Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider" appeared in many versions throughout his career, from early journals to his later works. The author points out that originally the poem spoke about difficulties in seeking love but later became more universal by speaking to the difficulty of the creative poet reaching out to the universe. The paper relates that the poem, in its latest form, is a commentary on the finiteness of human life in the universal scope.

From the Paper:

"Turning to the poem itself, one sees the application of web texture to poem text. There is an interconnectedness throughout, with central sounds and words carried from line to line and stanza to stanza. "Marked where" begins both the 2nd and 3rd lines: "I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated, / Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding." Throughout there flows a repetitive internal rhyme scheme tying the center of the lines together as if with spiral strands of web. "Ever unreeling...ever speeding..." in the last line of the first stanza ties to the "musing, venturing, throwing, seeking" in line three of stanza two. The second stanza is bracketed by repetitions of "Oh my soul." The repetition of words in the last two lines of the poem: "Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold, / Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul" is typical of Whitman. In many of his poems, this repetition is even more noticeable. Entire stanzas will have a short phrase, word, internal sound, or grammatical structure which repeats, tying them together."

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