Green Leaves : An Ecocritical Reading of Whitman’s Camden Poetry

1. Green Leaves:An Ecocritical Reading of Whitman’s Camden Poetry “Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions…” —“This Compost” (42-3)

2. Selecting a Topic • Explication and Bibliographic Essay • Maria Farland’s “Decomposing City” • Ideas for further investigation (bibliographic essay conclusion) • Research Objectives • Investigate the physical environment of Camden in the late nineteenth century • Locate references to environmental concerns or issues in poetry written between 1873-1892 • Recognize how the physical environment of Camden influenced Whitman’s poetry

3. Methodology/Critical Approach What is Ecocriticism? • Also known as Environmental Criticism or Green Studies • Termed in the late 1970s, popularized in the 1990s • Ecocriticism “explores the relations between literature and the biological and physical environment, conducted with an acute awareness of the devastation that has been wrought on that environment by human activities.” (Abrams and Harpham 87)

4. Methodology/Critical Approach What is Ecocriticism? • No single theoretical perspective (approaches include traditional, poststructural, and postcolonial) • Breaking down a binary: Anthropocentrism vs. Ecocentrism • Eco-whatever!New deviations of ecocriticism include focuses on race, ethnicity, social class, and gender (Ecofeminism)

5. Research Conducted • Scope of Research • Poems written from 1873-1892 • Selected earlier work for which ecocritical lens has already been applied • Omission of prose works • Types of Sources Consulted • Background on environmental criticism and ecocriticism • Environmental/ecocritical readings of earlier Whitman work • Historical background on life in Camden during Whitman’s stay

6. Questions that arose… • Where does Whitman recognize the potentially destructive consequences of the developing nation? • Why doesn’t Whitman incorporate more of the negative environmental effects of Camden life in his later poetry? • How do we resolve Whitman’s spectrum of commentary (from a lack of concern to an emphasis on it)?

7. Thesis An ecocritical reading of a selection of poems written during Whitman’s years in Camden reveals the poet’s conflicted thoughts on the effects of industrialization on the natural landscape. While ultimately favoring expansion in order to uphold the ideologies of the country he wrote for, Whitman demonstrates both a growing apprehension about and a desire to pursue further expansion—a concern to which contemporary nineteenth-century Americans could relate.

8. Basic Outline for Paper • Introduction • Brief Background on Ecocriticism • Previous Ecocritical Readings of Whitman • Background on Whitman’s Camden • The Camden Poems • Criticism of Anthropocentrism • Celebration of Anthropocentrism • Celebration of a Harmony between Man and Nature • Looking to the Future • Conclusions and Further Opportunities

9. Criticism of Anthropocentrism “Yonnondio” (1887) • A lament for the physical and historical loss of Native American culture • Technology and warfare are discussed as contributing to this “loss” • Parallels to the expansion/development into the West I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors, As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight… …blank and gone and still, and utterly lost. (4-6, 12)

10. Celebration of Anthropocentrism “Song of the Redwood-Tree” (1874) • Seems to work against the message in “Yonnondio” • Whitman extols the popular ideology of expansion and Manifest Destiny • The tree suffers, but that suffering will lead to renewal and support for the growing human race Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire, lands of the Western shore… The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic chemistry, This slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripening… Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of the past so grand, To build a grander future. (64, 87-8,104-5)

11. Harmony between Man & Nature “To a Locomotive in Winter” (1876) • Technology (the locomotive) is shown as existing in balance with nature (the winter) • Cacophony of the poem’s sounds creates a song-like rhythm that demonstrates harmony Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent… Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong. (13, 24-5)

12. Harmony between Man & Nature “Mannahatta” (1888) • A celebration of the city and its natural and industrial qualities • Juxtaposition of natural imagery and the urban environment Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies, The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes, (7, 16)

13. Promise for the Future “The Prairie States” (1880) • A clear statement of Whitman’s faith in the expanding West • The prairie represents the result of the “cost” paid by the past • Whitman acknowledges the anthropocentrism that brings destruction, but emphasizes the promise of further development and growth A newer garden of creation… Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributed… To justify the past. (1, 2-4, 6)

14. Research Conclusions • Whitman’s Camden poetry represents a range that seems to reveal both the negative consequences and potential benefits of industrialization. • Despite the negative aspects of the city that surrounded him as he wrote, Whitman ultimately supports the positive results of industrialization, but reveres the price that must be paid for such expansion. • These comments on the developing country are usually focused on areas located far from Whitman’s actual location. • Whitman’s desire to be “America’s poet” is likely a major influence on his inevitable stance.