MY WALT WHITMAN MOMENT

                                                              1.

Walt Whitman is a favorite poet of mine--when he is at his best, he is very good indeed.  I'm fond of him for several reasons.    First, he was a great innovator, profoundly changing  the course of American poetry. I like that.  Second, he did not become a great poet by being a recluse in a library; his poems are a result of confrontation with himself and with the world.   I like that even more.  Third, he was also a poet of great wisdom.  He knew what was important in life, namely the sacredness of human relationships, of nature, and of that which transcends nature.  Every relationship was a miracle for him, just as it should be. I like that most of all.

I was walking near a mall recently while in a very Whitmanesque mood,  praising everything I saw and finding music in the city sounds around me.  Smiling, I watched a young couple approaching from the opposite direction.  What a handsome couple, I thought.

The man, perhaps in his late 20s, walked a few steps in front of his wife; he was holding their child by the hand.  Yes, I'm a pediatrician and find most kids cute, but this one, about two years old, was a knockout.  She got her good looks from her mother, also probably in her late 20s. After looking at her, I recalled Whitman's lines, " I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,/ And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,/ And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men."   He would undoubtedly have praised this attractive family lavishly....

...up to a point.  There was trouble in paradise.  The man was wearing earphones; his head was bobbing to music no one else heard.  His wife had fallen back behind him because she was completely self-absorbed with texting.  One got the impression that if her husband had stopped short, she would have walked right into him.

The little kid was staring blankly ahead while sucking on her thumb.

Perhaps I should call this my anti-Whitman moment.  I felt like saying to them, "Please stop listening to a recording; please stop texting; please start listening to the world around you.  Please start talking to each other and, most of all, please instill a sense of wonder in your lovely child!"

I passed them by without uttering a word.  I thought of Whitman's lines:

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

I also thought, since I lack Whitman's way with strangers, that the father might have punched me in the nose for giving him unwanted advice.

                                                           2.

Whitman, unbelievably idealistic, considered his poetry to be the medicine his sick country needed. Imagine that--he actually hoped that his fellow Americans would take his brilliant medicine and get better!  That is not how things turned out. The disease--poor communication--has arguably gotten worse.  Walt Whitman, "a kosmos, of Manhattan the son" --what would he have thought while passing someone talking out loud--very loud--into a Bluetooth headset?   Talking to somebody who is not present as if Walt Whitman and worse, the entire world, didn't exist?  Such "conversations" take place in public places alas! quite often these days.

Are we that afraid of listening to the world?  Are we that afraid of listening to ourselves?  Apparently we are.

Whitman did listen to the world and to himself; the result, after a long struggle, was great poetry.  Although very, very few would become great poets, confrontation with the world and with one's self would certainly make nearly everyone wiser.  This path to wisdom will always have rough patches--some of them taking years to cross--but shutting out that confrontation is nothing less than shutting out life.

Are we so afraid of loneliness that we must drown it out--along with what really  matters--with constant chatter?

Would Whitman still praise living pearls, albeit more thickly covered with mud?  What would he have said?
"Vivas for those who have failed?"


The Walt Whitman Essays
(all on Thomasdorsett.blogspot.com)

1. Walt Whitman and Equality
2. Walt Whitman and Music
3. My Walt Whitman Moment
4. Five Poems About Death
5. Walt Whitman's Vision

WALT WHITMAN AND MUSIC

Of all art forms other than poetry, music had the deepest effect on Whitman.  He once said that without having come in contact with opera, Leaves of Grass would not have been written.  For those unwilling to take him at his word--he was not immune to exaggeration-- there is an abundance of convincing evidence in his work and life that confirms the primacy of music for him.  This essay will first explore some of the music that influenced Whitman, after which we will discuss poem number 26 from Song of Myself, which deals with music exclusively.

Part I Musical Influences

A.  Minstrels

Thomas D. Rice established his "Jim Crow" routine before 1830.  He grew up in New York City; at that time there were few African Americans living in the North.  He performed a wild dance, wearing rags and blackface.  It was, of course, a crude caricature, but it caught on.  In the 1840s, and for many decades later, minstrels, which included comedy skits and song and dance routines performed by whites in blackface, were well established and enormously popular, especially in the North.  Very few objected to the racial stereotyping; not even Whitman had reservations, and, in fact, he enjoyed them.

