"Song of Myself" is certainly an important poem, but it is hardly Whitman's best. I would give that title to something out of the "Sea Drift" section of Leaves of Grass. My own choice would ptobably be "As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life," which meant so much to me when I was in my moorless 30s. You don't get better poetry than this:
O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have
not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real
Me stands yet untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon
me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
I know so well how that feels. To have a family to support and literary ambitions and to know that at present you are going nowhere and may be a fake.
Regarding Frost's "Directive," see 'Hard to Understand, but Easy to Love.' (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I agree with you about the Whitman choice. "Song of Myself" was an easy, not very thoughtful choice. I would have picked one of the Calamus poems, probably, like "When I Heard at the Close of Day."
ReplyDeleteI also wouldn't have included either Lowell or Ashbery on my list. Dickinson definitely belongs there, and it's good to see Frost represented although that's an idiosyncratic choice.
"Dry Salvages" is not the Four Quartets. It is one of four poems in the Four Quartets.
ReplyDeleteI nominate Gjertrud Schnackenberg's "Supernatural Love" -- as close to perfect as a poem can get.
My list would have to include Jim Harrison's little book "Letters to Yesenin," which I think is one of the best American poems of the past 50 years.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd be okay with including "Four Quartets" in its entirety on the list. Of all the Eliot work, this is what I re-read most often.