Song of Myself
1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.Walt Whitman from “Song of Myself”
For years when I thought of “the concept of myself,” I would automatically think of Whitman’s long poem “Song of Myself.” Upon first reading this poem in college, I fell in love with it. It stated more eloquently than I could ever hope to express an image of myself that I hoped to attain in my lifetime.
Yes, I knew even then that this was a romanticized, idealistic view of mankind, just as the Christianity I was brought up with offered an idealized view of man’s ability to attain perfection if only we could follow Christ’s example. But this view also fit in quite well with the Transcendentalist view of the world and the Romantic tradition in England that I admired so much in my early years in college.
Though my later experiences with people, particularly as a soldier in Vietnam and as a caseworker, would certainly call into question this view of human nature, I think I still held to it unconsciously. It was my inspiration for my work as a caseworker and as a teacher. I felt, given the right opportunity, people would find the best in themselves and become better people.
Perhaps it wasn’t until I taught a literature class that included Lord of the Flies and When the Legends Die that I really re-examined these beliefs. I grouped these novels and accompanying short stories into two opposing views of human nature. The first group suggested that man was inherently evil and that only society’s rules kept mankind from slipping into anarchy and crime. Having taught 9th graders for several years, I could certainly see where Golding got his inspiration. The second group suggested that man was inherently good and that society’s evils corrupted some men and drove them to crime. The story of an Indian youth nearly destroyed by the “white man’s” school seemed just as convincing as Golding’s vision of boys run amuck on a deserted island.
When students wrote essays justifying one view or the other, I accepted either answer as correct because intellectually there is little convincing evidence to prove one view’s superiority over the other.
Deep down, though, I knew I was living my life believing that man was inherently good and society corrupted him. That was probably the only way I could have operated as a caseworker and as a teacher. I couldn’t have taught if I had had to maintain absolute discipline in the classroom and crush any student who dared to challenge my authority. I was there to help students, not control them.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I have been immune to the apocalyptic vision of mankind. It’s hard to reject out-of-hand visions like those in Road Warrior or Matrix. It’s even harder to ignore the capitalistic greed that continues to sacrifice the environment to meet an insatiable need for things, useless or not. It’s almost as hard to believe this will ever change considering that Emerson decried over a hundred years ago that “Things are in the saddle/And ride mankind.”
In moments of despair, I even envision a Malthusian world where the nature can no longer support the hordes of people overwhelming it. With such a vision in mind, it’s hard for me not to justify environmental radicals who defy the law to preserve the wilderness. In the end, though, my faith in man’s ability to learn from his mistakes hand, causes me to contribute generously to environmental groups rather than to pick up my shotgun and defend what’s left of my favorite western wildernesses.
My intellect at times goads me into believing this is a corrupt world driven by individual and corporate greed, but my heart, defying all logic, still wants to believe Whitman’s view is right on the mark.
Doc Searls offers a tribute to Whitman and an interesting compilation of lines from "Song of Myself."
Looking for Myself
The Civil War
I am torn in two
but I will conquer myself.
I will dig up the pride.
I will take scissors
and cut out the beggar.
I will take a crowbar
and pry out the broken
pieces of God in me.
Just like a jigsaw puzzle,
I will put Him together again
with the patience of a chess player.How many pieces?
It feels like thousands,
God dressed up like a whore
in a slime of green algae.
God dressed up like an old man
staggering out of His shoes.
God dressed up like a child,
all naked,
even without skin,
soft as an avocado when you peel it.
And others, others, others.But I will conquer them all
and build a whole nation of God
in me – but united,
build a new soul,
dress it with skin
and then put on my shirt
and sing an anthem,
a song of myself.Anne Sexton from The Awful Rowing Toward God
It frightens me how much I like this poem, not to mention this whole book of poems. The anguish in these poems is so intense, so palpable, that I know immediately, no matter how uncomfortable I may be, that I am directly in touch with a human soul in anguish. The poems must appeal to my shadow, my darker side, because they’re not the kind of poems I’m usually drawn to, at least I hope I’m not.
But there is something so authentic, so powerful, so frightening in this poem that I am irresistibly drawn to it – like it or not. What I find most frightening of all in the poem, though, is the last line, “a song of myself,” with its allusion to one of my favorite poems, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Although her stated goal may be the same as Whitman’s goal of becoming One with the Oversoul, the means of doing so are so frighteningly different that both poems are cast in a new light.
The poem begins calmly enough with feelings that I, and most readers, have certainly felt: the desire to conquer opposing forces drawing you different ways so you can go where you want to go. And certainly pride is as much a problem with me as it is with most people. (It’s hard to be humble when so many people are drawn to your web site:)
Thank God, though, I’ve never thought about taking “scissors” and digging my pride out. If I had feelings like this, I would damn sure keep only child-safe scissors in my house. Like most people, I, too, have felt that whatever goodness is in me is fragmented and leading nowhere, but using a crowbar to pry out the “broken pieces of God” certainly is not a pleasant prospect. And trying to put a giant puzzle of God together, especially since I have no idea what he looks like, would probably take the patience of Job, not just a chess player.
It’s even harder to identify with the images of God that appear in the next stanza, particularly the one of God dressed up as a “whore in a slime of green algae,” though maybe that’s just because I’m a man. The image of God dressed as an old man somehow reminds me of Blake’s Nobodaddy, and the image of the child certainly brings up images of the newborn Jesus. However, the image of the child as a soft avocado peeled without skin is a deeply disturbing one. God only knows what the “others, others, others” are. Are they so horrible that she can’t even describe them? A truly frightening thought.
