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“I
too lived--
Ian Maloney
Teaching
Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” within the contexts
of modern day
My
plan was twofold: one, have a dramatic reading of the poem
from the multi-cultural members of my class out in full
view of the natural setting that Whitman referenced so prominently,
namely, the ferry waterfront from the college rooftop and
the backdrop of the Manhattan cityscape; two, have a discussion
centered around the connections forged between Whitman and
the current students of St. Francis College, a small liberal-arts
commuter school in the heart of Brooklyn Heights, NY, which
serves a diverse student body, with students drawn from
a variety of ethnicities and very different economic and
educational backgrounds. Students in my summer course
majored in everything from education to the social sciences,
from the humanities to nursing. The class brought together
native New Yorkers--Brooklynites, Manhattanites, and Staten
Islanders--international students from Trinidad and Eastern
Europe, a student from
On our first day discussing Whitman, I found myself sitting in my office early in the morning, anxious about my experiment to follow. Taking the students up on the roof could be construed as grandstanding; maybe I was trying too hard for a Dead Poets Society moment. I felt a bit like Mr. Keating with his grainy portrait of Uncle Walt in the front of the classroom that first day when we began “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” How would this change in setting be accepted? Would it help or hinder the teaching of Whitman’s poem? Could I translate my enthusiasm for this poem to a diverse group of student learners, even when some of the students in my class would have chosen oral surgery over talking about poetry? How do I do this without sounding hokey or preachy? Would they brand me a Keating wannabe and dismiss Whitman entirely? I cringed at the thought of a mass revolt; I hoped for some divine intervention on the part of the gray-bearded poet. In a strange way, I received what I asked for.
As I strolled into the old science classroom into which my college had dropped Survey of American Literature, I secretly was hoping that students wouldn’t laugh when I prompted them to take their books and follow me. A few of the students looked around when told that a change in classroom setting was in order. Some seemed to be asking in a Brooklyn-accented interior monologue: “Is this guy for real?” Most of the college’s community felt the same way, as my class of 25 students paraded up the stairs and out onto the roof. Security guards appeared three times in the first fifteen minutes up there to inquire if something was wrong, if everything was ok; one guard even asked: do you have everything under control up here, Professor? I could see administrators come to the rooftop door throughout that two-hour class session just to check and see what was going on up there. Occasionally, they stopped to listen in on the discussion.
Once
the students got comfortable up on the roof, we turned to
reading the poem aloud. We read the entire poem, five or
six lines per student. Voices rang out; some were loud and
clear; others were softer and a bit muffled. The
At
the close of the reading, we began to talk. The power of
Whitman’s poetry could be gauged by the diverse reactions from students. On one end of the
spectrum, students react powerfully against the text: A
middle-aged nursing student from
I’m a bit startled by this hostility--and before I can throw in my opinion, the quiet student, who gave a near professional performance of the poem, states her opinion, from the opposite end of the spectrum: “You’re missing the point, I think. I mean this poem is talking about the things that bring us together. We do share similarities across time--those ferry riders are people like us, sharing daily struggles, triumphs, failures, hopes, and dreams. It’s all here. You’re just looking at it too literally. I think you have to see the broader picture he’s talking about.”
With those two opinions voiced, I was happy to see Mary Louise Pratt’s contact zone come into focus right there on the rooftop, without much prompting. I saw our class becoming one of such “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly symmetrical relations of power” (584). I saw lines being drawn through the air--students sitting on black rooftop tar, taking sides and thinking about the space between them and Whitman. Those lines either would have to hold, fold, expand, or snap during the course of the Whitman discussions. The nursing student and the quiet professional, unknowingly, had created a silent divide in the class and sides were quickly drawn in each student’s mind.
I chime in at this point. I admit to my nursing student that there is something unsettling in Whitman’s poem. He is reaching out to us across the page and across the span of time. I explain that this connection across time was what Whitman was seeking. The nursing student quickly looked through the text and read a few lines again, “Closer yet I approach you / What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you--I laid in my stores in advance / I considered long and seriously of you before you were born”(153). I can see the future nurse glare towards the quiet professional, almost as if to say: “You buy into THIS? This poet is thinking of ME before I was even born?” The quiet professional fires back with a calculated line, “These and all else were to me the same as they to you”(152). There is a palpable tension on that rooftop. I can feel it myself. The nursing student speaks again, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s me, but this just seems like bragging. Whitman seems so egotistical. How can he look ahead to me? What is he? God? He sounds sacrilegious.” A few traditionally-minded students echo similar concerns, believing that Whitman is over-stepping his boundaries and biting off a bit more than he can chew. His omniscience startles them. I begin to talk a little bit about Whitman’s Transcendentalism--Emerson, the Over-Soul, the Poet. I make the necessary teacher connection with Emerson’s praise of Whitman at the start of a great career, but something holds me back from delving much further into nineteenth-century religion and mysticism. I’m losing my audience; I can see it. Even the quiet professional student senses a teacher tirade on the way. I’m also losing the impact of my setting. Many of them are staring past me--the cityscape, the construction, the administrators at the rooftop door, even the rooftop tar below their feet seem far more interesting than my Emersonian connection.
