• Home
  • Poetry Prompts
  • For Writers
  • Daily Poem-Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Free Stuff + BOOKS
  • Patron Love

By Heart: ‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’ + New Derek Mahon Challenge

By Megan Willome 3 Comments

sunset over rock promontory
What does a spider have in common with a soul? A lot, according to Walt Whitman.

“A Noiseless Patient Spider” was originally stanza three of a longer poem titled “Whispers of Heavenly Death.” It was excised and published as part of a later edition of Leaves of Grass, which continues to both delight and puzzle readers. Walt Whitman, the Father of Free Verse is one of America’s most acclaimed poets. He’s also one of our Take Your Poet to Work poets, which means he is very important. So important we also made this poem a coloring page.

A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman Coloring Page Poem

Let’s take Will Willingham’s drawing and treat it like a one-page picture book. We have a man (presumably with a soul), standing and facing a bridge. We also have a spider (presumably noiseless and patient) hanging from a tree. The spider “stood isolated.” The soul stands “Surrounded, detached.” In the illustration, the man looks away from us, his hands in his pockets. The spider, its legs free and dangling, looks directly at us.

To me, all spiders that are not scary tarantulas or poisonous brown recluse are Charlotte. Charlotte is patient. Charlotte is sometimes noiseless, although she does enjoy talking with Wilbur.

A good story, like a good poem, needs no explanation. I would never attempt to explain E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web — I’d just tell you to read it and let it tell you what it is about. So also with Walt Whitman’s poem. What is it about? It’s about itself.

It features a spider and a soul, and although I’d never thought how they might be alike, now I know they are. They both “explore” from their “measureless oceans of space,” and they both need to “catch somewhere.”

Charlotte describes that process in chapter 8, “Good Progress,” where describes weaving the web that will feature the word “Terrific.”

Charlotte got so interested in her work, she began to talk to herself, as though to cheer herself on. If you had been sitting quietly in the barn cellar that evening, you would have heard something like this:

‘Now for the R! Up we go! Attach! Descend! Pay out line! Whoa! Attach! Good! Up you go! Repeat! … Good girl!’”

It goes on like that for a whole paragraph, and the word “attach” occurs seven times. The soul is restless until it catches, as restless as a spider “tirelessly speeding” out gossamer threads. We need a “bridge,” an “anchor” (even a “ductile” one), a place to “catch somewhere.”
Charlotte’s webs did more than connect letters — they connected her to Wilbur, a connection that endured after she was gone, even after his connection with Fern unreeled in the natural process of growing up.

The job of a spider, like the job of a soul, is to only connect. Sometimes we are noisy and impatient. The world looks vacant and vast. We are “ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, / seeking.” But if the filaments we launch forth attach, that is miraculous.

Picture Uncle Walt beside the farmhand Lurvy in this scene, the next morning after Charlotte has finished her connection.

Next morning, Wilbur arose and stood beneath the web. He breathed the morning air into his lungs. Drops of dew, catching the sun, made the web stand out clearly. When Lurvy arrived with breakfast, there was the handsome pig, and over him, woven neatly in block letters, was the word TERRIFIC. Another miracle.”

https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/22A-Noiseless-Patient-Spider22.m4a

Your Turn

Did you memorize “A Noiseless Patient Spider” this month? Join our By Heart community and share your audio or video using the hashtags #ByHeart and #MemoriesWithFriends and tagging us @tspoetry. We also welcome photos of your handwritten copy of the poem.

By Heart for December

For the next By Heart gathering, December 17, we’ll learn a short poem titled “Everything Is Going To Be All Right” by Derek Mahon. We’ll have three weeks to make these twelve lines our own. Our mental health might just depend on it.

Everything Is Going To Be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there’s no need to go into that.
The lines flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

—Derek Mahon

Photo by Joel Olives, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.

Browse more By Heart

MW-Joy of Poetry Front cover 367 x 265

“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”

—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro

Buy The Joy of Poetry Now

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Author, Editor at Tweetspeak Poetry
Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons - January 22, 2021
  • Children’s Book Club: ‘Katy and the Big Snow’ - January 15, 2021
  • Reading Generously: ‘How We Fight for Our Lives’ by Saeed Jones - January 8, 2021

Related

❤️✨ Sharing is caring

Filed Under: A Poem in Every Heart, Blog, By Heart, Poetry Memorization, Walt Whitman

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.

Comments

  1. Monica Sharman says

    November 27, 2020 at 7:00 pm

    Megan, I followed the link on “only connect” and was intrigued. I’d never read Howards End. It’s about connecting?

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      November 28, 2020 at 2:10 pm

      Yes, here’s the whole quote: “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”

      Reply
      • Monica Sharman says

        November 29, 2020 at 12:03 pm

        Thank you! I put it on my Kindle.

        Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our January Menu.

Keep the World Poetic

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world thoughtful and poetic.

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Join the Poetry Club

Join the poetry club, when you become a subscriber to Every Day Poems ✨

The classic—Now a Graphic Novel!

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

Recent Comments

  • Sandra Heska King on Poetry Prompt: Poems of Experience
  • Chelsea on The Artist’s Way: Safety
  • Callie Feyen on Poetry Prompt: Poems of Experience
  • Callie Feyen on Poetry Prompt: Poems of Experience

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Join Tweetspeak Poetry

Categories

Explore Work From Black Poets

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

Free Printable Poet Bios

Browse all poet bios now

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

About Us

  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • How to Write Form Poems-Infographics
  • • Poetry Club Tea Date
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • A Ritual to Read to Each Other
  • • Best Love Poetry
  • • Book Club
  • • Children’s Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Literary Analysis
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • VerseWrights Journal
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Give the Gift of Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2021 Tweetspeak Poetry · Site by The Willingham Enterprise · FAQ & Disclosure