Brooklyn Historic Railway Association

"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems"

Poesis from OED

The process of making; production, creation; creativity, culture

Etymology:  < classical Latin poēsis poetry, a poem < ancient Greek πόησις , early variant of ποίησις creation, production, poetry, a poem (see poiesis n.). Compare earlier poesy n.(Show Less)

See full OED Entry




accoucheur

Whitman and the City

Whitman and the City


Please read Theory and Terms.


Possible essay topics on Whitman


1. Read Baudelaire's definition of the flaneur (on theory page), and write a three page essay that considers the ways the persona in Song of Myself is and is not adequately described by Baudelaire's terms.
(Adapted from Whitman and the City)


2. Compare Whitman's response to the city in "Song of Myself" to another nineteenth-century that focuses on the city. Possibilities include Melville's "Bartleby," Poe's "The Man of the Crowd," and Wordsworth's "Residence in London." Ask me about other texts you may be interested in writing about. (3 pages)
(Adapted from Whitman and the City) 


3. In “Song of Myself,” in what ways are the presence of slaves enabling for the narrator and his identity? How do the two accounts of runaway slaves differ?  How is the different treatment of the runaway related to the overall movement of the poem? (3 pages)
-from Kenneth Price Univ. Nebraska, Lincoln

Emma West

Mount Bonnell is the highest tourist attraction in Austin. It rises 775 feet in the air showing the scenic views of downtown, the Penny Backer Bridge, and the lake. Couples young and old hike the mountain for its splendid views, and romantic air. However, over the past years the scenic views have been interrupted by the results of industrialization. I took pictures of the scenery trying to portray the mix of nature and humans. The pictures start out without much human intervention with just the trails being shown. However, as the film progresses human influence becomes more obvious. Through the trees you can see a peek of the road. Then in the sky you see the cell towers. The pictures represent how nature and humans coexist, however as it progresses, more and more houses are shown replacing the trees. You see the guardrails showing how we are kept away from nature because of the danger. The last photo is of a lock which locks the gate. This shows how there are always limits when it comes to nature, and in order for us to see nature there has to be boundaries set on when we have access to nature. The sounds in the back are two birds that were squawking at each other from either side of the road, and a car driving by. Further showing the split between nature and humans because the birds were responding to the car’s loud noise by getting louder themselves, and they were also separated by the road.

Stephanie Hepfer

Satellite

The Satellite

Deep in the Hill Country woodlands, red-tailed hawks circle high above the parched earth below. Patches of yellow waterless buffalo grass grow in separated tufts. A single cactus wilts, shaded by a live oak tree. Smells of cedar sap and dust waft in the crisp, dry air. Squirrels and small birds migrate from cedar to oak, in a continuous search for sustenance. The birds chirp and the trees rustle with the occasional warm gust of air. The natural sounds are interrupted at irregular intervals by a regular procession of light traffic on a nearby ranch-to-market road.

In the midst of this scenic woodland grove stands an out of commission, off white, 10 foot wide satellite dish. A large, rusting, cylindrical beam emerges from a four foot square plot of cement surrounded by thirsty soil. The pole, tinted green, rises six feet to the rusted chassis that hold the large satellite dish. The concave dish slopes gradually inward, facing the heavens above. The dish is streaked with oak pollen and dirt and at the bottom of its curve, cedar and oak foliage have slowly accumulated. At its centermost point, a rectangular steel bar runs perpendicular to the dish. On top of this white, painted bar rests the receiver of the satellite, a cylindrical cup with circumscribed, two-inch rings that directly face the dish’s center. The receiver is tuned to pick up radio waves reflected off the dish below. The receiver captures, or once did, radio waves from 5.63 gigahertz to 5.85 gigahertz, for transmission through insulated copper wire, which dangles freely. It has been unconnected for years.

