Analysis the poem A noiseless patient spider by Walt Whitman - Research Paper Example

The Sound of a Beautiful Noiselessness Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider” is a masterpiece of parallel imagery. First he describes the spider as he watches it and we think he is talking to us, the audience. However, in the second verse it becomes clear that he is talking to himself, or his soul. In a way he is voicing his astonishment at his own mind and its insatiable curiosity and need to learn and understand everything. Just as the spider creates it web to catch food, so does the soul create a web to catch its sustenance: knowledge and enlightenment.

Considering the voice in this poem, it seems not at all egotistical, nor even egocentric, but it is more a contemplation upon the nature of the human psyche. It seems right that Whitman compares his soul to another work of the Creator, a spider, a most wondrous and fascinating creature, and he creates a wonderful image of the soul-spider searching for truth. However, dissecting this poem and looking closely at every aspect will help us understand how it affects us and how the poet did that, but it cannot explain what he meant, because the best way to convey his exact message is with the words he used.

One contemporary poet I know, Karena Andrusyshyn (2008), says that poetry about simple things is that this kind of poetry that contains that “ah” moment, when the poet discovers some truth and finds a way to express it ("Smashwords - The Modern Muse - A book by Karena Andrusyshyn "). These kinds of truths simply cannot be expressed in ordinary words. Sometimes an artist, of visual arts, music, dance or poetry, manages to find just the right way to communicate, but even that communication defies explanation beyond the most superficial explanations of how it was done.

No matter how many words I might use, that is the case with this poem. In addition to this, the poem will mean something different to each and every one of us. In fact, it will mean something different each time it is read by the same reader, because that reader has been changed by reading the poem (Rosenblatt ). Rosenblatt calls this Transactional Analysis. Ann Michael (Michael 192-197) says Resnick calls Whitman’s imagery cinematic. I think I agree with that. In this poem we first see an animation or even a movie of a spider, mine is yellow and black stripes, spinning his web threads, but instead of moving from anchor to anchor and connecting them into his web, this spider launches his silken threads into space, tryping to catch something as we might catch a fish.

I remember watching a beautiful PBS series named “The Story of English” and one scene has stuck with me, and now has attached itself to this poem ("The Story of English episode 1 - An English Speaking World - Part 1 / 7 - YouTube "). It was a lone fisherman flinging a circular net into the sea, and dragging it back. It spins out like a nebulous pizza. That rhythm seems to be right for this poem and this spider.If there is anyone more image based in poetry than Whitman, it is Sylvia Plath.

She even wrote an article about writing with a sequence of images (Plath 30). The two poets are both very concrete and use images that can be compacted into few words, such is their universality. Whitman also uses this method, but his string of images is more cinematic that Plath. You might say that Whitman was the kinescope and Plath was the still life artist. Plath communicated through a sequence of images thrown at the wall and then described where they stuck, not linear at all. The only time during which there is any sequence is when the images are created.

Whitman described a process and we can almost see the spider trapped alone on the premonitory.In this poem we follow the spider as she turns and flings her silken threads into the void, trying to snag something which will help her. She stands, like Whitman, isolated, alone and desperate to understand her isolation. The sequence of words moves the spider to action and she keeps trying. Then the poet turns his attention to his soul and speaks as if it is separate from his mind, comparing it to that spider.

He wonders at the perseverance of his soul, alone in the void, yet constantly “flinging…..gossamer threads”, trying to get them to catch on something so “connect the spheres) and build a bridge. The spheres seem to have a special meaning. I seem to remember something about them from ancient philosophy or mythology, but I am not sure. I think maybe they were the planets and the sun when the Earth was thought to be the center of the universe.The visual cues allow us to share some of Whitman’s vision, as he uses concrete imagery, even though it does move (Michael 192-197).

We can share some of the experience and an understanding arrives and we know something we did not know before. Many critics would hang on the symbolism, but I do not think that it is the focus. I think that moving image of two entities searching in the void is what the poet wants to show us. He has painted a lovely animation in our heads. In the end the “noiseless patient spider” will prevail. It is interesting that he used the word “noiseless”, since it is not the same as silent. It can mean that there is frivolous sound, or information, since light and sound are related.

Works Cited Michael, Ann E. "Whitmans Paumanok Poems and the Value of being "Faithful to Things"." Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 13.2 (2008): 192-7. Print. Plath, Sylvia. "Drawing Pictures with Words." Literary Cavalcade 56.7 (2004): 30. Print. Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, and the Poem: A Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Illinois: Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. Print. "Smashwords - The Modern Muse - A book by Karena Andrusyshyn "Web.

12/7/2011 . "The Story of English episode 1 - An English Speaking World - Part 1 / 7 - YouTube "Web. 12/6/2011 .