Do you have trouble reading and absorbing poetry?
Wonder what the big deal is with Whitman?
Wish you were in a classroom listening to the teacher talk about the poetry?
Then this video clip is for you. Click below for 10 minutes of me reading and discussing some of Whitman’s lines…and remember, poetry was meant to be read aloud, performed, heard…so don’t be shy about sounding your “barbaric yawp” when confronting poetry.
originally posted 2-14-12
Thanks for your insightful take on the poem, Sharon. I was so focused on the final part of the poem–how it launches Whitman the boy into a lifetime of “singing” his song–that I didn’t spend much time thinking about the title and its significance. I really like your connection between the rocking of the waves and the cradle.
Thanks for engaging with my experimental video!
I enjoyed your reading of “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking”, and I agree that it is meant to be performed. Every time I read or hear that poem I take something different away from it. Sometimes it makes me dwell on optimism and the way we cling to our hopes, even when the hope is slim. Sometimes, it speaks to me of love and the way love endures. It sometimes endures hardships, separation and even death. I thought of how sometimes with old married couples one of them dies and then within days or a few weeks the other dies, almost as though they couldn’t bear to be separated, even in death. Other times it speaks to me of how life is cycle, birth, life, death. I heard the words, resounding like waves and thought of the cradle endlessly rocking, this poems speaks to me of rhythms.