Walt does indeed look at home in his old front yard, squinting up from under his broad-brimmed hat in the warm autumn sun. It is the only full-body statue of Walt at the Birthplace, and a thoughtful and generous gift on the part of Ikeda and SGI. I hope you’ll come visit Walt at his home, where you can now bask in the presence of the good gray poet in so many ways! Meanwhile, please enjoy the photos of the grand occasion, as well as the congratulatory remarks I delivered that day.

For more information on visiting the Walt Whitman Birthplace, please visit our virtual site first:

http://www.waltwhitman.org/

    The unveiling of John Giannotti’s monumental bronze at the Whitman Birthplace, West Hills, NY.

“Starting from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born”: Walt comes home at last!

SGI members and friends gather to celebrate this historic event.                                                

"...the future only holds thee, and can hold thee..."

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love

or dread, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or

for many years or stretching cycles of years.

(From “There Was a Child Went Forth”, Leaves of Grass 1855)

On May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was born in this farmhouse built by his father only a few years earlier.  Walt was the second of eight children, the son of a farmer who would soon leave his family legacy to pursue his interest in carpentry in burgeoning Brooklyn.

Walt Whitman spent his first four years at this house, which he held dear in his memory.  His last visit was in 1881— only 11 years before his death, and exactly 100 years before Daisaku Ikeda made his own pilgrimage to this spot.  Whitman describes his impressions of his West Hills birthplace in an opening passage to his autobiographical prose work, Specimen Days:

July 29, 1881.—AFTER more than forty years’ absence, (except a brief visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he died,) went down Long Island on a week’s jaunt to the place where I was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them, everything coming back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a view eastward, inclining south, over the broad and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780,) and my father. There was the new house (1810,) the big oak a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my great-grandfather (1750–’60) still standing, with its mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorous black-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776. On the other side of the road spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the grave (my uncle Jesse’s,) but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual blossoms and fruit yet.

Looking around these grounds, Whitman concluded that his “whole family history, with its succession of links, from the first settlement down to date, told here—three centuries” concentrated in this particular spot.

Now, over a century after his death in 1892, Whitman has come home to West Hills once again.

The person who we may thank for this much-anticipated homecoming is, like Whitman, someone who seems very close and very far away at the same time.  Daisaku Ikeda lives in Tokyo, though he has traveled the world extensively for the last 50 years.  He, like the poet he admires, was one of eight children born to a common farmer.  Like Walt, he fought for peace even while battling poverty and ill health.  Fifty years ago, in 1960, Ikeda succeeded his mentor Josei Toda as president of the Soka Gakkai lay Buddhist society.  And in 1975, Ikeda became the first president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), now a global network linking over 12 million members in about 190 countries and territories.

The central tenet of Ikeda’s philosophy is the fundamental sanctity of life.  For Ikeda and his fellow Buddhist thinkers and practitioners, the recognition of this basic principle is the key to global peace and true happiness.  Lasting peace will not be brought about by law or society, but relies instead on the self-motivated transformation of the individual.  A passage from Ikeda’s best-known work, The Human Revolution, summarizes this idea: “A great inner revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”

We gather today, then, to honor two individuals who exemplify such inner revolutions.  And the butterfly sitting so gently on Walt’s finger reminds us of the possibility of such magnificent transformations in all of us.  Though the process by which change happens may seem difficult or inscrutable, any one can become a beautiful force for good.  As such metamorphoses occur naturally, so can they happen within you.

Whitman first used the symbol of the butterfly in the imagery for his third edition of Leaves of Grass.  On the spine of the book and throughout its pages, he printed an image of a butterfly alight on a hand with index finger pointing in a variety of directions, though always to the right.  What was the meaning of this symbol, which Walt used again in a famous photo of himself, and again in the frontispiece to the seventh edition of the Leaves?

In Greek, ‘psyche’ is the word for both butterfly and soul, and the belief was that butterflies were human souls searching for a new reincarnation.  Celts believed that women became pregnant by swallowing butterfly-souls.  According to Native American legend, if you whisper your desire to a captive butterfly and then release it, it will carry your wish to the Great Spirit.  Some cultures believe that a butterfly landing on you is good luck, or that releasing butterflies is a way to celebrate a great event.

