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The rhythm of the readings we had for this week strike me as very different compared to the poetry and prose that we have read thus far. With the knowledge that we have about these writings are taken almost verbatim from personal letters Whitman wrote, perhaps I feel as though they are the most “life-like” for this reason exactly. The rhythm seems to be of a quicker tempo; a bit staccato, if you will. It seems to be very broken language, colloquial-like, without caring much about a flow. Very stream-of-conscious in the sense that he just says whatever comes to mind as fast as he can – like there is so much to say, but just not enough time (or paper, I guess!).

In two of the pieces, I noticed that Whitman used the word “melange,” which is a French word meaning a mixture, or medley of (typically) incongruous elements. I found this word choice rather intriguing, but quite Whitmanesque, considering that he always alludes to the fact that the mixing of races and genders is of no negativity in his own mind. The images of medley stem from the Civil War – that on the battlefield, the North and South are mixing together to fight for or against a single idea (in this case, slavery). How about also the idea of the white and black Americans joining together as one unit, versus white supremacy in power over the inferior blacks, even though not all would be slaves at this time (some would have already joined the Northern part of the U.S.).

I found it a bit disturbing how Whitman describes the cedar tree in such detail. I was not disturbed in such a way that I was scared, but I was taken back by how Whitman seemed to personify, almost, the tree’s position not only in the ground but also in the presence of a human’s life (the crazy old woman he sees in Camden). What about the cedar made her have such zeal and joy? Was it because she was crazy and was impressed by almost anything? Was Whitman’s interpretation of her zeal and joy mistaken for something else? Why did Whitman include the point about her “well-off married daughter”? Did I miss the point here? I’m assuming that the same person from whom he heard the lady was harmless told him that she lived with this daughter of hers… but why it would make a difference to the rest of the story?

The last little section of the “Cedar-Plums Like – Names” was pretty powerful, I felt. The point that everything has a name to distinguish it and separate its characteristics from other things can be translated into the names of people. Without names, we’d all be just faces, but what good is that when a name gives our face a purpose? It appears throuh this section that perhaps one of the major reasons for name-giving is to determine with what and whom we like to associate ourselves, so that each item/person is the basis for all other distinctions.