The dish marks the edge of suburbia and nature. It was built by an amateur radio operator in 1991. It was placed at the edge of forty acres of untouched hill country, very near the border of Travis and Hays County. It was on the frontier of an expanding city, relaying messages from the “frontiersman” to the rest of the world. It weathered and aged as suburbia crept further and further. It paid no heed to the asphalt that was laid, the houses that were built, or the woods that gave way to lawns. It ignored the telephone poles shoved five feet into earth, the fences planted to divide plots of dirt. It didn’t notice the animals pushed back by the march of human development; the habitats destroyed or the air polluted by increased traffic. The satellite dish sat unused, watching that cancerous unrestrained tumor, the human race. Unaffected and unconcerned the satellite stood as it stands today.

The satellite dish stands still, absorbing the waves that careen through the atmosphere. It gazes at the cosmos, receiving information sent from satellites orbiting the earth at breakneck paces. It observes the heavens: the orbits of the planets, the death of stars, the constant expansion of the universe. It remains motionless as starlight from galaxies far beyond the Milky Way bounces off its patient bowl. It listens and watches; it experiences, but relays those experiences to no one. Alone in the woods it waits. As gusts push the world around it, it stands firm. Facing skyward, rooted in earth.

The Rain

Sheets of rain fall on the thirsty soil. Open mouthed the cracked earth gorges itself. Raindrops smear the dust covered rocks underfoot. Dark clouds pour themselves on oaks and cedars. The rain brings new.

The rain stole the crisp air from the woods. The once sturdy soil caves in with any pressure. The muddy dirt surrounds, it stains, it smears, it streaks. It leaves memories and filth. The rain changes and destroys.

The satellite still stands, its surface altered. Clouds block the dishes view of the heavens. It loses its way, forgets its place in the cosmos. A puddle accumulates, weighing down the satellite. The satellite fears the new.

The satellite shifts with the soil it stands on. New thoughts, views, and understandings flurry in the clouds above the satellite. It hears the sounds of life as the woodlands wake from the sleep of survival. Six feet above the earth below the satellite welcomes the new day.

The rain must destroy to create. The satellite must change to understand.

Hit the orange play button on the soundcloud plugin, then click the youtube video.

Flower in the Neon (an Original)

Notes:

The the beginning of the song was created to symbolize Thoreau's train. The mood of the second video is designed to the emulate the invasive aspect of human civilization.Further, the slides depict the destruction that is creation.

The song in the first video is Of Japan by Port Blue.

The graffiti is a work in progress by Alejandro Kerrigan (and me to some degree).

Rose's Digital Project

Inspired by Rousseau’s description of the nature of Walden, I made a video to tell the natural history of St. Stephen’s Episcopal School. In this video, I also mention the potential danger around the St.Stephen’s campus.

The first part of the video traced back to 1949, when two bishops created this school. They built several buildings around chapel. After the first few years of St. Stephen’s development, the campus was like an Eden Garden that was isolated from the crowed and boisterous of Austin city. Standing on the top of the hill, there is no building but trees and bushes. Among the natural campus lived a lot of creatures such as deer and scrawls. Some people who live near campus also would like to visit the campus to enjoy the nature.

However, due to the recent years’ financial problems, St. Stephen’s began to sell lands in order to keep the balance of its budget. The sold lands were used by their new owners to build new buildings such as apartments and stores in order to make a large amount of profit. The materialized world destroys the beautiful nature. The outside development is encroaching St. Stephen’s natural campus.

In the first part, the campus is peaceful so I choose “first rose in spring” as background music. However, in the second part of the movie which is marked by the scene of signing the contract, I set the background track as Holst’s Mars to signify the sudden change from peace to danger.

What should we do to protect the natural beauty of the St.Stehphe’s? The natural history of St. Stephen’s edifies me to protect the nature from outside materialized invasion.

