Good old Walt...

19 February 2014: Walt Whitman has been the subject of conversation these past two days in ENGL 204. As you can imagine, that makes me happy all on its own. But there's more...

As I've noted before, all the snow days this semester have made establishing a good class rhythm and report a bit difficult. Today, though, students who hadn't had much to say before responded--and responded well--to Whitman.

"What," I asked them, "do you remember that we covered last time when we talked about Whitman?"

"Swagger!" one student answered. I love this answer because it is a response to this little presentation I always do, showing students images of other nineteenth-century poets (traditional head or shoulders-and-up shots of men in suits gazing off into the distance) versus this iconic picture of Whitman.

In response, we talk about how this visual representation of the poet--the representation he gives us in place of a name--echoes the themes he'll celebrate in his poems. And we talk about that swagger, (although I didn't use that exact word, at least not before today). How that swagger is his, but how he wants you, his reader, to have it, too.

I could go on and on, but I won't. I'll just say that the classes--both sections--were awesome today. Walt never lets you down.