[508] I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

Guest poem submitted by Zenobia Driver, <iamazenius@> :

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it stood there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wondered how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there
without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it,
and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend or lover near,
I know very well I could not.

	-- Walt Whitman

I was reminded of this poem by the ending of 'Wild Geese' [1]. Coincidentally i
was thinking of Whitman's poem this morning anyway - I find it very soothing,
and I love trees and somehow the poem seems to comfort and ward off loneliness
as well. And I really like the description of the tree in the poem...

Zenobia Driver.

[1] Zenobia submitted today's poem back in May, the day we ran Mary Oliver's
'Wild Geese'. You can read the latter poem at poem #426

From: sandi_ordinario@

Comments on Poem #508, Walt Whitman's I Saw in Louisiana 
                           a Live Oak Growing

The poem's imagery is not that difficult. Whitman likens
himself as an oak, ".. rude, unbending, lusty.." similar
to this one he is presently describing that stands by
itself in one of the wide flat spaces of Louisiana. It has
moss hanging down its branches. Alone, this tree "utters
joyous leaves of dark green."

We can by way of allegory say these leaves can represent
the poet's views or ideas, whereas the moss covering his
branches can be more or less minor ideas that are not 
original with him but rather those that have essentially 
grown on him from influences proceeding from his environment.

Whitman breaks off a twig from this solitary tree to act
as a token which reminds him of manly love. Does he mean
love for the opposite sex?

He ends the poem that unlike that solitary oak which can
utter joyous leaves of dark green that we have already 
interpreted as the poet's thoughts/views/ideas that he 
cannot express these in solitude. He requires inspiration 
that could only come from the presence of a friend or a lover.

Sandi

From: mpenney@  Sat Nov 13 16:12:44 2004

Actually, "manly love" is love for the _same_ sex.  Whitman had a
bizarre hierarchy of terms for various forms of love, apparently derived
from phrenology mumbo-jumbo with which he was familiar.  It's very hard
to keep them straight, since Whitman usually doesn't do a very good job
of keeping them straight himself.  But there is no doubt at all that
Whitman was gay.

"I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing" is a cleaned-up version of a
much longer and much more overtly homoerotic piece, never published as
such and known only from manuscript research in the 1950's, called "Live
Oak With Moss."  Most of "Live Oak With Moss" was chopped up and
redistributed into Leaves of Grass.  The textual history is very, very
interesting.  Check out the excellent web site at

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/fdw/volume3/price/lowm.php?inc"introduction

for a full analysis.

Note also that "uttering joyous leaves" has echoes of the leaves of a
book, also of Leaves of Grass itself.  Whitman thus, in a sense, utters
joyous Leaves.   Also, as anyone from the deep South can attest, Spanish
moss subsists in a symbiosis with the live oak tree; the moss cannot
live without the oak.  In essence the moss itself is a metaphor for
friendship.

From: SLydonHutchinson@

    Sometimes I wonder what Whitman is talking about.