The purpose of this project is to display, through the eyes of individuals in an ecosystem, a microcosm of the natural world in which the personal perspective tends to cover up the global perspective. The personal perspective is the story of the lizard’s crusade from the cricket/lizard’s point of view, and consists of both the instinctual habits of the lizard and the “unfair” devouring of the crickets. From a global standpoint, this example of a specific ecological hierarchy is not only ordinary, but also extraordinarily necessary. In transition to the mirrored macrocosm, it is the execution of the food-chain that controls population growth and maintains balance in nature. In the circumstance of cricket overpopulation, population growth on the part of cricket predators follows suit, which then leads to a decrease in cricket population, then finally a decline in predator population. This is, simply, one of many cyclical processes that retain order in the natural world. So, unfortunately for insects everywhere, it is and always will be the lizard’s duty to unsympathetically devour them.

Louis's project

A Suburban Ruin

A little ways off of Rollingwood Drive, there’s a building that’s been left to decay into the landscape. Right between two suburban residences is the remnant of an old stone house, falling apart and abandoned. Here is a perfect place to observe the interactions between the hills and forests of West Lake Hills and the suburbs, where the two distinct worlds come close together. It looks as if the building is melting into the ground at the same time as plants send their roots and stalks up to consume it. The floor is completely stripped away, revealing the foundation supports and the bare dirt underneath. Nearby, there’s a pool filled with dirt and garbage that serves as the centerpiece to an old patio.

The relationship between humanity and nature is not at its most beautiful here. To any average person, the building is an unsightly blemish in an otherwise orderly and relatively well-groomed neighborhood. Even when I get up close to this suburban ruin, there’s nothing that most people would call beautiful. Rusty pipes, crumbling walls, and twisted supports were what caught my eye as the theme of the place. Every now and then, a stretch of green grass or a blooming flower brought some visual flair, but it was always the beauty of nature, not that of the coexistence of nature and society. Rather, the spots that lie in between the two extremes of natural beauty and man-made organization are the spots that are the ugliest. Neither the green plants nor the order of the stone bricks can really flourish there. There’s something about this visual struggle that makes the scene quite distasteful to look at.

In stark contrast to the ruin is the surrounding suburb. Here, there’s no clash of worlds and no decay. There are only medium sized, low-profile houses that are well-maintained and that seem to be trying to stay out of the way. The border between these houses and the surrounding hills is much clearer, and is often staked out by a resolute metal fence. There’s none of the ugly, rusty, in-between area that makes up most of the ruin. Aesthetically, the neighborhood is much easier on the eye. It’s much more comforting when the world of humans is kept behind the fence where it belongs and when vines and bushes don’t start creeping up beyond their boundaries.

But really, what can we learn from the aesthetics of a place? Why does Thoreau, for example, spend the entire chapter “Sounds” describing the sights and sounds around him? What does he hope to tell us with this? Thoreau seems to say that we cannot truly learn about the nature of reality if we don’t look and observe the world around us. I agree; seeing our surroundings in a new objective light, outside of classes or books, is essential to understanding them. But perhaps more important is what the mere act of observation can tell us about ourselves. By noticing how we see things and react to them, we can explore our basic prejudices and our way of interacting with the world. In the case of this ruin, it’s important that the “in-between areas” are the ugliest. There is no harmonious coexistence of nature and man-made structure, no cooperation between the two; there is only an ugly conflict of swimming pools filled with dirt and bare dirt on the ground and rust consuming everything. Perhaps we have a hard time seeing the beauty in such a place because we do not truly believe in a peaceful coexistence between humans and what we refer to as “the natural world.” We prefer the neatly defined borders of the suburbs, with nature on one side of the fence and people on the other. Maybe if we are to learn to live with our environment rather than try to conquer it, we have to learn also to see the beauty in these in-between places of rust and dirt. And so I, who am no photographer, took a camera to the ruin and tried to take pictures of some of the eye-catching decay.

Notes:

- Any music that I’ve added to my presentation is from Woodland Sketches, composed by Edward MacDowell. MacDowell was an American romantic composer who lived only shortly after Thoreau (he was born two years before Thoreau died). His work was heavily inspired by nature. The pieces in my presentation are At an Old Trysting-Place and To a Wild Rose.

