Lawless, Whitman Spotter Extraordinare

The progression of the War, and Walt Whitman’s changing perception of it, is clearly depicted in Drum-Taps. The first several poems in the series are about the glory of the war to come, invoking the memories of an old Revolutionary War veteran even. “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” exemplifies this section, with the different voices privileged in different ways: the Father clinging to comfortable safety and unwilling to defend the country that provided this life to him, the Child that hears the call of the Banner, the Poet who intervenes on behalf of the Banner, and the Banner above all who symbolizes the glory of the Nation and reminds the citizens of their responsibilities towards Her. Also important in this moment are the poems that obviously see the Union as in the right and the Confederates in the wrong, mentioning often the manly blue of the soldiers.

The poems change as they progress, eventually bringing us to the quote in his poem “Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me” – “Must I change my triumphant songs?…/ Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?/ And sullen hymns of defeat?” (442). This is the darkest moment for Whitman, poetically speaking. He wonders whether his poetic vision can apply to the War and the world that will come after the war ends. He also has doubts as to the importance of poetry when more physical work is needed, as in the poem “The Wound-Dresser”.

He quickly rallies himself though, and reconstructs his vision to include the Southerners, the War, and his hospital work. A view in miniature of the arc of Drum-Taps can be seen in “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun” in which he moves from desiring the peace and simplicity of the country to embracing the living, changing, and dangerous life he finds in Manhattan and south during the war. Whitman begins to equate his poetic quest with the war, claiming that when the war ends, his battles, which promise to be just as challenging and dangerous as the more physical battles of the war.

Although the series of poems in Drum-Taps suggest a resolution and a resolve following the horrors of war, Whitman’s treatment of the book suggests that he was not quite as certain as I would have thought he was from reading the poems alone. He could not decide initially whether the poems, and thus the Civil War itself, belonged to his life-work of Leaves of Grass. Arguably, he spends the rest of his life wrestling with this question, making his few weeks spent in Fredericksburg and the longer time spent in DC helping the wounded a formative part of his poetic life.

Walt Whitman is confusing me. His song of himself “Walt Whitman” seems very differetn from the first version that I found so novel and problematic. This poem seems very refined in comparison, and controlled too, which I consider the effect of the poem’s divisions. His voice is stronger in this poem, I feel, although less wildly energetic. Many of the listing extravaganzas that he let himself talk on endlessly are gone or shortened or at least broken up. Or could it be that I have just become accustomed to his style? Certainly, I was surprised to read his more formal poems, ones like “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” that have a conscious creation in format as well as wording. (Wait, that makes it sound like his others are not considered… I mean that he is trying to restrict his poem to a format that is immediately recognizable as a restricted and poetic format, whether it is a traditional one or not.)

Anticipating Whitman’s war poems as I was, his poem “Pensive on Her Dead Gazing…” still surprised me. It resonated with me, and yet sounded completely Whitmanic. (He even slips a list into this fairly short poem.) His idea of life as cyclic is becoming more and more interesting to me, that somehow people are reborn thousands of years later, in bodies not quite their own but just as alive. I may have to go back with the intention of looking for this idea, especially how it relates to his sense of death.

A final note: this Saturday, I marched the grounds of Antietam battlefield, the single bloodiest day in American history (and I believe also the first of the war to be photographed before the removal of bodies…). I’ll be posting a… well, a post on this trip soon, complete with a few pictures.

Something that I feel I cannot connect with Whitman is the information we have about his family. As I recall, he was the breadwinner for his family, his mother and siblings, for much of his life. However, I don’t see this affecting his work. Also, with his emphasis on family and children to increase the US, he never had any. His sexual preferences may have had a role in that, but how does he reconcile that with his poetic message that he is, himself, this virile, baby-making man?

“The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,” (Song of Myself, 41)

“or off on a cruise with fishers in a fishing smack” (“Walt Whitman, A Brooklyn Boy”)

Smack, n.:

1. A single-masted sailing-vessel, fore-and-aft rigged like a sloop or cutter, and usually of light burden, chiefly employed as a coaster or for fishing, and formerly as a tender to a ship of war.

b. U.S. A fishing-vessel having a well in which fish may be kept alive.

(Oxford English Dictionary)

A fishing smack named the Victorious. (www.victorious.co.uk)

“Another symptom is the need felt by individuals of being even sternly sincere. This is the one great means by which alone progress can be essentially furthered. Truth is the nursing mother of genius. No man can be absolutely true to himself, eschewing cant, compromise, servile imitation, and complaisance, without becoming original, for there is in every creature a fountain of life which, if not choked back by stones and other dead rubbish, will create a fresh atmosphere, and bring to life fresh beauty. And it is the same with the nation as with the individual man.”