The best known composer of minstrel songs was Stephen Foster.  He had an extraordinary gift for melody; his lovely, simple albeit somewhat sentimental tunes are popular to this day.  It is said that his songs humanized African Americans, and this is indeed true.  They avoided derogatory depictions and showed much sympathy for the enslaved.  But they were written as sentimental show-stoppers that enabled the white performers to touch the hearts of the audience; a minstrel show that consisted merely of comedy skits would have been much less entertaining.   The songs were not written to help bring about emancipation.

Foster was probably the first American to try to make a living solely by writing popular songs.  His distant heirs, such as Bob Dylan, were much more fortunate.   They were no copyright laws in antebellum America; this perhaps encouraged his attachment to the promoters of minstrels, who paid him directly.  He eventually became penniless, and died tragically alone, a few days after a minor accidental injury, at age 37.

Whitman would much later tell his friend Traubel that he thought Foster's Old Folks at Home was the best thing created by an American composer so far.  He also said that he enjoyed African-American songs. (Like so many white Americans at the time, he used a more pejorative adjective than "African-American.")

B. The Hutchinson Family Singers

The first rock stars!  (That’s what a wag called them.  They came from  a farming family in rural New Hampshire.  They loved to sing, but their father forbade them to sing at home, since he deemed this activity to be diabolical.  Thus, after working on the farm all day, they met at a large rock on their property, and sang in the evening into the night, stars under stars.)  The Hutchinsons were a group of thirteen siblings; four of them founded the group around 1840.  They began locally, but soon were a national success, even an international success.  The Hutchinson Family Singers were the first successful singing group in the United States.  At the height of their popularity, they would receive up to a thousand dollars per performance.  This was no mean sum; Whitman paid $1,750 for his house in Camden, decades after the Hutchinsons first made their tours.  They were the original Peter, Paul and Mary; many of the songs they sang were what would later be called 'protest songs.'   Their music advocated temperance, women’s rights, and, especially, the emancipation of slaves.

As mentioned previously, the group was composed of four singing members.  In true American style--this style lasted throughout the nineteenth century and was quintessentially American--one singer would sing a verse, followed by the whole group singing in closed harmony, much like a barber shop quartet. This pattern would then be repeated with a different singer leading the next verse.

The style of singing was rooted in Irish and English folksongs.  The tempos were brisk; verse and chorus were repeated with little or no variation; the singing was simple, direct, and not very nuanced; the harmonies and melodies were nothing out of the ordinary.  Many of the compositions were by Jesse, one of the brothers; he was not nearly as talented as Foster.  But the music was lively, and no doubt resulted in a lot of clapping and toe-tapping.  Unlike Foster’s, their music was of the times without in any way transcending it.  If anyone performs their music today, it is more or less out of historical curiosity.

Whitman had the following to say about them: “Simple, fresh, and beautiful. we hope no spirit of imitation will ever induce them to engraft any “foreign airs” onto their “native graces.” We want this sort of starting point to mould something new and true in American music.”  He contrasted their “heart music” with foreign “art music.”  He would soon come in contact with the world of opera, which made him profoundly “change his tune” as we shall see.

C. Opera

The opera house, located in Astor Place in the East Village of New York City, opened in 1850 and remained there until 1890.  He began attending performances--many performances--shortly after the opera house opened.  I would like to have seen the expression on his face when he first heard the sophistication, beauty and emotional depth of opera.  It transformed his inner life forever.

We will discuss this encounter with opera in the following analysis of poem 26 from Song of Myself. The poem follows.

Part ll  An Analysis of Poem Number 26 from Song of Myself

Now I will do nothing but listen, 
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. 

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, 
clack of sticks cooking my meals, 
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, 
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, 
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, 
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of 
work-people at their meals, 
The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, 
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing 
a death-sentence, 
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the 
refrain of the anchor-lifters, 
The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking 
engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights, 
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, 
The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two, 
(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.) 

I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,) 
I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, 
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast. 

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera, 
Ah this indeed is music--this suits me. 

A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me, 
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. 