- I used a computerized voice and added various types of distortion to try to give the same atmosphere as my landscape: that of something mechanical and man-made decaying and wasting away in a more organic way.

"Oasis In Austin"

I interviewed two golfers, a man and a woman, and asked them why they go to the driving range, if it is a calm place for them, a song they associate with the driving range, and why. I used their audios over the footage I took of the driving range. I put the song that they chose over the audio and the video once they said what their song was. I also took photos of the driving range and I used those at the end.

I chose to interview these two golfers about what the driving range means to them because I believe people have a certain relationship with nature and this relationship is particularly strong with people who frequently go there. Music is very important to me and I almost always seem to relate a song to a place. I was interested to know if other people did too, especially for a place as serene and beautiful as the driving range at Austin Country Club. I find that I constantly have a song playing in my head and it often matches the feeling I get from my location. I was interested in why the golfers chose their song because my reason may not be their reason. I originally had the same song choice as the second golfer, which I found really interesting. I tried to decide between “Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay” and “Hold My Hand” because I associate both of those songs with calm and happy places. “Hold My Hand” is very fitting for the driving range because of my own memories of the range. I learned how to golf there and that was also the first time I tried to quit something because I was failing at it. I learned on that driving range from my dad and instructor that golf is frustrating but you cannot give up. The song “Hold My Hand” relates to how I needed someone there to keep me going because if it had been up to me, I would have quit. I eventually stopped golfing, but I had many more great memories golfing after that moment. The opinion of these two golfers was important to me because I think you learn a lot about a place depending on why it is important to someone else. I realized a lot about ACC after talking to these golfers. I have been going there my whole life and I suddenly have a completely new perspective. When I went to interview these golfers, it was about 95 degrees outside. This showed me how important it really was for them to have their time of escape, even if it was extremely hot outside.

Will Marcus

In my video, I tried to convey some of the ideas of the famous transcendentalists. I wanted to capture the dangers of industrialism as well as emphasize the importance of spending some time outside of the unrelenting pace of the stream of modern life. Slowing down and living in the moment allows one to notice all the beautiful things hidden in plain sight.

-Light bulb exploding:

I thought this would be a dramatic way of transitioning to the MOPAC time lapse. Lightbulbs were a significant milestone in the journey towards industrialization. Seeing one explode captures not only the physical dangers and unpredictability of modern technology, like Thoreau’s powder mill, but also the danger of becoming overly dependent on it. Civilization will often crumble away as soon as the lights go out. For example, the New York black out a few years ago gave rise to widespread rioting and looting.

-Slow motion lighter and time-lapsed cigarette:

The flame represents modern man’s addiction to consumption and the cigarette represents the consequences of it. The lighter is one of millions of other Bic lighters that look exactly alike, and that’s what most people see. When one slows down the action, however, a small firework show is revealed. The problem is that most people live too fast to see the beauty in the small things. For the most part, nobody buys a lighter to appreciate the beauty of the flame; they buy them to light cigarettes. Cigarettes slowly and steadily kill those who smoke them. They epitomize the dangers of an unregulated capitalism. They are consumer goods that exemplify the way “we have become the tools of our tools”; they enslave all who buy them.

-Blood in the water

The blood in the water represents the price of industrialization. As our society becomes increasingly advanced, we slowly lose touch with Emerson’s Aborigine warrior. Each new technology and convenience discovered is another drop of blood falling off the bridge and swirling away back to nature.

