On D.H. Lawrence's Critique of Whitman

Lawrence calls Whitman mechanical because he gravitates towards everything: something he seems critical of at first, claiming Whitman lost his individuality and was like a tube open at both ends, letting everything in, but retaining nothing for—or of—himself, so that he was “empty”; but by the end it is clear that he was very much a fan of Whitman’s, claiming him to be a founder of a “great new doctrine of life,” which seems very much similar to some eastern philosophy that can be summarized with the clichéd phrase ‘going with the flow’. And that is exactly what Whitman did, says Lawrence (and should be obvious to anyone whose read Song of Myself), not by mediating, fasting, exploring heaven, etc.; but, rather, by taking to the open road, to where life led him, sympathizing with those he came across and taking everything in.
Reading this, hearing Lawrence talk about this doctrine, I believe Whitman, if not made, at least concretely romanticized The American Dream and the open road, so that he was probably, in my mind, the first great American poet, in that he seems to be the one who really defined the American spirit successfully, and forcefully, separating it from anything European for the first time—so that, according to Lawrence, if America was a poem, as Whitman said, it was he, Whitman, who was the rhythm.
The one thing I didn’t agree with Lawrence about was his claim that Whitman was a poet of “the end of life,” or “a post-mortem poet”; I think he was a poet of an ends to life, based on the eastern-like goal of recognizing unity in everything, including the self; so that, if anything, he was a poet of ‘the end of the self’, or something… Either way, the Eskimo section, the depiction of himself as a “fat old man full of a rather senile, self-conscious sensuosity,” the metaphor of Whiman’s camp at the end of the road--this was an amazing critique that made sense of Whitman and was quite entertaining to read.

Also, here’s a poem I finished today that, while having little to do with the class, is poetry nonetheless:

Ode to Squatting Hole
by Paul Tino

Many years have pas’t
since happened I was’t young
From humble beginnings
to that which I was brung
A land of great privilege
away from dirt and dung
A place of proper etiquette
which from me so did wrung
old mannerisms, thinking
and formalized my tongue
Until I stood before you all
a gentleman, fancy and well-sung

But today is quite different
For I am back in native lands!
I’ve found my old village
(though in quite different hands…)
Nobody doth recognize me
They laugh, and stare, and tease
But still managed I to unearth
My old hut among the trees!

Razed to the ground?
Doth nothing remain?
No relatives…
No pottery…
Not a simple window pane!
Alas, it had no windows…
But for something I did need
A simple thing I once touched
A plaything, berry, or bead…

But nothing was familiar!
So I sat and cried and cried
Why did not they keep me
all those many years ago
and prevent that fateful boat ride?
Alone in the World!
A creature whose origins erased
Nothing left now
but a bitter, lonely taste

--But wait, could it not be?
And then, with no warning
through my tears did I see…

Yes! yes! yes! A reminder of the past!
Something I could remember, feel, and see
Not merely something familiar…
But an ancient part of me!

Ah, the old squatting hole,
T’was a place of great mystery
and even greater sorrow…
How I miss the old squatting hole!