The Promised Land Project: Whitman: A Vision of Westward Expansion

Turning Vision into Action....at least hypothetically

Strike up the music of the band
We're blazing a trail for the promised land
Heaven on earth is within you.

Through the writing of stories, poetry, essays, and a novel, I’ve creatively contended with the consumer culture and the problem of the ideal in the modern era. This preoccupation in time would lead to a vision of cultural transformation and where I believe our democratic society needs to go to truly progress beyond the modern era. Conceding my limited credibility, this blog provides a synthesis of recognized visionaries, poets, and writers with the objective of making a credible argument. Ultimately, it is a certain feeling the project strives to inspire and sustain on a certain level, making more vital use of poetry and the arts; consequently whether one agrees or not is less important than whether one senses it and feels it over time.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Whitman: A Vision of Westward Expansion

In turning away from Europe to write distinctly American poetry, Whitman would turn westward. The first edition of Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, arrived at a time of United States westward expansion. Whitman's visionary poetry can be both characteristic of his time and place in the nineteenth-century America and transcendent of his time.

In the poem "Song of Myself," one can see the individual pride and the nationalism that would take on more destructive forms in the twentieth-century. One can see the nineteenth century American rationale of manifest destiny as a precursor to the twentieth-century German rationale of Lebensraum. While one can see the individual pride that would become central to our present consumer culture, there is also in Whitman, I believe, that which remains transcendent and relevant to our current democratic society. Continuing on the Whitman trail, I believe we can discover that which can unite us.