In 1972, the meteorologist and mathematician Dr. Edward Norton Lorenz delivered a paper entitled “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?”  The idea that small changes can cause big changes, that everything is part of everything else— is the basis for Lorenz’s “Butterfly Effect.”  Though the development of this theory postdates Whitman’s time, Walt may have been acquainted with (or perhaps simply had an instinctive understanding of) a related Buddhist idea, “Dependent Origination.”  Whitman teaches this principle throughout Leaves of Grass, as Daisaku Ikeda also shares his philosophy through poetry.  Either of them, perhaps, might have written these lines:

All truths wait in all things,

They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,

They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,

The insignificant is as big to me as any,

What is less or more than a touch?

(From “Song of Myself”, Leaves of Grass 1855)

Can a butterfly flapping its wings in West Hills set off dramatic changes around the world?  Walt Whitman and Daisaku Ikeda both believe so, and this magnificent statue will now embody that possibility of personal and universal transformation, for us and for the generations to follow Walt’s footsteps back home.

]]> http://karbiener.lookingforwhitman.org/2010/10/19/walt-whitman-sensei/feed/ 0 http://karbiener.lookingforwhitman.org/2009/12/14/boduci-pesnici-translating-the-untranslatable-barbaric-yawp-with-dragan-puresic/ http://karbiener.lookingforwhitman.org/2009/12/14/boduci-pesnici-translating-the-untranslatable-barbaric-yawp-with-dragan-puresic/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:53:41 +0000 http://karbiener.lookingforwhitman.org/?p=484 Though the poet Walt Whitman never learned to speak or write in anything besides English, he loved the sounds of other languages.  He announces himself no ‘dainty dolce affettuoso’; his ‘vivas’ are blown through his ’embouchures’ from ‘Paumanok’ to ‘Mannahatta.’  Though he claims that the United States have veins “full of poetical stuff,” he gave a French titles to one of his most important clusters of the third edition (“Enfans d’Adam”).  Whitman encouraged his readers to think globally by integrating what must have been exotic foreign phrases in nineteenth-century America, from ‘tabounschiks’ to ‘teokalllises.’

Hey Walt! –did you ever consider how fluid and strong and beautiful all of these words would sound… in Serbian?

Sati protiču dugi, mučni i teški,

Sati u suton, kada se povlačim na neko osamljeno i

Pusto mjesto, sjedam, naslanjajući lice na ruke…

That is Elma Porobic’s stunning translation of the first lines of Calamus 9.  Those of you who can read Serbian will not just note her sensitive treatment of Whitman’s language, but her ear for his music.  Elma is one of my six students in “Walt Whitman: The Global Perspective”, and one of three that have chosen to absorb, translate, and interpret Calamus 9 as her final project.  Sanja Stanimirovic offers a different perspective on Whitman’s emotional opening:

Sati teku dugi, bolni i tegobni,

Sati u sumrak, kada se povlačim na neko samotno mesto, retko pohođeno, sedam i zarivam

lice u šake…

And then we have Bojana Acamovic’s nuanced reading:

Sati teku dugi, bolni, nesrećni,

Sati sutona, kada se povlačim na usamljeno i pusto mesto, kada sedam, spuštam lice u šake…

Indira Janic brings another level of meaning to Calamus 22 (later “To a Stranger”) by interpreting him using the Cyrillic alphabet:

Странче у пролазу! Ти не знаш колико те чежљиво гледам…

Neda Kosoric has diligently labored to resolve interesting questions regarding the use of gender in Serbian, in her translation of Calamus 11:

…i njegova ruka lagano prebacena preko mojih grudi,

i te noci ja bio sam srecan.

And Josip brings passion and intensity to Calamus 6 as he continues to try to wrestle down a Serbian word for a distinctively Whitmanic term:

Ne s bilo kim niti sa svima, O adhesiveness! O bȉlo mog života!

Potrebno mi je da postojiš i prikazuješ se, više no u ovim pesmama.

Dragan Purešić,, Karen, Indra, Sanja, Neda, Bojana, and Elma: united we Whitmaniacs stand!

On Saturday 12 December, we were honored to welcome the esteemed translator Dragan Purešić to our classroom at the University of Novi Sad.  In addition to his crucial contributions to the success of the Serbian Book Market Project (see http://www.ceebp.org/book-market.htm for more info), Dragan has published noteworthy translations of the works of William Blake (Belgrade: Plato, 2007) as well as Walt Whitman (Belgrade: Plato, 2008).  He presented us with a memorable lecture on the art of translation, describing some of the challenges he faced when interpreting Whitman’s words for the Serbian people.  “The poem is an artistic entity,” he reminded us.  “The translator is both an artist and an artisan.”  Quoting freely and fluidly from works as wide-ranging as Lessing’s “Laocoon” and “The Godfather Part III”, he charged us with the significance and the perils of our task at hand.  And he inspired us.  “Blessed be the messengers,” he said.  Whitman sounds really good, really true and beautiful, in Serbian.

