HPC Portrayals

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

by Brian Ellis

As a young reporter, Walt Whitman heard Ralph Waldo Emerson deliver a lecture about the need for an American voice to develop an American poetry unique and distinctive from the Old World. Walt Whitman became that voice! Drawing inspiration from such diverse elements as the Old Testament list poems, Italian opera’s long lyrical lines, the American laborer’s brash braggadocio, religious revival rhythms, the language of the street, and the poetry of popular song, Whitman created a new style of poetry rooted in the fiber of the people he loved. His was the visionary song of democracy – “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, out of the mockingbird’s throat!”

As an active member of the artistic and cultural avant-garde that grew up in the middle of the 19th century, Whitman moved freely through the layers of society, spending time with carpenters and teamsters, working in the hospitals and witnessing a slave auction, lecturing high society and dining with debutants. He pricked his ear to the songs of the common man and woman. He captured the voices of the rabble rouser and the effete politicians. He also spent long hours wandering the shores of Long Island, tramping the woods above Brooklyn, and swimming in the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Some say his poetry lacks rhythm and meter, but if you have listened long to the jazzy, syncopated rhythms of waves, crashing upon the shore and then whispering as they wash away, then you too have heard the meter that inspired Whitman.

Because Whitman was of the people and sought to give voice to the people, he was able to capture a vision of the America not yet fully formed. He celebrates our democracy in all its imperfection, yet challenges us to “stick by each other as long as we live” so that someday “America does what is promised,” in our constitution, in our Bill of Rights, in the core of who we are as a nation, so that we may yet one day become this visionary ideal, “when each part is peopled with free people.”

Sadly, Whitman was unappreciated in his prime, at least in his homeland, and died in poverty. It is ironic that the same year he first published Leaves of Grass and sold less than 800 copies, Longfellow published The Song of Hiawatha and sold tens of thousands of copies. How did Hiawatha change the landscape of American poetry? Not one whit. But Leaves of Grass changed the world. Whitman’s work was so well loved in England that the poets and literati formed an “Old Grey Beard Society” in his honor. Late in his life, as the “Pope of Mickle Street,” he received innumerable dignitaries as visitors, including Oscar Wilde and John Burroughs. His poetic style has influenced every modern poet since. And the large visionary themes of his work have influenced everyone from Carl Sandburg and Langston Hughes to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

BRIAN ELLIS

More than a fan of Whitman, Brian “Fox” Ellis spent a week in New York and Brooklyn walking in Whitman’s footsteps with a Harvard educated, Tony-nominated actor, taking turns reciting Whitman to anyone who would listen, often reading poems in the places they were written. Fox has created more than a dozen one-man shows, several of which have received funding from the Illinois, Colorado, Nebraska and Missouri humanities councils. He is the author of 12 books, including two books of poetry. He teaches creative writing across the curriculum with an emphasis on using poetry to bring history and ecology to life. To learn more about Brian “Fox” Ellis visit www.foxtalesint.com

WALT WHITMAN

Walt Whitman’s visionary poetry is credited with creating several new forms including free verse, the list poem, and the object poem.

Though he was sued for obscenity and many who have not read his work will claim it was overly sexualized, Whitman sought to celebrate a healthy appreciation for the body, the sensual – in direct opposition to the sexual and sensational fiction popular in his day and in ours.

Walt Whitman strived for and found that he embodied the high ideals of democracy, and his poetry calls us all to live up to the glorious intentions of our national charter.

Most scholars agree that the first edition of Leaves of Grass is best, raw and exciting, but the deathbed edition includes poems found nowhere else. The two make a good comparison of Whitman’s process and evolution as a poet.

Beyond a doubt Walt Whitman is the most influential poet in American letters.

QUOTES BY WALT WHITMAN

“Resist much. Obey little.”
“Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.”
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
“Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”
“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

TIMELINE
May 31, 1819	Walter Whitman is born on Long Island, New York.
1823	The Whitman family moves to the village of Brooklyn Heights.
1831	Eleven-year-old Walt leaves school to get his first job as an errand boy for a law firm and then becomes an apprentice newspaper printer in order to help support his struggling family.
1836-1841	Walt follows his family to Long Island where he teaches in a variety of one-room schools, often boarding with families.
1841-1848	Back in New York City, Walt writes for and edits a variety of newspapers, writes a temperance novel, and takes a radical editorial stance on corporal punishment, labor issues, immigration and women’s rights.
1848	Walt moves to New Orleans where he edits The Crescent from February to May.
1848-1861	Working as a freelance writer and editor, carpenter and stationary salesman, Walt spends his free time with the more Bohemian elements of New York, often at Pfaff’s saloon. He is also a patron of the theatre and is involved in free-soil politics.
1855	Leaves of Grass is first published. Walt helps to set type and design the book. Expanded and edited versions are published throughout his life in 1856, 1860, 1867, 1870, 1876, 1881, and in 1892 the deathbed edition is finished.
1861	When the Civil War erupts, his brother enlists and is injured in Fredericksburg. Walt goes to find him and decides to work as a nurse for the remainder of the war, relocating to Washington D.C. in 1862. During the day he clerks, and in the evening he nurses dying soldiers.
1865	Walt hears Lincoln’s second inaugural address, but is in New York barely a month later when the president is assassinated.
1870-1873	Walt lives in New York and publishes another version of Leaves of Grass, Passage to India and Democratic Vistas. After two strokes, he moves to Camden New Jersey to live with his brother.
1873-1892	Walt lives in Camden, New Jersey, where he is affectionately known as the “Pope of Mickle Street.” He continues to write until the end of his days and to add poems to his Leaves of Grass.
1881-1882	He finally finds some acclaim, and a major Bostonian publisher agrees to print Leaves of Grass, but before it goes to press Walt and the publisher are sued for obscenity. Refusing to eliminate a few poems, a smaller Philadelphia press agrees to run the plates.
1887	Whitman gives one of many lectures on the life and death of Lincoln. In the audience are Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mark Twain, William Tecumseh Sherman, and John Hay. Twain says this was one of the most dramatic performances he has ever seen, and Millay gave a glowing review for the papers.
March 26, 1892	Walt Whitman dies and is entombed in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey.

RECOMMENDED READING

Callow, Philip. From Noon to Starry Night. Chicago, Illinois: Ivan R. Dee, 1992.
Levin, Jonathan. Walt Whitman Poetry for Young People. New York: Sterling Publishing Co, Inc., 2008.
Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
Sculley, Bradley, Blodgett, Harold W. Leaves of Grass. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.