frank's project

Path—Freedom—Sentiment

The vogue fogs completely covered the St. Stephen’s campus during the raining day. I walked
on the path behind the tennis courts. The path is about a mile long while is quite clam and moist.
In the morning, the trees on the sides of the path looks like dancers who dances gently with the
winds. The sun opposite the path seems like a lightly director to lead the birds and tress to
performance elegantly. The scenery of the path in the morning looks like a perfect and
harmonious painting that I have never seen. While in the evening, accompanied with the twilight,
the path is a little bit darker. When I stalk in the path with some gentle piano music, I can see
my shadow reflected by the nightfall surround me, that makes me feel a little bit of scary but
excited. I always walk along on the path because the feeling when I was there can always haul
my mind to be patient and relieved. Even though the scenery is not magnificent that make
people feel surprised, the path’s view is kind of quiet but affluence, pure but colorful. The
voice by the birds and the flows by the trees make me feel like that I join a natural musical
performance. During the spring term, I run to the path for training every day. I wear my pants
and shirt, carry my iPod, and start from the tennis court to the end of path, which is an old
gate. Outside the gate is a street for residents, which I only have been a time. I run in the
path with the sweat and pant, but I like that painstaking. It makes me feel free and relaxed.
I usually run to the gate and do push up in every thirty steps to come back. The path makes
me tired, but the tired makes me release. Anyway, whatever the condition of environment
changes in the path, the feeling of freedom and relaxation is never eliminated in my mind.
I deeply appreciate that the path can stay with me for three year, carried my freedom and hope.

Embed Code mp3 player - We will go over this in class

Below is the code you will need to enter into the WYSIWYG HTML editor on blogger. (When you go compose your post switch to "edit html" and then add the code, otherwise it will show up as text as it does here rather than the audio player you want to create).

Your file needs to be stored in a public folder on webspace somewhere. If you have a dropbox account you can store the file in your public folder then right click on it to get the url address which you copy and paste into the code below.

You may also store the file in the public folder on your SSES file server account. The address of files stored there is

If you put a file call demo.mp3 into your public_html folder, the URL is:

http://spartans.sstx.org/~afassi/demo.mp3

The part in bold above is a tilde followed by your user name.  Your user name is the same one you use for email etc. 

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf?audioUrl=URL_OF_YOUR_FILE_HERE" height="27" width="320"></embed>

Lego Walden

A Lego representation of a scene in "Brute Neighbors."

At the start of the video, I put a picture of Thoreau's actual house on the lake, and fade to its Lego representation. A Lego Thoreau walks out of his cabin, and, in 54 images, closes the door and walks to the forest behind his house. This scene was designed to represent one part of "Brute Neighbors," so I have nature sounds like a creek rushing by and the rustling of leaves in the wind playing in the background. Thoreau walks past a forest and then I played the portion of the text that pertains to the next scene, a battle between the ants. Thoreau walks up to a small, 2X3 flat brick, which is the "chip" on which the legions of ants do battle. The scene cuts to a close up of the brick, and the ant pieces are now visible. Then, it "zooms" in one more time to show a small skirmish between red and black warriors. It zooms out to show Thoreau examining the wood chip, and then zooms out again to show someone examining Thoreau.

The battle between the ants is important because it is similar to a battle between humans, as evidenced by the comparison that Thoreau makes to the Myrmidons. In the video, the battle occurs on such a small scale that it is only visible after "zooming" in twice, represented by the transitions between the ant pieces and the warriors. Similarly, it would be possible to extrapolate to a different, outside observer, who views Thoreau and by extension humans on the same scale as humans view ants. Humans are small when compared to the vastness of the universe. I tried to convey this by zooming out one more time after the scene returns to Thoreau. It was easy to accomplish using Legos because of the different sizes of pieces. Plus, I really like Legos.

Revolution 99

Here's my English project.