Ringed round by Dragans: Whitman's women (don't forget Indira, behind the lens!)

Dragan then led a translation workshop (which was further enhanced by the contribution of Novi Sad faculty members Vladislava Gordic Petkovic, Ivana Djuric, and Aleksandra Izgarjan).  We pored over Whitman’s language: what’s the connotative difference between being “content” and “happy”, as we see these terms used in Calamus 9 and 11?  What is behind the unusual statement “I am to wait” at the end of Calamus 22, and how can one achieve that feeling in Serbian?  And when Whitman asks, “I wonder if other men ever have the like” (Calamus 9), does the use of  the idea of  ‘mankind’ deny the poem’s true meaning or enhance its applicability?  Dragan offered suggestions and asked thoughtful questions of all of us; all of us responded and questioned our own understandings of Whitman’s words and intentions.

We strolled out of Classroom 37 three hours later, with full hearts and minds.  You see, Dragan knows Walt Whitman.   He ‘gets’ the poet in a fluid and intuitive way, in addition to possessing a finessed scholarly knowledge of  Whitman’s life and work.  And Dragan communicated his love and understanding for Whitman to us with honesty and passion, encouraging and helping shape our responses to these elusive Calamus poems.

In a few weeks, you will be able to listen to my students’ final versions of their Calamus translations on our “video map” (just go to “Video Map” on top of our class website– http://unovisad.lookingforwhitman.org– and swing the pointer a bit east of Walt’s usual stomping-grounds).  You, too, will be able to enjoy the benefits of Dragan’s sensitive tutelage– as channeled by this outstanding, unforgettable collective of new Serbian Whitmaniacs.

Hvala, Dragan! Vidimo se, Josip, Indira, Elma, Bojana, Sanja, Neda and faithful right-hand man Dragan!

…I ostavlja vama da dokazujete i određujete,

I glavne stvari očekuje od vas.

(the rousing challenge of “Poets to Come”, as delivered by Walt Whitman and Dragan Purešić)

Catching up at one of the conference’s many after-hours gatherings, Wynn and I found we shared a similar devotion to teaching as well as dedicated passions to our hometowns. Wynn has been living and teaching in Swansea most of his life—which means that he’s been living with Dylan Thomas. Though Wynn admitted that he had never wanted to teach a single author course on Dylan (though he’s led several Whitman seminars), he knows the poet as a neighbor, a ghost, an obsession, a symbol. Wow, I said shyly. If you show me your Dylan’s Swansea, I’ll show you my Whitman’s New York.

Dylan Thomas stagger-danced back into my life this spring, when I decided to include him in my NYU-London seminar, “Bohemian Ink, Beginnings to Beats.” Our final session focused on Dylan’s poetry and love letters (Kerouac’s scroll, on exhibit in the UK for the first time through January 2009, prompted us to read On the Road first)— and as I attempted to wrestle down a few ideas for class, I realized how challenged I was by these rich and highly crafted poems. It was slippery, shimmery stuff, and I needed and wanted to spend more time with it. So Dylan stayed with me through the summer in Whitman’s New York (accompanying me more than once on strange and sad pilgrimages to the White Horse Tavern, where according to urban legend he drank himself to death in 1953) and then back over to the U.K. in August. Of course I had to write to Wynn. Could I take him up on his offer for a Dylan Thomas tour of Wales? Might we really be able to see the house where everything started, hunchbacked Cwmordin Park—maybe even the boathouse at Laugharne, about an hour’s drive west of Swansea? While New York had spelled the end of Dylan Thomas, Wales was the place where he had written best (and most). And M. Wynn Thomas was the person who could best explicate and demonstrate the importance of this place for this poet.

On the morning of August 11, Wynn greeted me warmly at Swansea’s busy train station—and was hailed in turn by several passers-by as we crossed the High Street to the parking lot. It was a wonderful, breathless thing, to drive with Wynn through streets he knew and loved so well. He chatted easily about Swansea’s troubled history, and pointed out several Dylan-related sites that no longer are. The Blitz had ripped through Swansea’s heart, so instead driving by Dylan’s Kardomah Café we past Castle Street’s bland 1950s structures and big parking lots. The streets teemed with life, though—mothers and children, old folks and droves of students. And when Wynn brought me to the top of Townhill, the city looked like a British version of the Bay of Naples—shinier with industry, perhaps, but just as beautifully situated around the curve of Swansea Bay.

