We’re a few weeks into the afterglow of Whitman on Walls!, and I want to share just a bit of feedback from one of the students in the audience. The point here isn’t just that she enjoyed the event – although she did! – but also that she found the event empowering in that it invited her into a community of poets and thinkers.
So, with her permission, here is a response from Danielle Chiarello:
Last Saturday I attended the Whitman on Walls event, and although it wouldn’t usually be the kind of event I would attend myself, I am glad I decided to go. In every English class I have been a student in, I have always struggled with grasping the meaning and the story in poems. I think this is because in my middle or high school classes, I often found myself just reading poetry, and never hearing anyone speak it aloud. Prior to this event, I have been very familiar with Walt Whitman. Where I am from on Long Island, a neighboring school district and a mall is named after him, and I have even gone to his house when I was younger. In my senior year of high school, my teacher asked the class to read a specific poem by Whitman, and then create our own version of it. I really struggled with this assignment. I have never been good at poetry; however, I still did my best and received a good grade. Regardless of the grade I received, I felt that I didn’t grasp anything from the assignment. By sitting in the room last Saturday, and hearing all different people speak, I found that I was able to find more meaning in the words that they spoke in comparison to what I would have found if I had just read it myself. By attending Whitman on Walls, I was able to see how much power words really had. I saw this through all the poets, including my classmates, that read their poems, and even in the short films they presented. I have learned that poetry has much more meaning than just the words on the page. If a reader really takes time to decipher each stanza, line, and even word that is in the poem, they would be able to see the ideas of what Whitman, or any other poet, is trying to illustrate much more than just by reading it as you would with any other book.
In the words I highlighted, Danielle reveals one of the most important motivations for the Whitman on Walls! event and similar public poetry events that we have in the English deparment: poetry is a spoken and performed medium, not just words on a page. That’s always been true, from the oral improvisational epics of Homer to Shakespeare’s public stage – but one of the most important elements of twenty-first century poetic culture is how public and oral it is today. Poetry is performance – as we all, both those of us who performed and those in the audience, showed at Whitman on Walls!
Thanks to Danielle for her insightful comments!
Also – for anyone (like me!) who can’t quite get enough of Whitmania, we’re having a Third Thursdays event in the Writing Center this week, on Th 11/21, at 5 pm, for students to read poems that we didn’t have space for on Sat 10/26. Please come!
Leave a Reply