Beginnings

The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d

wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce

merely,

Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-

lifters of the departing,

Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops

selling goods from the rest of the earth,

Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place

where money is plentiest,

Nor the place of the most numerous population [. . .]

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,

If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole

world.

~Song of the Broad Axe, Walt Whitman

Welcome to Tyler Singleton's Guatemala travel blog. I'll be living in Guatemala this summer writing and translating poetry. You can use this blog to keep up to speed on my adventures.

The title for this blog was taken from a Walt Whitman’s “Passage to India.” It's a poem written while traveling about traveling, giving Whitman an opportunity to expound on his reasons for traveling so frequently, some of the same reasons for which I'll be traveling to Guatemala. Here are a few excerpts from the poem:

Passage to more than India!

Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? [. . .]

Passage to you, your shores, ye aged enigmas!

Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems! [. . .]

Passage indeed O soul to primal thought,

Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness,

The young maturity of brood and bloom,

To realms of budding bibles.

To soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,

Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,

Of man, the voyage of his mind's return,

To reason's early paradise,

Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions,

Again with fair creation. [. . .]

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? [. . .]

Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,

Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,

And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

My adventure to Guatemala is, like Whitman's travels, a passage to poetry; passage to new sights, peoples and experiences that will hopefully sow “exotic” seeds in the mind and heart, some of which will ripen into poetry. I guess in a sense poetry has always been a means of charting the soul and life's mysteries, setting forth into the unknown and coming away astonished and enlightened. In this way traveling also becomes a way of harmonizing my life with the act of creating poetry. In the words of Unamuno, “mi religión es luchar incesante e incansablemente con el misterio.”

Side note on Whitman: Walt Whitman's revolutionary poetry had a far-flung impact. Many 20^th century poets from around the world have claimed him as one of their biggest influence. Pablo Neruda, who as many of you know is my favorite and greatest influence, was one of them. Once, when Neruda was moving into a new house, a man helping with the move saw him hanging up a large portrait of Whitman. The man asked if it was his father in the painting. Neruda smiled and said it was. Seeing as how Neruda claimed Whitman as his “poetic father,” and I would claim Neruda as my “poetic father,” I guess that would make Whitman my grandaddy. If I had to choose a mother, I would have to say Nicole Krauss, but since she sort of abandoned me by giving up poetry, I think I have been adopted by Mary Oliver.