Reading Response Prompts
 

These prompts are meant to get you thinking about what you have read, and to help focus your thoughts for your reading responses. You can respond to any one of them, or, if you have another idea you would rather explore, you are free to write about that instead. Do not, however, attempt to answer multiple prompts for any assignment. If you choose to pursue an idea of your own or are not writing a response that day, you should still spend at least a few minutes thinking about each of the prompts in preparation for class. For more information, review the listserv assignment.
Walt Whitman, Other Poems from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, all of which are untitled in this edition: [“A Song for Occupations”], [“[To Think of Time”], [“The Sleepers”], [“I Sing the Body Electric”], [“Europe: The 72nd and 73rd Years of These States”], [“Who Learns My Lesson Complete”], [“Great are the Myths”]

Consider Whitman as a poet of democracy. What evidence in the poems reveals his political leanings?

Consider Whitman as an erotic poet.  What kind of sexuality is being expressed here?  I am not referring to homosexuality or heterosexuality; rather I mean the relationship Whitman describes between himself and all of his “lovers,” by which he seems to mean everyone, even in those poems that are not literally sexual. Look particularly at “The Sleepers.”

Consider Whitman as a physical poet or a poet of the body. Examine the 1855 untitled poem that he would title eventually title “I Sing the Body Electric.” Contrast Whitman’s understanding of the relationship between body and soul with Emerson’s.

Consider Whitman as a Transcendalist or Emersonian poet. As I have mentioned, Whitman saw his book as an ongoing project, what he called in his notebooks “The Great Construction of the New American Bible.” In what ways do these poems serve as religious or devotional literature?
 
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