I want to believe the narrator will be able to conquer all these elements of herself and build a new soul and sing an anthem of herself. However, it seems unlikely she will be able to “conquer” all these pieces of God, much less “build a whole nation of God.” Can one conquer even one omnipotent God? I’m somehow left with the feeling that if she puts on a shirt it will be a “hair” shirt as a sign of her self-flagellation.
While her despair seems so great that it is almost unthinkable that she can overcome it, this is precisely what we most wish for her. In the end, though, all I am left with is the slight hope that somehow through her ability to articulate her despair so brilliantly and through her deep insights into herself she will be able to conquer these demons that haunt her.
In a Dark Time
Here’s the poem this journal takes its title from:
IN A DARK TIME
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks-is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened. summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Theodore Roethke’s “In a Dark Time” seems even more powerful today than when I first read it in 1965. It stands as a masterpiece in itself but takes on added depth when read within the context of Roethke’s entire body of works. When one understands the dark nature of many of Roethke’s earlier poems, poems like “Epidermal Macabre,” “Weed Puller, or longer poems like “The Lost Son,” the transcendence suggested in the phrase “and one is One” is amazing. In another sense, though, it is a “typical” Roethke poem because many of his poems attempt to move from despair to hope.
The first line of the poem suggests the essence of the poem, the idea that in a dark time, a time of despair, one begins to find oneself. Too often we lose ourselves in our despair and give up all hope, but the loss of the most important things in life can also help us gain insights that enrich our future life. Indeed, perhaps it is only in such moments of despair that we can find our true selves because they test who we are and what we truly believe.
When the poet sees his “shadow” he sees his alter ego, perhaps even the dark side of his soul, in this increasing darkness. The “echo,” though it may seem merely to reflect the idea of the shadow, instead seems to indicate a different idea, the idea that he finds himself reflected in nature, which is usually a source of insight and power in Roethke’s poetry. This idea of highs and lows is mirrored in the closing lines where he uses images of “the wren,” high, and, “serpents of the den.” low.
The line “What’s madness but nobility of soul/ At odds with circumstance” seems particularly poignant considering the number of times Roethke was committed to a mental institution for treatment. Certainly if anyone could understand the “purity of despair” he could. “That place among the rocks-is it a cave,/Or winding path?” forces us to wonder how many times in the midst of this tormenting “fire” he felt he saw a way out, like Yeats’ spiral path, only to discover that was a source of greater despair, the cave of the “serpents of the den.” In these moments of despair, he seems to be constantly walking on the edge of the abyss.
In this “dark night of the soul” he receives many “messages,” literal or symbolic. It is a night when the birds, often used to represent the soul, fly away, as if suddenly disturbed by some force or as if leaving the body behind. The complex symbol of the “ragged moon” suggests “lunacy” or loss of imagination, while the eclipse suggests that the dark side is prevailing and that all hope is lost. The “unnatural light” reinforces the idea that the forces of darkness are at work here. Worst of all, there are no tears, as if no one really cares what is happening, even the poet himself.
The poet, a “heat-maddened” fly desperately buzzing at death’s door, simply wants to die. And miraculously, at this very moment of the “death of the self,” the poet finds himself and God, becoming one with One, and he is suddenly “free in the tearing wind,” free in spirit, no longer held by the flesh. It’s almost Zen-like, or perhaps the kind of merging with God that Christian Saints felt in mystical moments.
This final transcendence seems more convincing because of the powerful images of despair that precede it. This is no easy victory, no easy transformation promised in a book. This is the record of a hard-won victory by this man at this moment.
And, if Roethke can win his victory over the forces of darkness and despair, there is hope that I can too.
Here’s a number of Roethke resources on the web.
A Scott Ruescher essay on Roethke’s collected poems.
A Roethke page at the Academy of American Poets
This site is a touching dedication to Roethke
Eleven of Roethke’s poems are included here if you want some background. “The Far Field” and a “Journey to the Interior” might shine the most light on “In a Dark Time.”
A Form of Spiritual Testimony
Stanley Kunitz’s poetry, at least for me, is “a form of spiritual testimony, the sign of the inviolable self consolidated against the enemies within and without that would corrupt or destroy human pride and dignity.” The poem “The Layers” is precisely the kind of poem that helps us see that the spirit can endure, for Kunitz has lived a remarkable life, and when you read his “confessional” poems you see just how his spirit has endured throughout a remarkable life.
THE LAYERS
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
Maybe you have to be older to appreciate this poem, but I find “The Layers” not only delightful, but insightful. Because we get caught up in our day-to-day life we tend to lose sight of the fact that we are continually changing and that we are not the person now that we were several years ago. Sometimes it takes but a single event to change us. A war, a divorce, an operation.
It is difficult to remain true to principles when struggling against forces that threaten to defeat you. For instance, fighting in a war can make you question whether human’s are basically loving in nature, and a marriage gone astray can make you question whether true love truly exists. You hope, though, that “some principle of being abides,” that you are able to remain true to yourself.
If you are lucky there is still a “will intact to go wherever I need to go” and you will be able to focus on the best parts of life, “not on the litter.”
Most of all, you hope that you will be able to remain true to your principles during the next transformation, the one that has already begun but is still waiting to be discovered.