After a fun if unsuccessful search for the Dylan Thomas fountain in Cwmdonkin Park (though we had a good stroll through this hilly green, and stopped to admire the last few lines of “Fern Hill” on a stone: “And I sang in my chains like the sea”), we walked down Uplands Crescent past the Uplands Tavern (“Come back when we’re open, to sit in Dylan’s snug!”) and finally up the steep rise of Cwmdonkin Drive. Here, in the upstairs front bedroom of Number Five , Dylan Marlais Thomas was born on October 27, 1914.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green…

Something magical was bound to happen.

“Do take a look at the gate,” said a tweedy voice, breathily striding towards us from the top of the street. Emlyn Davies’ father had bought the house from the Thomas’, when they moved out in 1938. And Emlyn Davies knew what it felt like to live with the ghost of Dylan Thomas, even more than Wynn in some ways. But this family hadn’t tread cautiously over Dylan’s haunted floorboards: they had made it theirs, “as any family would,” explained Emlyn congenially. His father had been an artisan of some note in the Swansea circuit of the 1940s, and Emlyn had recently gifted his father’s letters to the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth (including some correspondence from the poet David Jones, and one letter from Dylan Thomas himself). What remained was the front gate that his father had designed: a graceful bend of the letters DT and the number 5—perhaps the most fitting and loving monument to Swansea’s poet in town. He opened it for us with a smile… and I had to smile too, recalling the open door at 99 Ryerson Street just about a year ago.

Our next stop was the Dylan Thomas Center, opened in 1995 by his fan Jimmy Carter and staffed by a dedicated core of Thomas enthusiasts, including many of Wynn’s students. The excellent permanent exhibition includes several of Dylan’s childhood books (I was surprised to see a copy of Struwwelpeter, a terrifying tale that I haunts my own early memories), some furiously scribbled poetry drafts, and a “New York Tablecloth” covered with pencil sketches by Dylan, who was actually a pretty good sketch-artist. The text panels were energetic and daring: “Was Dylan Thomas a Drunk?”, one of them challenged. Recordings of Dylan’s poetry readings drifted into the café-bookstore, as Wynn and I chatted over lunch. He recollected the special events of 1995, when the Centre hosted the “UK Year of Literature and Writing”—and I loved the story of his afternoon with Allen Ginsberg, who fell to his knees in front of Dylan Thomas’ grave and recited the kaddish. Now: how now do we get other people to visit this shrine? How do we get people to become interested in preserving his memory? Will you, patient reader, follow our path and honor the memory of this complex ‘spinning man’?

An hour’s drive brought us to Laugharne, a picturesque and still not overly touristy village in Carmarthenshire where Dylan lived and wrote for his last four years. Wynn steered us first to St. Martin’s Church, where a simple white cross bears Dylan’s name on one side, his wife Caitlin’s on the other. Someone had placed the Welsh dragon and a riderless horse atop the arms of the cross. Wynn threatened to remove them, but then thought better of it. We placed some tart wild blackberries on the grave, in lieu of a stone. And we considered the restless, beautiful bodies beneath our soles.

For the bird lay bedded
In a choir of wings, as though she slept or died,
And the wings glided wide and he was hymned and wedded.

Through the town, then, past Dylan’s last-favorite pub on these shores (Brown’s Hotel, with its very brown, timbered interior), a stained-glass warehouse and a small bookshop, to a windy seaside path. Bright sun and low tide had encouraged many families to saunter out here, and the way to Dylan’s house was lively. Our first stop was the writing shed—really, a sort of boat-garage on stilts, lightly resting on the Cliffside with its writing end nosing out from the Cliffside. The floorboards must have bounced precariously, responding to his every move. So this was Dylan’s home away from home away from home, where he escaped Caitlin and the children and hid away to edit a single line for hours at a time. “Walt used to hang up there,” Wynn pointed about the rickety desk, set up to look as if Dylan had just stepped out. So many words, so little space—and time! But it was so much easier now somehow, to imagine Dylan wrestling down the first lines to “Poem on his Birthday”:

In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay’s grave
He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
Herons spire and spear.