Revolution 99
For my creative project, I chose the recent protests, known as Occupy Austin, which are going on at City Hall. I see the protests as the leftist answer to the Tea Party movement, a movement that will bring about long-deserved changes in government. The title of my project, Revolution 99, is both a reference to the Beatles song Revolution 9, from which I got a bit of inspiration for this project, and to the slogan “We are the 99 percent,” seen commonly throughout the protests, and referring to those who are not in the 1 percent of massively wealthy Americans.
The key to my creative project is the juxtaposition – by mixing the music in with the audio from the protests, I equate the two. All the music that I use was specifically chosen for the rebellious and, in some cases, revolutionary content. The project starts with a sample of a numbers station, which is on its own not considered music, but when put next to the other music can only be considered avant-garde music, similar to the Futurists of revolutionary Russia. Numbers stations are used by governments to transmit messages to spies – “delta foxtrot delta zwo eins” could have been a message from East Germany ordering agents to kill the president of some far-off country. However, just as the protesters reappropriated City Hall, a government site, as a site for protesting government, I reappropriate clandestine government orders as music. Other parts include samples from the Rite of Spring, noted for causing a riot upon its premiere; the Concerto Spirituale by Arthur Lourié, which, among other works, got its composer purged; and the song “Love Lies Limp” by Alternative TV, one of the bands that kicked off the punk rock movement. Just like these songs, the protests are kicking off a movement too, one that has become a “global movement of change, of people realizing that they are no longer in charge of their government,” as one woman whom I interviewed at the protests put it. Occupy Austin, along with the other Occupy movements, will certainly bring mass change and reform into the United States.
The diversity of music chosen and the relative fragmentation of the project is a reflection of what it was like to walk around the protests. Some people are actually serious about change. Some of those serious people want change in a libertarian manner, and others want it with government oversight. Some people are there because grassroots organization is chic to them, regardless of whether or not they actually believed in the movement. Some were there playing music for others - a benefit show was being organized, and Kaz was there a few hours after I went listening to a band. There were also LaRouche cultists. All of these people, packed into the green around City Hall, made for a bit of a chaotic experience, one of vastly different messages being broadcast. Regardless, though, they came together as a unified protest, just as this project brings different works together as a unified work.

In order of appearance, the music is as follows:

Dfd 21, The Conet Project
Concerto Spirituale, Lourié
Love Lies Limp, Alternative TV
Voiles, Debussy
Rite of Spring, Stravinsky
The protests
Piano Sonata no. 2, Mosolov
New - Stock, Hausen, and Walkman
Opus Clavicembalisticum, Sorabji
Nixon in China, Adams
Verklärte Nacht, Schoenberg
The People United Will Never Be Defeated, Rzewski
The Tides of Manaunaun, Cowell

Traffic Patterns - Walden Pond

Check this out from the City issue of Lapham's Quarterly

San Francisco, Infinite City

Cartography Art

Creative Assignment

You are not restricted to using digital media in creating your project. However, you are required to share your work. If you work on an art installation, for example, that you cannot bring into the classroom either because your piece is immovable or because the context and landscape are essential to the meaning of your work, then you must document your work. You might want to take photos or film your installation while providing an audio narrative or introduction to the piece. You may want to create a "podcast" either to document your process or as a project in and of itself.

Consider composing audio essay based on field research at a site somewhere nearby. It could be the same site you wrote about in your landscape essay.

As with your landscape essay

First, you need to think of a place that might be interesting to visit and write about.

Next, you will visit your chosen site and collect audio or visual data.

Then, you may want to outline your project based on your field notes and any additional research that is helpful including the landscape essay you already handed in.

Finally, you will mix a voice recording of this essay with audio or visual data captured at the site you are writing about.

The most difficult part of this assignment will be the editing of your audio or video essay, because this is a technical skill that many of you will have little to no experience with. I will be learning how to create podcasts along with you and so my hope is that we can share our growing knowledge as we go. Time will be devoted in class to various "how-to" tutorials.


Here's a link to the Beijing installation from an urban sound art project called "Invisible Cities"



Mixing in musical intros or interludes will only make your presentation more professional.

Time-lapsed video can be an especially evocative way to capture a sense of the dynamism of a place:


The Beat of SHIBUYA from darwinfish105 on Vimeo.

