Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (105 page)

 

After an Interval,
p. 773: See note to “The Beauty of the Ship,” above. “After an Interval” was also an intercalation in the 1876
Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits and Intercalations;
it was published in the later pressing of this edition, the 1876
Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits from Life.

 

Two Rivulets,
p. 773: Published in this form only once, in
Two Rivulets,
the companion volume to the 1876 edition of
Leaves of Grass.
Lines 10-12 were used in “As Consequent, Etc.,” a poem new to the 1881 edition. All in all, four poems in
Two Rivulets
appeared only in that volume: “Two Rivulets,” “Or from That Sea of Time,” “From My Last Years,” and “In Former Songs” (see notes, below).

 

Or from That Sea of Time,
p. 774: The text to this poem appeared in this form only in the 1876 companion volume
Two Rivulets.
The first twelve lines were revised and became lines 22-33 of “As Consequent, Etc”; lines 13-18 were altered slightly to form lines 16-21 of that poem.

 

From My Last Years,
p. 775: This poem appeared once only in
Two Rivulets
(1876).

 

In Former Songs,
p. 775: This poem appears but once, in the companion volume
Two Rivulets
(1876).

 

As in a Swoon,
p. 775: The poem first appeared as an intercalation in the 1876
Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits and Intercalations;
it was published in the 1876 edition
Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits from Life
(see the note, above, on “The Beauty of the Ship” for information about Whitman’s intercalations). Though it was included in
Good-Bye My Fancy
(1891) and
Complete Prose Works
(1892), it was not included in
Leaves of Grass
(1891-1892).

 

[
Last Droplets
]
,
p. 776: Whitman never titled these lines, which appear only once: in the prefatory note to the literary miscellany
Good-Bye My Fancy
(1891).

 

Ship Ahoy!,
p. 776: The poem first appeared in the literary miscellany
Good-Bye My Fancy
(1891) and was also published in
Complete Prose Works
(1892), though it was never included in the culminating 1801-1802 edition of
Leaves of Grass.

 

For Queen Victoria’s Birthday,
p. 776: This tribute poem appeared first in the
Philadelphia Public Ledger
(May 22, 1890) and was included in
Complete Prose Works
(1892), though Whitman decided not to include it in the 1891-1892 edition of
Leaves of
Grass.

 

 

L of G,
p. 776: The poem appeared first in the literary miscellany
Good-Bye My Fancy
(1891) and finally in
Complete Prose Works
(1892). The poet chose not to include it in his culminating edition of 1891-1892.

 

After the Argument,
p. 777: Published in
Good-Bye My Fancy
(1891) and
Complete Prose Works
(1892), the poem was not included in Whitman’s culminating edition of
Leaves of Grass.

 

For Us Two, Reader Dear,
p. 777: Published in the literary miscellany
Good-Bye My Fancy
(1891) as well as
Complete Prose Works
(1802), the poem was excluded from the 1801-1802 edition of
Leaves of Grass.

To Soar in Freedom and in Fullness of Power,
p. 779: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

Then Shall Perceive,
p. 779: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

The Few Drops Known,
p. 779: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

One Thought Ever at the Fore,
p. 780: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1807).

 

While Behind All Firm and Erect,
p. 780: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

A Kiss to the Bride,
p. 780: Published in the
New York Daily Graphic
of May 21, 1874, this poem was first collected in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

Nay, Tell Me Not To-day the Publish’d Shame,
p. 781: Published in the
New York Daily Graphic
of March 5, 1873, this poem was first collected in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

Supplement Hours,
p. 781: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897)

 

Of Many a Smutch’d Deed Reminiscent,
p. 782: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

To Be at All,
Cf. Stanza 27,
“Song of Myself,”
p. 782: Though this poem was first published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897), it appears to be a draft or revision of stanza 27 of “Song of Myself.”

 

Death’s Valley,
p. 783: First published—ironically—the month after Whitman’s death in
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
(April 1982), the poem was collected in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

On the Same Picture,
p. 784: First published in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

 

A Thought of Columbus,
p. 784: First published in
Once a Week
on July 9, 1892, a few months after Whitman’s death, the poem was collected in
Old Age Echoes
(1897).

INSPIRED BY LEAVES OF GRASS

Whitman poems on every subject—war, love, travel, compassion—continue to inspire artists in many genres.

In “Poets to Come” Walt Whitman addresses future generations of poets, commanding, “Arouse! for you must justify me.” They have done so. Among them is Ezra Pound, whose poem “A Pact” (1913) begins, “I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman—/ I have detested you long enough.” Other notable poems invoking Whitman include “Retort to Whitman” (late 1920s), by D. H. Lawrence, and “Old Walt” (1954), by Langston Hughes (who also edited a collection of Whitman’s verse in 1946). T. S. Eliot and Carl Sandburg both published essays in the 1920s addressing the importance of Whitman in American poetry. Though Eliot found the poet’s style to be primitive and even distasteful, Sandburg’s
Chicago Poems
(1916) and
The People, Yes!
(1936) reflect Whitman’s style.

In his “Cape Hatteras” (1920) Hart Crane asks: “Walt, tell me, Walt Whitman, if infinity / Be still the same as when you walked the beach / Near Paumanok.” The last lines of the poem envision Crane and Whitman together on the beach, walking hand in hand. Crane summons his venerated predecessor into the future, attempting to carry his legacy onward.