I need to re-center the discussion. I know it. I’m reminded that many of the students think in very traditional ways. If I push Whitman’s radical sensibilities, God-like omniscience, or too much philosophy, I’m going to lose many of them. How do I reach them without compromising Whitman’s message?
We
break for a short spell; the students refresh with iced
coffees and water. For some reason, a quote from Christopher
Morley that I had read in a recent
Now, maybe Morley’s quote is a bit extreme and dichotomous, but it works wonders with the group. They nod in agreement: Their Brooklyn, it’s a place of home, heaven, happiness, and humbleness. It is the borough of the perpetual underdog, like its lost Dodgers facing down the daunting empire of Yankee pinstripe pride, or Willy Loman seeking the American Dream in Death of a Salesman. Morley’s quote also leads them back to Whitman’s poem. I ask, “How could this relate back to Whitman? What connects Morley, Whitman, us? What are we doing up here anyway?”
The
With
that exchange and some follow-up conversation related to
Morley’s quote, we’ve moved back
to the space of
Many
of the students begin to see poetry in a new light; perhaps,
it isn’t such foreign territory
after all. I can sense connections between poet and students.
This
The
metaphor of the ferry becomes important as the conversation
continues. As we are talking, the Staten Island Ferry heads
to port in
At this point, Whitman’s poem has established a powerful connection with place. Several of my students think of the connections across time--others, like themselves, heading on the ferry into work and on with their lives, and the certainty of others to follow. We discuss the Brooklyn Ferry and mythic ferries, crossings into work worlds, underworlds and other worlds. I mention Orpheus’ journey into the underworld to bring his lost love Eurydice back into the light. The similarities between the past and the future come alive. There is both a sense of comfort and haunting in slowly realizing the ebb and flow of human existence. Others have faced similar journeys in this space; countless others will follow long after we have gone.
The
nursing student from
I reminded my students at this point that a powerful counterpoint, of course, can be found in the text of the poem itself, when the poetic voice reminds us that the “dark patches” fell upon him as well:
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall The dark threw its patches down upon me also The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious, My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meager? Nor is it you alone who knows what it is to be evil, I am he who knew what it was to be evil I too knitted the old knot of contrariety Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me. (153) |
We
begin to discuss the implications of the dark patches that
Whitman had to encounter in his space of time in nineteenth-century
Brooklyn: senseless street violence, city disasters, theater
riots, extremely poor sanitary conditions, racial tensions
and draft riots, political corruption, the impending doom
of the Civil War, the complexity of Manifest Destiny and
its pull on America’s imagination, the tremendous contested
surges of immigration, and, of course, the changing grounds
of Brooklyn’s own geographical shift from the pastoral to
the urban. One student referred to Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York as a popular, yet fictional vision
of the
The
discussion fleshes out Whitman as a poet of contradiction,
a perfect emblem for the borough itself as he simultaneously
couples Manhattan-like sprawl with
I
saw this happen in my class because Whitman created a place
of connection in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” which was not
destined solely for the erudite, the classically learned,
or the so-called elite arbiters of cultural taste. In Whitman’s
vision, poetry was a place to celebrate the democratic spirit
of the ages, a place with room for all. Whitman, this poet
of our
The
magical, almost mystical feeling of his words was palpable.
Whitman reached out from the page and across the span of
time and drew us together, regardless of the innovations
and trends of our contemporary age. While Whitman championed
the darker images of the foundry fires of industry and the
black clouds of chimney soot of his city, my students tackled
rush-hour lunches, ferry boat crashes,
the absence of towers, and bourgeoning skylines. Many of
them cleverly wrote about summer skies and light glimmering
off the same sea Whitman saw, sea-birds continuing their flights, and updated sea vessels
navigating the channel to port. In my mind, this poet with
the grey beard was reminding us to love and appreciate all
that surrounds us, regardless of time and space. He was
allowing my students to see those hills in
Change
is inevitable and people will be drawn to hasten on with
their lives, almost as if they are being
frantically swept up by the pace of their obligations and
keeping up with the currents of progress. Sometimes,
like the nursing student, people can be caught too firmly
in the web of their times, unable to see connections with
others, but it is the poet and his words that remind us
to re-center ourselves, to be firm for those that lean idly.
Whitman called on my students to take the time to stop and
look, to reflect on the beauty and the ugliness around us,
and to appreciate this borough of
Works
Cited
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. 1851.
Morley, Christopher.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” In Ways of
Whitman Walt. “Crossing
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