The Beat of SHIBUYA from darwinfish105 on Vimeo.

To begin, with you will need to choose an appropriate editing software. For audio Audacity and Garage Band are two popular ones. I can't help as much with video. I would like all projects posted to the blog. I'm still working on being able to embed mp3 audio and not just wav. I will help you with this on a case by case basis.

You can find Apple's "Support" for Garage Band here.

Audacity's "help" pages are somewhat dense, but here they are as well.

Note: this project is not technically a "Podcast" because I am less concerned about the "broadcast" portion of the project than about the creation of a Podcast-like audio or video essay.

Sample audio mix.




FM: No big supernova, no end of the universe, just a little puff and you're gone.

Thoreau: Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation where I had squatted . . ."

A Condensed Biography of Thoreau's Life

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/poet/thoreau.html

If anyone besides me cares about what he did before he moved to Walden and after he left...

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W. B. Yeats (1888)

Walden Pond and Thoreau's Cabin

Walden Pond

http://www.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1984920_1984861,00.html?iid=perma_share

A replica of Thoreau's Cabin at Walden Pond State Reservation, Concord, MA

http://www.4peaks.com/thwalden02.jpg

Emerson's Transparent Eyeball

"This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibed delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself."

Thoreau, Walden (90). 

Caricature of Emerson as a transparent eyeball 

by Christopher Pearce Cranch

"Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God" (996). 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)

http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/transcendentaloverhead.htm

The Witches' Song by Ben Jonson

1 WITCH.

"I HAVE been all day looking after
A raven feeding upon a quarter:
And, soone as she turn'd her beak to the south,
I snatch'd this morsell out of her mouth."

2 WITCH.

"I have beene gathering wolves haires,
The madd dogges foames, and adders eares;
The spurging of a dead man's eyes:
And all since the evening starre did rise."

3 WITCH.

"I last night lay all alone
O' the ground, to heare the mandrake grone;
And pluckt him up, though he grew full low:
And, as I had done, the cocke did crow."

4 WITCH.

"And I ha' beene chusing out this scull
From charnell houses that were full;
From private grots, and publike pits:
And frighted a sexton out of his wits."

5 WITCH.

"Under a cradle I did crepe
By day; and, when the childe was a-sleepe
At night, I suck'd the breath; and rose,
And pluck'd the nodding nurse by the nose.

6 WITCH.

"I had a dagger: what did I with that?
Killed an infant to have his fat.
A piper it got at a church-ale.
I bade him again blow wind i' the taile."

7 WITCH.

"A murderer yonder was hung in chaines;
The sunne and the wind had shrunke his veins:
I bit off a sinew; I clipp'd his haire;
I brought off his ragges, that danc'd i' the ayre."

8 WITCH.

"The scrich-owles egges and the feathers blacke,
The bloud of the frogge, and the bone in his backe
I have been getting; and made of his skin
A purset, to keepe Sir Cranion in."

9 WITCH.

"And I ha' beene plucking (plants among)
Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue,
Night-shade, moone-wort, libbards-bane;
And twise by the dogges was like to be tane."

10 WITCH.

"I from the jaw's of a gardiner's bitch
Did snatch these bones, and then leap'd the ditch:
Yet went I back to the house againe,
Kill'd the blacke cat, and here is the braine."

11 WITCH.

"I went to the toad, breedes under the wall,
I charmed him out, and he came at my call;
I scratch'd out the eyes of the owle before;
I tore the batts wing: what would you have more?"

DAME.

"Yes: I have brought, to helpe your vows,
Horned poppie, cypresse boughes,
The fig-tree wild, that grows on tombes,
And juice, that from the larch-tree comes,
The basiliskes bloud, and the vipers skin:--
And now our orgies let's begin."

Taken from Percy's Reliques

Here is an example of Ululation.

"Fragments"

I Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side. II Where got I that truth? Out of a medium's mouth. Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh.  - W. B. Yeats, from The Tower (1928)