Still hard to beat the American poet Walt Whitman, for language and scope of vision for the whole nation! In times of great change, we still need poets to help guide us home to our true identity and forward toward it’s next chapters. Hoping for more Whitman’s to arise in our times. You don’t have to agree with everything someone says, to recognize their gift and impact on the whole. Whitman had that quintessential American soaring and hopeful vision, which America needed then. And does again now. And her compassion for the oppressed and weak. Her willingness to care again. And in his time, she was barely a nation, and still forming the foundations of her identity. Interesting moment in her story to return to now. A time when America still had and offered out hope.
This year, i decided to give my wife Walt Whitman’s hope for America and beyond….a rare copy of the prequel to “Leaves of Grass”. This one is called, “Drum Taps”, and is mostly about his time with civil war veterans, and trying to bring meaning to their suffering. Whitman is still probably my favorite American poet, back when being a poet meant something to a nation. Back when poets really were the interpreters of nations—before the mass media kicked in. His ability to name and encourage the best of the whole nation’s gift was rare, and maybe hasn’t been repeated in America since. Look to your poets and artist in times of great change, as my mentor told me. Looking back at this fellow who was writing near the birth of this particular nation.
When I lived on the east coast of America, mostly in my car, at times beneath bridges (believe me, i have proof!), i used to always stop and sleep at the Walt Whitman rest area in New Jersey (service area, for my european friends). It was named after him, but also had the entire of leaves of grass written on the walls. I loved that America had a poet, before the beats and before it was just protest, and reaction—when it was still trying to name itself well, and offer hope to other nations.
It’s not easy celebrating a nation you are not in love with. For Love proceeds poetry about. You cannot write well about something you don’t love. Another way of saying that, you can only prophecy into something, to the degree you love it.
He was a poet sort of celebrating her identity, the truer identity of his nation at his time, in the strange new old world.
I especially have always liked his civil war hospital poems that he wrote after visiting so many wounded soldiers. Growing up a minister’s son, I did hospitals and funerals weekly, so I related to Whitman’s care about the suffering people in his times.
I’ve always had a copy of “leaves of grass” nearby, but this year, decided in the wake of our many current crisis globally, to get a more special copy specifically of his hospital poems, which he wrote for the dying and suffering.
These were mostly written while he was sitting with war veterans of that era’s war in the hospital. They still are moving, and as he really did have an american style of writing- big, bold, risky, compassionately long sentences—a muscular prose. I still like re-visiting his writings. He didn’t have the full picture spiritually, but certainly had the gift to express his times well! I still like his hopeful version of america, or at least his hope for her.
I met Allen Ginsberg, Phillip Levine, and Galway Kinnel, some of my favorites American poets, but Whitman’s generation had a different calling of how to name and challenge her, more of a celebratory and less a protest calling, more a naming and seeing the identity and less a complaint about it—good to go back and recall when people where celebrating your identity.
Whitman still had a sort of old world hope, yet I would say, not romantic, and his time was before the old world lost her heart as well. Before spiritual amnesia kicked in. That is, before our parents forgot themselves. But, in the end also, his is, just great art. He had a true poets gift of words. Expressing identity of a nation, and his own in dialogue!
Here are few strangely contemporary sounding, excerpts again from Whitman, if you’ve never read him, an interesting study in what America could be:
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward
and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and
new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or
lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain
rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
//
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your
tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my
feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that
pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the
women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
//
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may
see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Whitman also loved cities and nations; “he saw in nations”, as one reviewer named it. I relate to that. I love his meditation on Ireland, for instance. Here’s one on Ireland from this collection, which eventually made it’s way into “Leaves of Grass”. I had a vision once, that Ireland was God’s heart; while Italy was the tip of His sword. Nice observations about her heart. I’ve felt similar things in prayer towards her:
OLD IRELAND.
FAR hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen, now lean and tatter’d seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her shoulders,
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent, she too long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and
heir,
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of
love.
Yet a word ancient mother,
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with fore-
head between your knees,
O you need not sit there veil’d in your old white hair so dishevel’d,
For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead,
The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in
another country,
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the grave,
The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it,
And now with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day in a new country.
There’s a nice resurrection hope in Whitman’s meditation on the dying and suffering soldiers of his time. We need that hope now to be sure. Nice re-reading these poems this holiday in the midst of so many wars, and so much suffering globally. Maybe now, we need global poets willing to name and nuance hope for our times! And hope for all our nations.
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