Comments on: Thoughts on Song of The Open Road

By: Paul Mags

Paul Mags — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 23:08:58 +0000

In reply to Lawrence. Ah! But Emerson and Thoreau were content in their domains. While Whitman cautioned about our burdens, he ultimately championed traveling and championed the freedom.

By: Lawrence

Lawrence — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 18:53:12 +0000

Emerson expressed the same sentiment in “Self-Reliance”:

“Travelling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me in the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

By: Paul Mags

Paul Mags — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 01:43:40 +0000

In reply to Lisa T. THank you!

By: Lisa T

Lisa T — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 10:21:30 +0000

One of my favorite poems, ever ( and I’ve been around awhile…). I love your musings and insightful comments about journeying using Whitman as a touchstone. I’ve always taken note of those four unsung ( no pun intended ) lines– you carry your light and heavy burdens with you wherever you go. How fortunate for us all that Whitman did not romanticize travel as pure escapism.
Thanks, too, grannyhiker for your lovely analysis.

By: grannyhiker

grannyhiker — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 04:04:21 +0000

Hooray, another Whitman fan! Thank you for the insightful analysis of the opening of a classic American poem. I’ve been reading about Whitman in relation to the Civil War, (“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”), but I need to go back to his earlier poems like this one. It’s so true that we take our “old delicious burdens” (not always so delicious, IMHO) with us! Sometimes, even if we can’t leave them behind, the journey helps us put them in perspective.

Whitman was uniquely American, unlike most 19th century American poets. Nursing wounded and diseased soldiers (disease killed more soldiers than battles) in the Washington DC hospitals during the Civil War is said to have taken most of the poetry out of him. After reading “Lilacs” (an elegy on Lincoln’s death); I’m not too sure about that.