of Independence is to modern-day political freedom.
Concord
by Levi Asher on Friday, March 16, 2001 06:54 pmConcord, a small country town about 15 miles northwest of Boston, was where the colonial American militia stockpiled their guns and ammunition in the months preceding the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The British attempted a surprise attack on the weapon stores in Concord on the night of April 18, 1775.
The colonials had already anticipated this, and on the first sign of British movement Paul Revere, Samuel Prescott and William Dawes rode ahead of the British armies to spread the word. American defenders gathered in Concord and Lexington, and the result was a rout of the British forces and a major victory for the cause of American independence.
Two generations later, a literary and philosophical revolution began in the same town. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott and other progressive thinkers began holding meetings to discuss anti-slavery activism, spirituality, education and the idea of a uniquely American sense of art. They founded a literary journal called "The Dial" to help spread the word, and New England Transcendentalism was born.
Walt Whitman
by Levi Asher on Wednesday, August 31, 1994 08:58 pm
Many writers have been called timeless, but Walt Whitman deserves this description in a special way. He invented himself in 1855 with a slim volume of poetry, 'Leaves of Grass,' that seemed to have come from nowhere and connected to nothing else that was being written at that time or any other. The poems were about himself, plain and simple, especially the ecstatic 'Song Of Myself,' which celebrated the explosive joy of living inside a human body. The poems were as sexually frank as diary entries, and the rhythms of the words took 'free verse' to a new threshold; it was as if meter and rhyme had never existed.
Walter Whitman (he chose to become 'Walt' when he became a writer) was born of Quaker parentage on May 31, 1819 in West Hills near Huntington, Long Island. He was taught in various Long Island schools and worked for several newspapers, including the Brooklyn Eagle. He published some of his writings, but by his mid-thirties had still not displayed the slightest hint of his unique talent and vision. He published 'Leaves of Grass' himself in 1855. He mailed a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who immediately recognized the book's unusual worth and wrote Whitman a letter with the famous line so many writers have since wished to hear: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career."
Whitman was enormously affected by the Civil War, and published a series of wartime poems under the title 'Drum-Taps.' These poems, like many others, were eventually folded into 'Leaves of Grass,' which Whitman added to throughout his life, publishing nine different editions. By the end of his life Whitman was a tremendous literary celebrity. In the 20th Century the example of his unhinged poetic rhythms provided Allen Ginsberg the only voice that could speak the words of 'Howl.'
Whitman died on March 26, 1892 in Camden, New Jersey.
In Huntington, Long Island, Walt Whitman is memorialized by a huge shopping mall where teenagers shop for shirts and mothers lug screaming babies through the echoing halls, the immortal words of the Good Gray Poet on the minds of each and every one. I did a photo essay at this mall, which you can see here as part of my web project, Queensboro Ballads. You can also read more about Whitman and his parallels with the Beat Generation here.
Gary Snyder
by Levi Asher on Monday, July 25, 1994 02:03 pmAmerican, Beat Generation, Biography, Eastern, Ecology, Nature, Poetry, Politics, Religion, Summer Of Love, Transcendentalism
You have to be careful writing about Gary Snyder, because he's such a Zen guy you get the feeling anything you write will be vastly inferior to silence. People tend to be impressed by Gary Snyder: Jack Kerouac was so knocked out by his mountain-climber courage and Buddhist calmness that he wrote one of his best books, The Dharma Bums, about him. Snyder's poems, charged with the consciousness of Buddha-nature, made him a Beat celebrity as a young man, and he remains a widely respected symbol of a certain peaceful and contemplative literary state of mind.
So I probably already deserve a sharp blow on the back with a stick for this inane blathering, and I'll just briefly summarize the pertinent facts of Snyder's life and then send you along to one of his poems, which I'll type in as an exercise in right mindfulness.