Two important post-World War II American poets, William Carlos Williams and John Berryman, also took Whitman as an artistic guide. Williams’s essay “The American Idiom” (1967) addresses Whitman’s impact on language. Likewise, Beat-generation poets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg often cited Whitman as the major influence in their work. In “Supermarket in California” (1955), Ginsberg imagines his predecessor roving among modern store aisles, examining meats and vegetables, darting desirous glances at the grocery boys. Kerouac, too, invokes Whitman, in his poem “168th Chorus” (1959). Louis Simpson named his collection
At the End of the Open Road
(1963) in reference to Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road,” and in some of his closing verse he carries on a lengthy dialogue with the older poet regarding new problems in a modernized America. Across the Atlantic, Whitman has been the subject of poems by Spanish writers Pedro Mir, Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Jorge Luis Borges.

Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song
(edited by Dan Campion, Ed Folsom, and Jim Perlman; see “For Further Reading”) an thologizes works of the many poets Whitman has influenced and includes Whitman-related letters and essays by such writers as Ger ard Manley Hopkins, Matthew Arnold, Henry David Thoreau, Sherwood Anderson, Henry Miller, and Robert Bly. In
Whitman’s Wild Children,
Neeli Cherkovski provides in-depth discussions of twelve poets who represent the Whitmanic tradition, and
The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
begins and ends with Whitman’s verse.

Willa Cather took the title of her novel O
Pioneers!
(1913) from the Whitman poem “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” Set on the Nebraska prairie, the novel chronicles the struggles of Swedish immigrant Alexandra Bergson, whose father’s death leaves her with a plot of sickly farmland that she transforms into a thriving enterprise. The novel includes this Whitmanesque line: “The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.” British novelist E. M. Forster took the title of Whitman’s poem as that of his masterpiece
A Passage to India
(1924).

Jack Kerouac refers directly to Whitman as his muse in the freewheeling
On the Road
(1957), the title of which echoes Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” Perhaps the seminal text of the Beat generation, the novel details the adventures of writer Sal Paradise and recent jailbird Dean Moriarty as they hitchhike and travel by bus across America, smoking marijuana, drinking heavily, and visiting jazz clubs and brothels.

Another incarnation of Whitman hit the road in 1989, in Max ine Hong Kingston’s novel
Tripmaster Monkey.
The protagonist, a young Chinese-American poet named Wittman Ah Sing, recites poetry to fellow passengers on the buses of San Francisco.

Whitman’s rich imagery translates well into painting. The poet has been a favorite among artists since the time of Vincent van Gogh, who praised Whitman vigorously in letters to his family while he painted
Starry Night
(1889). Indeed, van Gogh may even have taken his title from Whitman’s poem cluster “From Noon to Starry Night,” which was published in France just before the artist began work on the famous painting.

Realist painter Thomas Eakins enjoyed a close friendship with Whitman. While the poet was frequently photographed and painted, he most admired his portrait by Eakins, saying it represented him truly, without glossing over his physical imperfections. Eakins’s best-known work,
The Swimming Hole
(1889), is widely thought to be a response to “Song of Myself” in which “twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore.”

Inspired by the poem “I Hear America Singing,” Whitman’s ode to the noble and tireless workers of the country, in 1939 Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson Shahn painted the epic series
Resources of America
for the walls of the Bronx County Post Office in New York City. The eighteen-foot-high frescoes depict ordinary Americans performing the everyday tasks that keep the country running. Several panels focus on people engaged in such jobs as harvesting wheat and reading construction blueprints. Other panels depict technology, including hydroelectric dams and electrical blast furnaces, and one panel shows Whitman himself reciting poetry to citizens gathered below.

Weda Cook, a popular singer, friend of Whitman, and model for painter Thomas Eakins, was the first musician to set “O Captain! My Captain!” and other Whitman poems to music. Classical music has also strongly favored Whitman. Composer Charles Ives, deemed the “Walt Whitman of American Music,” provided a setting of one of the outspoken passages of “Song of Myself”: “Who goes there? Hankering, gross, mystical, nude...” (from “Walt Whitman”). In the early twentieth century, the good gray poet sparked the interest of three important British composers: Frederick Delius, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and Gustav Holst. Delius set Whitman’s poems to music in “Seadrift” (1904), “Songs of Farewell” (1930), and “Idyll” (1932). Williams’s “Toward the Unknown Reason” (1906) sets the poem “Darest Thou Now O Soul” to music; his “Sea Symphony” (1910) uses words from “A Passage to India” and several Whitman poems about ships; and his “Dona Nobis Pacem” (“Grant Us Peace,” 1936) is an antiwar piece incorporating Whitman’s Civil War poems. Holst set Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom‘d” to music in “Ode to Death” (1919), which memorialized friends killed during World War I. In the years leading up to World War II, a number of anti-Nazi composers set Whitman to music. Among them were Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Hans Werner Henze, Friedrich Wildgans, Franz Schreker, and Karl Amadeus Hartmann.

Whitman’s immense influence on folk and progressive music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan is discussed by Bryan Garman in
A Race of Singers: Whitman’s Working-class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen.

COMMENTS & QUESTIONS