An American Poet

Walt Whitman (1819-92), our first American author in this class, was born on Long Island, New York, in a rural community. He had only a handful of years of formal education; his employment record was eclectic: he worked as a printer, a journalist, an editor, and he wrote a temperance novel preaching against the evils of alcohol. He was also, in many people’s opinion, the first great American poet.

In 1855, Whitman published Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry that included “Song of Myself.” Critical reaction was . . . mixed. Some critics called it “gross yet elevated,” and “simple yet profound”; critics who didn’t like it called it “noxious weeds,” “spasmodic idiocy,” and “a mass of stupid filth.” Poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “extraordinary poetry”; poet John Greenleaf Whittier threw it into the fire.

Whitman continued to publish Leaves of Grass every few years, adding more material and revising some of the poems. His purpose in writing was not simply to create beautiful poetry—he wanted to be the bard of democracy, to write poetry that communicated the vast scope and diversity of life in the United States. In his Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855 edition), he writes

“The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer . . . he is individual . . . he is complete in himself . . . the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of the chorus . . . he does not stop for any regulation . . . he is the president of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest.”

Like Shelley, Whitman believes that poetry and poets have a kind of prophetic function. Poetry helps people to see what they couldn’t see before—art helps people to focus on and understand what’s going on around them. Notice that Whitman emphasizes that the only thing special about the poet is that he realizes he’s special, and other people haven’t yet realized how special they are.

Whitman has a democratic vision for poetry:

“A great poem is for ages and ages in common and for all degrees and complexions and all departments and sects and for a woman as much as a man and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning. Has anyone fancied he could sit at last under some due authority and rest satisfied with explanations and realize and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring . . . he brings neither cessation or sheltered fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action.”

Not only does Whitman believe that poetry is for everybody, but he thinks that reading a poem should move people to action. What makes poetry great is that it empowers people to think for themselves, to make their own discoveries

In many ways, Whitman resembles the English Romantics. Like them, he believes in the importance of the emotions and the individual. When he writes “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” he’s not just celebrating Walt Whitman—he’s celebrating the very idea of individuality. Part of what he wants to do by celebrating his individuality is to encourage people to recognize and celebrate their own individuality.

Part of celebrating individuality involves rejecting the tradition, the old, the inherited. Notice that Whitman isn’t writing in iambic pentameter—his lines are irregular and inconsistent. Some lines are fairly short, and others are very long; notice how the second line of section four reaches all the way to the right margin of the page and then continues into the next line. The line is so long that it breaks past the margin of the page—it isn’t contained by iambic pentameter rhythm or even by the dimensions of the page it’s written on.

Again, this is consistent with the attitudes of the English Romantics, who wanted to break away from the traditions of the past, who distrusted institutions, who believed in newness and freshness and intuition and inspiration. Whitman is in fact classified among the American Romantics.

As R.W.B. Lewis points out in his book The American Adam, however, there are clear differences between the Romanticism of the British and that of Whitman:

“While European romanticism continued to resent the effect of time, Whitman was announcing that time had only just begun. He was able to think so because of the facts of the immediate history in America during the years when he was maturing: when the world was, in some literal way, being created before his eyes. It was this that Whitman had the opportunity to dramatize; and it was this that gave Leaves of Grass its special quality of a Yankee Genesis: a new account of the creation of the world—the creation, that is, of a new world; an account this time with a happy ending for Adam its hero; or better yet, with no ending at all; and with this important emendation, that now the creature has taken on the role of creator.”

You’ll probably recall that Wordsworth and Coleridge and Shelley tended to have a moment in their poems where they mourned the passage of time, where they thought back on a lost time when the earth was “appareled in celestial light” (“Ode on Intimations of Immortality”). Whitman doesn’t feel that same loss, in part because America from its very beginning has been about renewal. For many writers and thinkers, America is more than just a continent—it’s a second chance for humanity, a place to begin again, a new Eden. According to this way of thinking, Europe has suffered the effects of the Fall of Humanity—it has become old and corrupt. But America is a New World, and Americans are like Adam in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Americans have the opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the past—they can do things the right way this time; they aren’t bound by the past. This view is immensely appealing for somebody like Whitman, who has watched the United States grow and develop over the course of his lifetime, who has watched cities grow out of the wilderness and knows that his government is only a few decades older than he is. He’s witnessed a civilization being created out of virtually nothing—no wonder he believes that the past is unimportant and the individual can make any dream she or he has become a reality.

Obviously, this point of view contradicts orthodox theology. According to the Bible, everyone is affected by history: Adam and Eve sinned and all of humanity has been altered by that sin. There’s no way for human beings to start over again from scratch—we must be redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice.

Even though not all nineteenth-century Americans would agree with the idea that America is a new beginning, that the American is a new Adam, all nineteenth century Americans would have been aware of the idea. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that America was split between “the Party of the Past and the Party of the Future . . . the parties of Memory and Hope.” Emerson and Whitman obviously associated themselves with the future and hope—other Americans were not quite so convinced that the past, memory, and history could be that easily dismissed. What’s unique about America, however, is that it’s the only nation in the world in which it’s possible to believe more in the future than in the past.

What “Song of Myself” conveys in most lines is that Whitman believes in the future more than he does in the past, in his ability to create himself and not be affected by other forces. In section 4, Whitman recounts the questions people ask him about influences on his life:

People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life of my early life or the ward or city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues

Following a much longer list of possible influences, Whitman writes, “These come to me days and nights and go from me again,/But they are not the Me myself.” According to Whitman, his self is independent of his personal history and environment—he can be whatever he wants to be, not matter what.

Whitman makes a similar point in section 51:

The past and present wilt—I have filled them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

He has no use for either the past or the present—he’s not bound by the past because the past is used up, and the present seems equally meaningless to him. The only time Whitman has use for is the future.

Another example of Whitman’s attitude toward history and authority is found in section 46:

I tramp a perpetual journey (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, not church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

Here, Whitman seems to be saying that he doesn’t want to be an authority—he doesn’t want to be an influence on anyone. He doesn’t want anyone to sit down and learn from him; he doesn’t want to establish a library or any other kind of institution. His ideal is to be constantly moving, to always be creating, to never be held back by any kind of precedent. He wants the same thing for other people, too. He doesn’t want anyone to imitate him or follow him—he doesn’t want to be copied. Instead, he says that all he can show people is how to head off by themselves—all he can do is encourage people to go their own way and create themselves by themselves.

In section 52, Whitman presents an image of his radical sense of independence and freedom:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Like the hawk, Whitman presents himself as free, as someone who transcends the rules and expectations of society. It’s important to remember that he’s not just talking about himself—every American has the potential to be that free.

Another of the repeated motifs in “Song of Myself” has to do with the vastness and diversity of the American experience. One of the reasons, perhaps, that Whitman presents himself as so free and unaffected by history is a poet who wants to write a poem that captures the whole of American life has to be able to identify with the staggering expanse of American life. “Song of Myself” is filled with passages where Whitman tries to convey just how amazingly big and complex American life is: in section 16, he writes he is

A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound by my own was ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;

The descriptions go on for line after line, as Whitman tries to fit all of America into his poem. One can argue over whether or not he’s successful, but I have to say that I always come away from the poem impressed that he’s made that attempt.

For discussion:

- Is Whitman celebrating individuality, or is he just conceited?

- Does Whitman remind you of anyone we’ve read earlier for this class?

- In section 51, Whitman has written the famous lines, “Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself./I am large, I contain multitudes.)” What’s your opinion of these lines? Is Whitman promoting such radical freedom that we don’t even have to be consistent with ourselves? Is he just careless?