I hear the train'd soprano (what work with hers is this?) 
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, 
It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them, 
It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves, 
I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath, 
Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, 
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, 
And that we call Being. 

The title Song of Myself would seem to indicate an autobiographcal poem.  It is true that the first person singular appears many times throughout the poem; the name of the author is also mentioned.  But this is deceptive.  The "I" often refers to an objective camera-type observing eye, or to a transcendent "I" of wisdom itself.  When the author mentions his own name, such as in the lines, there is little biographcal information:

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding/

True, Whitman lived in New York City, but everyone is "a kosmos," and the adjectives seem to describe Whitman's ideal Everyman rather than himself.  (Whitman hardly spent his time "eating, drinking and breeding.") This poem about music is a great exception.  All the first person singulars of this poem refer to direct personal experience.  Music affects nearly everyone; it was, for Whitman, something egalitarian which had a great potential for ennobling everyday people.  It was important for him to write about music not only for political reasons, but also for very personal ones.  Music, after all, had ennobled him. His own "I" had become a witness to the beauty and depth of this art form; it didn't need any help from an "I" that was not completely 
Whitman's.

The first stanza is vintage Whitman.  Great music is found in the wonderful, everyday sounds of the world, from birds to 'steam-whistles.' One is reminded of the compositions of John Cage, a composer active a century after Whitman's death--Whitman was ahead of his times in many areas.  For John Cage,the timbre, the sounds themselves, were more important than melody, harmony and composition.  The line, "I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice," reflects Whitman's view exactly.  An emotional person like Whitman, as one might expect, was most moved by the most subtly emotional instrument of all.

I find it remarkable that after a stanza of cataloguing Whitman turns directly to opera.  No mention of Foster, no mention of the Hutchinsons!  He was a tireless promoter of things American; one would think that his political self would have demanded some mentioning of American music.  But here his inner life, hooked on opera--a very European art form--took completely over.

I am convinced that the "violincello" he mentions refers to the beautiful cello solo that begins the overture to William Tell, an opera he knew well.  The opening ascending phrase, not to mention that very moving melody that soon follows, undoubtedly had a great affect on him.  It is a melody tinged with melancholy; a young man at the time, he undoubtedly related to it as his own "heart's lament."

As in the poem, the overture is followed by a chorus.  The line "Ah this indeed is music--this suits me." is to be taken literally.  This--and not the music of Foster nor of the Hutchinsons was for Whitman 'the real thing."

In Rossini's opera, as in the poem, the tenor comes next.  The tessitura is high; high notes are sustained.  "The orbic flex of his mouth" would be apparent to anyone observing a tenor singing this section of the opera .  The tenor here is probably Alessandro Bettini, a great Italian tenor of the time.  (Many of the singers Whitman heard were first-rate and internationally known.)

Next comes a reference to the singer whom he loved most of all, the great Marietta Alboni.  Having been discovered by Rossini himself, Alboni had become a world-famous bel canto singer by the time she visited the United Sates.  When she wasn't engaged in New York, Whitman would travel to neighboring cities to hear her.  She apparently was down-to-earth, had a beautiful tone, an extensive range, technical prowess and, most important of all, was a singer of great emotional depth.  The simple, homespun singing of American culture at the time provided no competition!

The original form of the line "I hear the traine'd soprano (what work of hers is this?)" was "I hear the train'd soprano...she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip."  This is of course "over the top" and we are grateful for the revision.  But it is significant  to note that for Whitman, whose study of physiology and whose inner reflections led him to the conviction that sex was primary--a view not so obvious to his contemporaries--music had almost the same level of importance.  (Whitman would undoubtedly have appreciated the joke, "What is the difference between Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 27 and sex?  The concerto lasts longer.")

He may well have been referring to the "train'd soprano" singing a lovely, expressive aria from William Tell, Sombre Foret, or to other arias by composers whose operas he was familiar with, e.g. Donizetti, Bellini, Mozart, Verdi.

Whitman had also been deeply moved by other art forms, especially the theater.  He was a passionate fan of the famous nineteenth century actor, Junius Brutus Booth.  What he later wrote, however, is very telling: "For me, out of the whole list of stage deities of that period, not one meant as much to me as Alboni, as Booth: narrowing it further, I should say Alboni alone."

