Turn O Libertad for clever titles are not easy

Turn O Libertad by Walt Whitman

Turn O Libertad, for the war is over,

From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute,

sweeping the world,

Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past,

From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past,

From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings,

slavery, caste,

Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come—give up that

backward world,

Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past,

But what remains, remains for singers for you, wars to come are

for you;

(Lo! how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the

wars

of the present also inure;)

Then turn, and be not alarm’d O Libertad—turn your undying face,

To where the future, greater than all the past,

Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.

So firstly, I really love this poem. It just feels so sweet and almost rejoiceful to me. It's as if Walt and his romantic companion have finally conquered some hurdle to be able to be together. Knowing what I know about Walt, I am hypothesizing that he had just gotten his boy to be okay with the idea of being gay, so now all of the inner war is over and stuff like that. I might be completely wrong, but that is just what came to mind for me the first couple of times that I read it. Now, being a good AP Lit student, I know that I have to come at this poem as if I had no background knowledge whatsoever. So, here we go: I think that knowing what "Libertad" means /is is very very important to be able to understand this poem properly. After doing some defining, I have found a lot of definitions for this word, which is Spanish in origin. So here they are: an act of undue intimacy, a leave granted to a sailor, Liberty, freedom, independence, release, looseness, the condition of being free, the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints, freedom of choice, immunity from an obligation or duty. Honestly, I think that all of these fit this poem very well, so nice job Walt. However, none of them really make sense if it is meant to be a person who is the Libertad, so it might be that another, yet to be discovered, translation is something like Libertarian. Either way, looking back at those definitions, they all make sense. 'An act of undue intimacy' fits if this is really about Walt or the speaker loving the Libertad unconditionally while the Libertad is still worried about appearances. 'A leave granted to a sailor' is almost like this man has finally been freed of his duty, so now he may be with the speaker. All of the freedom, independence, release, and the rest of the definitions are pretty obvious. So on to a different point! Looking at the layout of the poem, assuming I found the correct layout, the first line is indented and then much shorter than the next. This is interesting to me because I feel like it might be just the summation of the whole poem, like if you did not feel like reading everything, just read that line and you will be good. Anyway, all of the poem is just one big sentence with a plethora of commas, a couple semicolons, and an interjection. This format gives a feeling of it all being one idea, as if it could be said in one breath. It is almost like the speaker was too excited, eager, or urgent to stop at all while he was giving the good news to his Libertad. However, I do think that the poem requires a slower reading, not too slow, but slow enough to really get a feeling off of every word. So this almost clashing of emotions and sort of requirements is an interesting mix. But I am over the necessary word count, so this will all be continued in my paper!