As we meandered down the path, I—delighted in the company and the very pretty scene—wondered if Dylan had ever felt as happy and lucky as I did now. And was the Boathouse as charming to him, as it was to Wynn and me? The simple white cottage shone from its nook in the rocks. I couldn’t imagine a sweeter, cuter place to think and write poetry. Even the retired policeman who manned the front desk grinned as he handed us our tickets, urging us to take tea on the terrace below while there were still Welsh griddle-cakes to be had. “And they call this work,” he said, and told us about the last time he had seen Dylan’s daughter Aeronwy, who died of cancer on July 27 this year. She had come to terms with her dysfunctional family history in her later years, speaking and writing more candidly about her father and his poetry. Lately, she had read her own work in a small room upstairs that now showcased the text of her “Recollections of Christmas Day at the Boathouse.” Aeronwyr had packed the house, we were told in excited tones. I imagined the tiny house overflowing with lovers of verse. Imagined, too, the scattering of her ashes around the Boathouse just a few days before our visit.

No photos were allowed in the Boathouse, and it’s really just as well. Despite my efforts to take you with me on Wynn’s wonderful tour, you must know by now that you need to experience this for yourself. But while we’re here, try to imagine the cozy claustrophobia of Dylan’s living room—the overstuffed furniture, rugs, radios, and English kitsch. We had a laugh over the familiar-looking China spaniels that guarded the books on the mantelpiece. And we pored over the photos of the handsome young couple, Dylan’s comfortable-looking mother and his big, lazy dog.

Dylan’s scene was not within, but just outside the green-framed windows. This was the view that he absorbed and translated in the last four years of his life— as he wove the word-webs of poems like “Author’s Prologue”, and when he wasn’t drowning himself on the streets of my Mannahatta. The stunning vista even silenced our happy chatter. We noted that the two boats on a sandbar of the Taf Estuary had also not been prepared for the change in tide.

This precious Wales visitation serves as a beautiful reminder that “being there” really does matter. Just as I feel that my understanding of Whitman’s message is illuminated by my daily walks in his New York, so I believe that seeing the Wales in his arms clarifies and transfigures my vision of Dylan and his sea-thumbed leaves. But the best part of the adventure was getting to spend time with and to know Wales’ “other” beloved Thomas. Thank you, Wynn, for an extraordinary day of poetry and communion, and for the great gift of your friendship!

The diversity of voices and faces and body languages– the great sound effects and accents and intonations– the complex shifting sea-, sky- and landscape– all of it, food for the soul! Warmest whitmanic thanks to you participants, who affirmed that this poem is very much a song of yourselves… and have done your share to keep Whitman and his message alive and radiant here, in his beloved New York.

Here then, are you readers… and you numberless patient listeners…

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

So Long! –’til next year…

Dear friend, whoever you are, take this kiss,

I give it especially to you—Do not forget me,

I feel like one who has done his work—I progress on,

The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more direct, darts awakening rays about me—So Long!

Remember my words—I love you—I depart from materials,

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

It’s a memorable goodbye, full of passion and demonstrations of genuine affection.  And Whitman comes as close as he ever did, to manifesting his love—to touching us physically, to breaking down old, assumed boundaries of time and place.  As we run our fingers over the lines of the third edition, the “kiss” of letter-pressed page 456 provides proof of the printer’s bodily contact (hey Walt, weren’t you overseeing the printing up there in Boston?  Might you have pressed those letters into the page, to reach us on the ‘other side’?).  And as we flip the last page, close the back cover, and take our hand off the book, Whitman comes as close as he ever will to being disembodied and dead to us.

These lines received only minor revisions through the next twenty years.  But in the 1881-82 edition of the Leaves—the sixth edition—Whitman added a completely new fourth line:

I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me

Like many of Whitman’s late poems and revisions, this line adds a new spiritual dimension to the raw bigness of his exaltations and exhortations.  Though he might be changing the spelling (and gender?) of the original Hindu word, Whitman does seem to be thinking of avatar(a) as the incarnate, earthbound form of a deity.  Death is the only thing that’ll get this kosmos off the streets!  So then, Whitman’s avatar is holiness at street level, a manifestation of the divine that can be seen and touched by anybody.