The last five lines of the poem are especially revealing; Whitman's stance here is a good way to separate those who merely like music from those who really love it.  For the former music is simply a form of entertainment; for the latter, music, while still entertaining, brings the listener to the very depth of reality, to "the puzzle of puzzles,/ And that we call Being."  Notice the capital B!

Summary

Even though Whitman never learned to play an instrument, his musical tastes were that of a first-rate musician.  (For instance, Whitman was critical of Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale" who was much more popular in America than Alboni.  She had great technical abilities, but apparently lacked emotional depth.  Whitman criticized her superficial artistry; I have no doubt that this criticism was spot-on.) 

It is no accident that his greatest poem series is called Song of Myself.  Perhaps it was a good thing that Whitman never studied music formally; if he did, he might have become obsessed with practice and have neglected his obsession with words.  If he had learned at any early age to love music too much, Leaves of Grass might never have been written. We can be grateful that things turned out as they did.  Much of Leaves of Grass is masterly indeed.

For those who like music, there are many great passages in Whitman's poetry; for those who love music, and thus also are able to appreciate the sounds of his words, the appreciation goes even deeper.  

Additional Reading

1. Whitman and Equality by Thomas Dorsett (Google title and author.)

WALT WHITMAN AND EQUALITY

Here is a view of Whitman's house in Camden, New Jersey:

Here are two views John Schnatter's house, the CEO of Papa John's Pizza::

Doesn't that say it all?

For those of you who believe that crass materialism is basically an American phenomenon, I include a picture of a 27 story-building in Mombai, India, built as a private residence by an Indian businessman for his family of five:

                                                            2.

Whitman has much to teach us.  He is arguably the most important writer America has ever produced.  Even those not particularly fond of him, such as the aristocratic modernist poet, Ezra Pound, conceded that Whitman is to America what Dante is to Italy.  Most critics would agree.  (I doubt whether the average American would agree, since so few read poetry.  This is a shame, since Whitman's poetry is both accessible and essential.)

First and foremost, Whitman, as a great poet, delights us with his use of language. Although beauty of expression is always the poet's basic concern, words, unlike musical notes, have meaning and lovers of poetry heed the what as well as the how of expression.  This is especially true of Whitman, who had much to say and said it well.  He advised his readers to:

read these leaves (that is, his poems)  in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Whitman wrote his greatest work immediately prior to the Civil War, that is, at a time of a great national crisis.  He was convinced that America, perhaps more than any other nation, needs poets.  He was acutely aware of the political corruption and social problems of his time: he, therefore, set out to "quell America with a great tongue." (No matter how much the political and social corruptions of his day bothered him, he never lost a profound sense of optimism, rooted not only in his nature but in his (very) non-dogmatic religious faith.) He viewed his task as a Messianic one--and, unlike false prophets, his words are replete with truth and dignity. Much of what he wrote still very much applies to America today.  I don't think I'm exaggerating by stating that Whitman's stance on many issues has become urgent; if we ignore them, we, both as individuals and as citizens, will pay dearly.

This article will focus on three (there are many more) of his core beliefs: the spiritual poverty that results from the 'mania of owning things'; the central importance of personal relationships; and, finally, a call to fully embrace an equality that includes not only gender and racial justice, but extends to people of all classes.