This quote from Margaret Fuller seems uniquely appropriate for Walt Whitman. While he is prone to flights of hyperbole, he never seems to realize it himself. When he says in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, he sincerely believes that there will be a reader hundreds of years from him admiring the steamboats in the water before him. To me, Whitman is not the voice of Truth, necessarily, but he is speaking his truth, which seems to be the thrust of Fuller’s claim.

In his poems, we are forced by his exuberance and sincerity to see Whitman’s America. Not only is he trying to create an American literature by establishing a literary standard, but he is also trying to create an American nation by reaching out to average American citizens nationwide with his style, language, and subjects.

It is interesting how consciously he is chasing his dual goals. Every time he says “men and women” or some equivalent thereof, I am jolted out of the work; he is trying so hard to be inclusive that it is not only noticeable but obvious. The feminist in me cringes when he goes to such effort to claim men and women are equal to him, then falls right back into glorifying the “masculine” world, presumably without noticing the disconnect between the two. (An example that comes to mind is on pages 356-357, “The wife, and she is not one jot” to “none shall wish to escape me”)

The deliberation behind so much of his work brings me to wonder if perhaps he intends these deliberations to be transparent. He purposefully constructs an image of America and his idea of what American literature needs to be, as well as deliberately writing to fulfill those requirements. It seems likely that his exaggerations and conscious inclusion of images and people (of which women are only one example) are meant to be spotted and considered. He would likely prefer that they are then accepted as at least partly true, as he seems to think what he has to say is quite valuable. In this vein, perhaps my example in the beginning of the steamboats is Whitman being sincere but simultaneously acknowledging the possibility that he may be exaggerating. I’m not sure if I have read enough Whitman to decide yet.

In a rambling fashion, this brings me to Whitman’s contradictions. I am undecided as to whether he is unaware of his contradictions, aware but hoping that the reader does not notice, or aware and anticipating the reader detecting the contradictions as well. As an example of the contradictions that caught my attention, his attitude towards the physically and morally diseased people in society seems to change from acceptance to rejection: compare his attitude in “A Song for Occupations” on page 356 and in “Song of the Open Road” on page 303. I cannot decide what his contradictions reveal, or whether they are even contradictions.

Sit awhile wayfarer,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes
I will certainly kiss you with my goodbye kiss and open
the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dream,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of
every moment of your life

(83)

To me, Whitman’s portrait is the visual counterpart to his poems. Therefore, he appears to me in a confident stance that invites conversation. He is intent on the reader and is paying close if somewhat insolent attention to the viewer. His casual clothes and the full body image set him apart from the other poets that he tries to set himself apart from in his poems as well.

I am not Walt Whitman, so I do not feel that it would be appropriate for me to try to convey the same message as his image does. Instead, I feel this corresponds nicely to the selection from his poem. He tells the reader that he wants to welcome him, teach him to see and experience life, then send him on his way to continue experiencing things.  This is me, enjoying “the dazzle of” that moment of my life.

In the preface to the 1855 edition to Leaves of Grass, Whitman tells of the master poet. The qualities this poet is to have are numerous: American, embodying the American spirit, not slave to rhyme and meter, not veiling his poems in obscure language, etc. Is Whitman here speaking of what his work as a poet is to be or is he describing an ideal that he will strive to reach without expectation of success? To me, this preface does not describe what Whitman thinks his own poetry is to be. I believe that all the qualities he describes and the relationships between poet and non-poets are part of a great ideal that he himself wishes to measure himself against and strive for.
At the end of the preface, Whitman says “The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” And America, as Whitman points out, is such a massive space, with so much that must be absorbed, that the task seems near impossible. Although he lists many things (for example, his listing of rivers on page 7), he is showing the enormous span that America has and conveying that even these lists only touch on the wonders of America.
The poet, says Whitman, is to be modest, but possessing of great powers. “In war he is the most deadly force of the war” (9). “The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality” (10). These and others build the vision of the great poet to dizzying heights of perfection. This great poet must not only know and sing of his country but be “complete lover” to the whole universe (11). Whitman distances himself from this identity by keeping this unnamed great poet at third person.
Despite the arm’s length at which he tries to keep his description of “the great poet”, Whitman is also listing qualities that he has decided to embody, especially those pertaining to writing and composing poems. His subject matter is the width and breadth of the American experience. He does sport simplicity, as his great poet claims “I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains”(14). He does not use “rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to things nor…melancholy complaints or good precepts” (11).

This preface seems to be presenting the reader with the criteria with which Whitman would like the works following to be judged. “This,” he seems to say, “is what I am striving for, not the traditional style of European poetry, or poetry in general.”While I don’t yet know (not having read much of Whitman’s body of works) to what extent he succeeds at all his lofty aims mentioned in the preface, I believe that they are definitely what I should keep in mind when reading his poems, even the later ones where his aims may have evolved.

Here I am, everyone!

Not that this helps with identification, but here's me as George Washington.

Looking forward to tracking Walt Whitman this semester!