Phillips_ENG3120_SampleBlog

  I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you. -Walt Whitman, “To a Stranger”   Walt Whitman’s poem “To a Stranger” represents a unique loneliness and longing. The poem begins with him calling out to a “passing stranger” who is unaware of the speaker, and has no idea what emotions the speaker feels at seeing the stranger as they “flit” past each other (line 4). What sticks out most to me, while reading this poem, is that Whitman alternates between masculine and feminine pronouns, relying primarily on the gender-neutral second pronoun “you.” “You must be he I was seeking,” the speaker says, “or she I was seeking,” and two lines later says, “You…were a boy with me or a girl with me” (lines 2 and 5). The speaker does not seem concerned about whether this singular stranger is male or female, and implies that they could be either and i...