                                                         3.
                                       Whitman and Materialism

Whitman's family on both sides settled in America before independence.  His father's ancestors were wealthy landowners, but the family fortune steadily declined.  At the time of Whitman's birth, the original five-hundred acre homestead in Long Island had dwindled to sixty.  His father was quite unsuccessful; the family had a difficult time raising Whitman and his numerous siblings.  They all moved to Brooklyn when Whitman was two years old.  In his autobiography Whitman notes, regarding the houses where he lived in in Brooklyn during his youth, "We occupied them one after the other, but they were mortgaged, and we lost them."  Whitman, who absorbed the scientific and cultural life of his times to an astounding degree, left school permanently at the age of eleven, to help his family.  His housing was always what we would consider today to be simple, whether he worked as a printer, journalist, teacher, editor, carpenter or writer.  Working as a carpenter in the early 1850s, Whitman actually built the house he lived in. When he suffered his first stroke at the age of 54, he moved in with his brother, George, who was an engineer and pipe inspector.  His brother and his family lived in a row house in Camden, New Jersey.  I am not sure what his brother charged him--probably not much--but Whitman always paid room and board. It was only when Whitman finally became famous that he was able to afford the house pictured in this article.  He was at that time 64 and crippled.  He died in that house eight years later, bedridden and in constant pain.
The life of the poet, who was not a churchgoer, was a stellar example of living according to Jesus's injunction that we should "store (our) treasure in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy..."  Heaven I would interpret here--and Whitman would undoubtedly have agreed--to mean that one should live life to the fullest spiritually.  This doesn't mean that we should be indifferent to our material comfort; it does mean, however, that we should not lose perspective and balance.  (Extolling perspective and balance are dominant themes in Whitman's life and work.) The businessmen's houses pictured in this article are clear examples of unbalanced lives.  How much better the world would be if they lived even slightly ostentatiously, yet spent more time developing their own minds and actively helping others!

Whitman beautifully expresses the delight in fellowship and the dangers of crass materialism in the following lines from Song of Myself:

I am satisfied--I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?

                                                         4.

                                          Whitman and Friendship

Whitman was a quintessential people-person.  If you could have asked him what makes people truly rich, he would answer "comradeship" without hesitation.  (The latest research illustrates the wisdom of being more concerned about people than about anything else: isolation tends to take years off lonely lives.  Human beings evolved in groups.)  Whitman's love of people was not of the How-To-Win-Friends-And-Influence-People sort; nearly all fascinated him in their own right.  For Whitman the way to build treasures in heaven was to build treasured relationships on earth.  His love of people had a very religious--and sensual--quality. All of Whitman's poetry is informed by the belief in the sacredness of human relationships; here is  but one example:

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.

Note that Whitman writes "person" and not "body"--for him, touching another is also coming into contact with that person's soul.  No narcissism or mere self-gratification here!

There are not many references to envy in Whitman's poetry.  Here is one that turns the concept of envy on its head.  Usually one is envious of another who is richer, handsomer, smarter, etc.  Such envy was totally foreign to Whitman.  He is not speaking of himself in the following poem--he had so many friends; he wishes to convey to the reader that  human relationships are the measure of true wealth.  (Notice that Whitman doesn't mention any qualities or achievements of those in the "brotherhood of lovers"--their ability to be a good friend is what is essential.  In Whitman's time, by the way, "lovers"  meant, simply, "friends."  Note also the line, stating that he does not envy "the rich in his great house.")

When I peruse the conquer'd fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house,
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,
How together through life, through dangers, through odium, unchanging, long and long,
Through youth and through middle and through old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were,
Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away fill'd with the bitterest envy.

                                          5.
                           
                             Whitman and Equality

Whitman was a staunch feminist--he was friends with many of the feminists of his day, and made sure he attended the first great meeting for women's rights in American history, which took place in Seneca Falls in 1848. He was downright contemporary in this regard, "The woman as well as the man I sing."  He believed that qualified women should attain positions in all fields, including becoming members of the Congress and Senate. Regarding race, he was way ahead of his time, albeit not completely unaffected by the rampant racism of antebellum America.  The former slaves Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth waxed rapturous when discussing Whitman, who treated African Americans in his poetry with love, decency and respect.  Needless to say, he vociferously opposed slavery--but not as radically as some, since he was willing to make (temporary) concessions to keep the Union intact.

Regarding gender and racial equality, we have achieved much that would have delighted Whitman.  Women are assuming more and more important positions; women, in fact, are doing better in higher education than men, which assures that more progress is in store in the future.  Regarding racial progress, we now have an African-American president.  Even though many still oppose our president because of his race, the possibility of a black president filling America's highest ofiice was beyond the wildest imaginings of the nineteenth century--and for that matter, for most of the twentieth century.  This does not mean that these issues have been resolved; but we are doing much in the Whitman spirit, and will undoubtedly continue to do more.
But something is seriously missing.  We get the first line right, but are horribly failing with the second line of the following, from "One's Self I Sing":

One's self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Actually we're not even getting the first line right.  The majority of us seem
to be singing his or her own self, that's true.  But in the arias we sing to the mirror, "simple" has been replaced by "unique," "superior" and "downright special."  We are failing miserably in the realization of  the second line, which balances individualism with equality.  (In Whitman's philosophy, both lines should be realized; realizing one at the expense of the other results in misery.  History certainly confirms this view.) This is so obvious, I will illustrate it with only one point:  professional women are getting good jobs, professional African-Americans are getting good jobs, while the undereducated  masses of both genders and all races are doing worse and worse.  This is not a situation that would please Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony and certainly not Walt Whitman.

