“The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature... (they) themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”
This is how Walt opens up the second paragraph of his Leaves of Grass poems. He goes on to say that the genius and poetic nature of America is not figureheads and not the things people would recall as its defining characteristics but that it is the common people. The people of America had a moderate attitude towards most things and a limp, careless gait while walking down streets.Things like freedom and novelty were just accepted as as a trait in the individual and the power of these carefree, common people is more powerful than senators or priests. This was Walt’s manifest dream that was soon to be destructed.
The first point Walt makes is that Americans emanate a sort of carefree attitude and a beautiful kind of laziness: "The picturesque looseness of their carriages." In a way that still exists, but in a different kind of way. The American species acknowledged that they were lazy creatures and became enveloped in lazy ordeals such as video games, artificial suns (lightboxes) and television. With the evolution of the species, laziness evolved into something Walt would've disapproved off and a laziness that lacks all beauty.
Americans, as Whitman puts it in his opening paragraph, are content and live in accordance with the 'old, simple ways of life'. He is also extremely intrigued by the way Americans integrated the old ways with the new ways of life in a perfect recipe. And that observation is also as true today as ever before in the government. Our laws, ideals, religions all stem off of archaic ideals and we are now haunted with a thing called Conservativism, where people believe in morals and norms that no longer line up in the culture and state of the modern world.
It is my belief that Walt grayed faster than the typical human, or maybe even the modern day stock traders that have a hard time juggling all of the day’s chaos, balding at a premature age. Railroads were drilling tunnels though his forests, and towns and cities were being erected in mindless balk. Western expansion and industrialization were both strangling the environment that he praised as being beautiful and necessary; while Indian Relocation and Civil War served as a beautiful example of the American Coldness. A hard burden to bare, but he carried the burden with an indescribable optimism that was pushed forward in all he did, the poetry that he wrote.
The first point Walt makes is that Americans emanate a sort of carefree attitude and a beautiful kind of laziness: "The picturesque looseness of their carriages." In a way that still exists, but in a different kind of way. The American species acknowledged that they were lazy creatures and became enveloped in lazy ordeals such as video games, artificial suns (lightboxes) and television. With the evolution of the species, laziness evolved into something Walt would've disapproved off and a laziness that lacks all beauty.
Americans, as Whitman puts it in his opening paragraph, are content and live in accordance with the 'old, simple ways of life'. He is also extremely intrigued by the way Americans integrated the old ways with the new ways of life in a perfect recipe. And that observation is also as true today as ever before in the government. Our laws, ideals, religions all stem off of archaic ideals and we are now haunted with a thing called Conservativism, where people believe in morals and norms that no longer line up in the culture and state of the modern world.
It is my belief that Walt grayed faster than the typical human, or maybe even the modern day stock traders that have a hard time juggling all of the day’s chaos, balding at a premature age. Railroads were drilling tunnels though his forests, and towns and cities were being erected in mindless balk. Western expansion and industrialization were both strangling the environment that he praised as being beautiful and necessary; while Indian Relocation and Civil War served as a beautiful example of the American Coldness. A hard burden to bare, but he carried the burden with an indescribable optimism that was pushed forward in all he did, the poetry that he wrote.
JIM JIM
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