Now (yikes), back to “Change Avatar.”  And I’m sure experienced bloggers and gamers are rolling their eyes at my complication of a simple idea:  a “graphic representation of a person or character in a computer-generated environment, esp. one which represents a user in an interactive game or setting, and which can move about in its surroundings and interact with other characters” (Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition).  But for folks like me who actively love the poet right back, celebrate the revolution of his art and receive joy and satisfaction from teaching his message, choosing an avatar is a daunting task.

Too easy, I think, to put Whitman’s own beloved visage in the clipboard square.   Instead, I recall a favorite line from the first poem of the first edition, later entitled “Song of Myself”:

In all people I see myself—none more, and not one a barleycorn less

So, patient reader, I give you… me.

But this is me at what might have been my most Whitmanic moment yet—this is me standing within the front hallway of 99 Ryerson Street in Brooklyn, where America’s greatest poet completed America’s greatest book of poetry.

Ryerson Street was described as a “street of mechanics’ homes” during Whitman’s day, and it still is home to an assortment of hardworking Brooklynites.  The mechanics, students, and local shop owners who dwell here now, live with the constant roar of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (elevated across Ryerson, just a few blocks away)… and the ghost of America’s greatest poet.

As a Whitman scholar, I am fascinated by the relationship between his poetry and his own interest in physical space and place—specifically, in the connection between the growth of the Leaves and the spectacular rise of New York City as the world’s center for culture, communication, and commerce.  Indeed, the book I’m currently completing is titled Walt Whitman and New York: The Urban Roots of Leaves of Grass.  So when I teach my Whitman courses at NYU or Columbia, I make a point of not just telling them about Whitman’s beloved Brooklyn or Mannahatta, but showing them what Whitman saw, experienced, predicated, and celebrated.  We follow Whitman’s footsteps around Brooklyn Heights, where the 1855 edition was printed; around Newspaper Row, where the young journalist got his start; down to what remains of Pfaff’s Cellar, America’s first Bohemian hotspot and Whitman’s hangout in the late 1850s; on the Staten Island Ferry,  in an effort to simulate those countless rides on the Fulton Ferry.

My favorite tour is our perambulation around Fort Greene Park (established as Brooklyn’s first official park in 1847, because of Whitman’s almost-daily newspaper editorials calling for the need for green space in his neighborhood), then down the now omnibus-less Myrtle Avenue (passing the site of the offices of Whitman’s Brooklyn Freeman) on our way home to Walt’s house at 99 Ryerson.  I want students to experience how Whitman’s daily walks here in 1855 fed the developing project of the Leaves. Myrtle Avenue is still a lively commercial thoroughfare; and just as Whitman enjoyed window-shopping at Joseph Muchmore’s china shop  (at #37), we take in the diverse goods and products on display at Kiini Ubura Jewelry or, well, Karen’s Body Beautiful (J).

In the summer of 2008, I took my Columbia students of “Walt Whitman and New York” on this pilgrimage route.  As we approached the three-story, yellow aluminum-sided building on the east side of Ryerson, I sensed their surprise at the  modesty of Walt’s house.  Is this where Whitman dreamed up lines like:

This is the city…. and I am one of the citizens

Or

The mother quietly at home placing the dishes on the suppertable

Or the idea of

“Walt Whitman, A Brooklyn Boy”?

Had Emerson actually walked up this plain and solid stoop, to search for the author of Leaves of Grass?  If Whitman is the poet of place, then we felt we were in the Whitmanic Navel.

“Who are you looking for?”  came a voice from a big brown car parked out front of the house.  It didn’t take long for me to answer.

“Walt Whitman.”

“Well, he lived here, you know.”  The congenial Brooklynite turned out to be the owner of the building.  After hearing about our pilgrimage, and smiling at the enthusiasm on our faces, he opened his heart– and his home, to us.  Without hesitation, he ushered all 26 of us through the ground floor entrance and up the staircases that Walt daily ascended and descended in 1855.

Though the house is now divided up into smaller apartments (Pratt students and recent immigrants now live in closer quarters than the Whitman family did), the spirit of the house still felt broad, muscular— “braced in the beams.”  I felt the solidness and soundess of the construction as I grasped the generous wooden banister and climbed the good-sized stairs.  Walt is here.  In the floorboards, the doorknobs, the old float-glass window panes.  And in our faces as we passed through this magical place.

That’s me and my student Billie Eddington (an accomplished singer who set several of Whitman’s poems to music, for her final project) standing on Walt’s front landing.

Here are Ira Stup and me, absolutely beaming with Whitmanic enthusiasm just inside Walt’s threshold.