Daily Sip - A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to
connect them;

Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor
hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

-Walt Whitman

Brilliant chioce. Whitman is one of my top five.

Just look at those commas, baby!

Lol, just imagine what the members would have done with this;)

I think it's great you show these kind of poems, to broaden the horizon of those who otherwise might develop punctuation- phobia from all the bad publicity it is getting over here!

I think, maybe, that perhaps, the commas are why I like Whitman.

I wonder if someone writing this poem today, same words and all, would have omitted the commas in favor of line breaks. It seems like he's kind of sticking to that tradition of "wide" poems with long lines, where a modern poet might have used line breaks to distinguish between phrases.

Of course, the commas kind of show that the thoughts are intimately connected, while still giving clear grammatical direction.

I learned from Whitman to use punctuation as I do. I believe that Whitman wrote his poems to be read aloud, placing deliberate pauses. He certainly is a dramatist.

Look at this passage that starts 'On the Beach At Night' from Leaves of Grass. You see that he widely varies his line meter and length, setting up dramatic pauses by repetition and punctuation:

On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

Yes, I agree that WW takes a certain amount of patience to absorb, but well worth the effort.

No no no, shush your yapping. This poem is wonderful, the idea is wonderful, commas are wonderful, and the absolute only thing I resent about it is the comparison between spiders and humans. What an enchantingly gross write. Love it Sibs!

Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has a tendency to personify, not humans, but God as a spider.... what do ya think of that, Narph? Creepy, eh?

There is this member on here called Robert Gardiner, who uses commas abundantly and on reading his poems you cannot help but become as enthusiastic as he! I always feel better after reading his work, he uses punctuation as a way to convey joy and happiness.

Oh Sibs. My life is just one tangled web; all my unique thoughts and moments, that used to flit and buzz about my room, are now indistinguishable in the thick white string that keeps them wrapped-up, sucked dry and brittle by a thieving eight-legged god. My, wasn't that depressing?

Why would god be a spider? For one thing, the fangs!

Bummer, Narph! You could write a sad poem about that.

Ok, I guess I don't know if HE thinks God is a spider, but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iobjAjriPBo

Start watching at 40 seconds; the rest of the video is nothing.

I'm going to have nightmares now.