Whitman lived in an age that was in many respects much like ours.  During the colonial period and for decades after independence, inequality was not at all rampant.  Whitman lived in an age of rapid industrialization, during which the country transitioned from an agricultural economy to a capitalist one.  Brooklyn was quite rural when Whitman moved there as a toddler; by the time he was forty, it had become a bustling metropolis.  Inequality among social classes increased dramatically, to a point, in fact, which was almost as bad as it is in America today.  (Today one percent owns 40% of the wealth; by the end of Whitman's lifetime, the top one percent owned 30% of the wealth.)

Whitman was by no means a political radical; one of his mottoes was "Be radical, be radical, be radical--but not too radical."  There is little anger in his poetry, although as a journalist he was sometimes quite enraged.  (He wrote some --deservedly no doubt---nasty things about the corrupt presidents who preceded Lincoln.)  He would not have supported revolution; he did avidly support, however,  a revolution in thinking which would make violence unnecessary.

He wrote that one of the purposes of his work was to "cheer up the slaves, and horrify despots."  (A variation of the beautiful Jewish adage that religion is to "comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable.)  His poetry is quite consistent with this view.

Whitman's life and work are stunning examples of the very antithesis of elitism.  He knew many of the top intellectuals of his day; he also befriended many members of the working class--not only because of politics, but because he found worth in them as individuals.  What follows is a photo of Whitman and his friend Peter Doyle, who had been a Confederate soldier and a "mere" bus conductor after the war.   Doyle was also present in Ford's Theater the night Lincoln was shot, April 14, 1865.  (Whether or not  the relationship between Whitman and Doyle was partially fueled by eros does not matter; the marriage of two mutually self-respecting personalities, no doubt, was what the kept the fire going.)

Whitman knew America was ill and needed medicine.  He wrote his poems in an effort to provide a recipe for health.  He loved and respected people of all classes, but emphasized those from the working class in his poetry not only from genuine devotion to them, but to spread a sense of much needed egalitarianism with his infectious verse.  He "catalogued" many different types of workers in his poems, stressing that no class is superior to another.  The examples are legion; I will give two.  First, the opening lines of "I Hear America Singing"

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of the mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam...

(He goes on to praise masons, boatmen, shoemakers, wood-cutters, etc.  Another illustration of his identification with workers comes from Song of Myself:  "A young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well, etc.")

The second example comes from a poem written shortly before his death::

I see Freedom, completley arm'd and victorious and very haughty, with Law on one side and Peace on the other,
A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste...

What could be more contemporary than a poet who convincingly and beautifully argues for less greed and more fellowship?

Whitman who vigorously absorbed all aspects of American life; whose spirit transcended his country while never ceasing to love it; Whitman, who wrote poetry of the first order, offered as an elixir to uplift and transform, has much to teach us.  We should indeed follow his injunction to read his poems out loud during all seasons. And heed them! Whitman, as stated previously, wrote that America, perhaps more than any other nation, needs poets; the current mess in Congress is but one of countless indications that this hasn't changed.   Have we completely given up on the idea of the transformative power of great poetry?  As Geoffrey Hill wrote in a poem, "We learn too late or not too late."

I will end on a personal note.  Whitman's poetry has been delighting me for half a century. Among other things, it has helped me maintain a transcendent optimism, no matter what happens locally.  I must admit, though, that my local self is getting nervous.



The Walt Whitman Essays
(All on thomasdorsett.blogspot.com)

1. Walt Whitman and Music
2. Whitman's Vision
3. Five Poems About Death
4. My Walt Whitman Moment
5. Walt Whitman and Equality