Following this ardent apology succeeds an argumentation vested in logic’s design:
Whitman’s use of the dash generates a quick movement of breath that mirrors in form the “speeding . . . unreeling” spider’s silken thread. The dash makes the poem, looming thrice at pivotal moments of movement—carrying the momentum of the creative mind in hasty pause. The Speaker imagines Whitman a diligent spider, endlessly weaving his Leaves of Grass in some cottage cranny, eight arms at full length, “ceaselessly musing”—birthing fine linen in ringlets of elegant line; forging and shaping an impulse of soul: a means of design meant to build “till the bridge you will need be formed, Till the ductile anchor hold”. Indeed, Whitman did mark where on a bluff a delicate spider perused its surroundings through lurches of silk, but arguably he did more than this:
“A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding”
To mark; to etch on paper: to write—who is this spindling spider? Is it perhaps a vision of our pouncing poet, himself settled neatly in a seat off of a certain wooden (oak) desk—indeed a kind of little bluff? Our spidery poet—your silk has found crevice in the nooks of my moods: the threads of your “O my soul”, silver in substance, still fling in the winds of this gossamer ghoul.
