18 pages • 36 minutes read
Walt WhitmanAre you the new person drawn toward me?
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1860A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“A Glimpse” by Walt Whitman (1860)
Published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, “A Glimpse” gives readers an intimate look at the relationship between two lovers. Set in a noisy bar filled with workmen gathering around a stove to stay warm in the winter weather, the poem zooms in on the connection between two individuals, who need only hold hands and not say a word to feel close to one another.
“Gliding O’er All” by Walt Whitman (1900)
While “Are you the new person drawn toward me?” focuses on the relationship between two individuals, “Gliding O’er All” assesses the relationship of the individual soul with the rest of the world. In “Are you the new person drawn toward me?” the two individuals are separate from one another and misread one another while in “Gliding O’er All” the soul is interconnected with all things as it makes its journey through life.
“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” by Walt Whitman (1892)
This particular Whitman poem appeared in the last edition of Leaves of Grass published in 1892. Similar to the previous two poems mentioned here, Whitman focuses on the concept of human connection. In the poem, the speaker observes a tree and wonders how it can blossom and be so beautiful despite having no other trees or companions around to keep it company. The speaker takes a small twig and some moss with them when they leave as a reminder of their own friends and their inability to be as alone as the oak tree.
Further Literary Resources
“Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?” by Frederick J. Butler (1998)
Butler gives a history of the publication of Whitman’s poem as well as his own line-by-line analysis. In addition to the unique point of view Whitman uses addressing the reader directly, Butler discusses the topic of duality present in the poem. He connects this concept to the Hindu Upanishads that “discriminate between the real world, Brahman, and the world of illusion, maya.” Therefore, throughout the poem Whitman “advances the person toward a higher level of understanding of the difference between the illusion of what is experienced and the reality of it.”
“Great or Small, You Furnish Your Parts Toward the Soul”: Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Winifred Farrant Bevilacqua (2015)
Walt Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” serves as the focal point for Bevilacqua’s analysis. The poem was published in 1856 in the second edition of Leaves of Grass and was originally titled “Sun-Down Poem.” Bevilacqua analyzes this particular Whitman poem through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theorizing “to avoid the general tendency to gloss over one or more parts of the poem, and to bring to the foreground the poet’s careful thought process, orderly sequencing of the sections, and the development of an intuitively coherent meaning.”
Walt Whitman, White Revanchism, and the Dilemmas of Social Criticism by Lisa Gilson (2020)
Gilson contrasts the early inclusivity and diversity apparent in Whitman’s poetry with the absence of references to Black individuals in his Reconstruction works. Gilson’s goal is to show how this absence of references isn’t due to a change in Whitman’s personal or societal views but rather due to “a rhetorical shift” that was “tailored to court the Americans who were least open to his democratic project—white Southerners.”
Listen to Poem
A “virtual video” of “Are you the new person drawn toward me?” shows an animated Whitman reading his own poem published over 100 years ago to contemporary viewers.
Related Titles
By Walt Whitman
