Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (4 page)

INTRODUCTION

Walt Whitman and the Promise of America

“America,” the voice says, decidedly.

There is a pause. Then, with renewed vigor and a deliberate beat:

“Listener up there!” the poet calls from the pages of
Leaves of Grass.
Walt Whitman listens—
really listens—
and responds—
actually responds—
to America through his poetry. The page functions as a “necessary film” between the reader and the elusive, contradictory “I” of the text, but Whitman himself often longed to dispose of this medium and confront his audience face to face. He was compelled by the powers of the human voice; Whitman might have realized early dreams of becoming an orator had he possessed a stronger tonal quality or more dramatic flair and talent. But even as a writer, he never stopped measuring the worth of words by their sound and aural appeal. “I like to read them in a palpable voice: I try my poems that way—always have: read them aloud to myself,” the aging poet told his friend Horace Traubel (
With Walt Whitman in Camden,
vol. 3, p. 375; see “For Further Reading”). Getting his listeners to listen to him, as he absorbed and translated them; sensing and deriving energy from the presence and participation of an audience, as his own physical self and voice inspired them: These were foremost concerns for the poet now known as America’s greatest spokesperson, a man who still speaks to and for the American people.

Thomas Edison’s recording of Whitman reading his poem “America” is the closest Walt came, in a literal sense, to addressing his audience (that is, if it is indeed authentic; see Ed Folsom’s article “The Whitman Recording”). Edison patented the phonograph in 1878, and the public flocked to see and hear demonstrations of the new device that “spoke” in a faint metallic tone. Whitman himself visited New York’s Exhibition Building to see displays of Edison’s phonograph and telephone in 1879. A great admirer of technological progress and inventive spirits, Whitman and Edison struck up a friendship and apparently decided to make a recording in 1889. The poet spoke into a small megaphone, attached to the recording apparatus with a flexible tube; the inventor turned the crank. The winding sound of the spinning wax cylinder is clearly heard for the first few seconds of the recording.

And then the voice starts. Students of Whitman are often surprised by how “old” he sounds, forgetting his many paralytic strokes in the 1870s and the ill health that plagued him in his final years. His choice of poem for this apparently onetime opportunity also seems unusual, since “America” is not a popular favorite with Whitman or his readers. But given the strong beat of the poem’s many monosyllabic words, Whitman may have chosen the reading for its sound as well as its meaning. The urgency of his voice increases as he moves from the musical cadence of the first two lines to the solemn grandeur of the next. His pronunciation of “ample” as “eam ple” sounds explosive, and the accent perhaps betrays the Dutch heritage of his family and his beloved city. And the luxurious curl in the word “love” is intimate and inviting. The sensual Whitman can still be heard—even felt—well over a hundred years after his physical death.

The sudden cut after the last word suggests that Whitman and Edison had run out of cylinder space before recording the last two lines: “A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, / Chair’d in the adamant of Time.” The omission does not damage the poetic quality of the first four lines; in fact, fans of Whitman’s earlier, energetic descriptions may consider the final image too static, too conservative or classical. But this late poem was written by a poet reacting as much to intimations of his own mortality as to America’s growing obsession with capitalism and divisions of labor. By the time Whitman wrote “America” in 1888, he no longer believed he would see the promise of America fulfilled in his day; if true democracy were to be achieved, Americans would have to will it into existence. Whitman forcefully projects this solid, secure image of America—an America where the values of community, equality, and creation are at the center rather than the margins—in defiance of the divisive, material culture he first recognized after the Civil War. In both the recorded four and the original six lines of the poem, Whitman’s last word on America is love.

 

Whitman might be disappointed by how removed America still is from his idealized vision, but he would have been pleasantly surprised by the relevance and impact of his message today—especially to his fellow New Yorkers. Though the printshop where
Leaves of Grass
was first struck off was unceremoniously demolished in the 1960s to make way for a housing project, the city has since confirmed and created symbols of the enduring presence of the poems: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” hammered into the Fulton Ferry landing balustrade in Brooklyn, underscores one of the most dramatic Manhattan views; an inspiring section of “City of Ships!” faces the World Financial Center from the marina’s iron enclosure; other verse cruises the length of the city below ground, as part of the “Poetry in Motion” series exhibited on the subway.

The events of September 11, 2001, affected every American’s sense of security and allegiance but brought New Yorkers together in a particularly powerful way. With a renewed sense of connection among this diverse group of people, and support for its heroes and survivors, came a turn to their first spokesperson. Even a century and a half later, Whitman’s images of American courage are strikingly modern. As more firehouse walls and church walls became temporary memorial sites, more of
Leaves of Grass
became part daily life in New York City. This passage, inspired by Whitman’s own eyewitness accounts of the great fires of 1845, became a popular posting:

“The proof of a poet,” wrote Whitman in his 1855 preface to
Leaves of Grass
, “is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it” (p. 27). For decades now, American popular culture has participated in a conversation with Whitman that continues to grow more lively and intimate. The absorption of Whitman by the mainstream is clearly demonstrated in film—an appropriate medium, considering the poet’s interest in appealing to the ears and eyes of readers. When Ryan O‘Neal quotes the last lines of “Song of the Open Road” as part of his wedding vows in
Love Story
(1970), he pronounces Whitman as the spokesman for love that knows no boundaries of class, creed, or time; “Song of Myself “ is used similarly in
With Honors
(1994) when read over the deathbed of Simon Wilder, a beloved eccentric (played by Joe Pesci) found living in the basement of Harvard’s Huntington Library. Whitman stars with Robin Williams in
Dead Poets Society
(1989), and represents proud individuality and independence of spirit—socially and sexually. ”I Sing the Body Electric“ inspires dancers to celebrate physicality in
Fame
(1980); as Annie Savoy, Susan Sarandon also uses the poem to celebrate her body in the sexiest scene of
Bull Durham
(1988).

The musicality of Whitman’s long lines have inspired American composers from Charles Ives to Madonna, who quotes from “Vocalism” in her song “Sanctuary”: “Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, / Him or her I shall follow.” Well over 500 recordings have been made of Whitman-inspired songs, with such artists as Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein lending Whitman’s words a classic pop sensibility. Bryan K. Garman’s
A Race of Singers: Whitman’s Working-class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen,
introduces Whit man’s influence on rock and folk musicians, far too vast for adequate treatment here. As a single example of the continuing presence of Whitman through generations of singers, consider this: The popular alt-country group Wilco (along with British singer-activist Billy Bragg) recorded a 1946 Woody Guthrie song entitled “Walt Whitman’s Niece” and included it on the 1998 release
Mermaid Avenue.
Guthrie himself never recorded the song; one wonders how far the joke of the title would go with his own audiences.

Many Americans get the joke now, and can smile about it. Others still don’t find it funny. For few writers have provoked such extreme reactions as Walt Whitman—America’s poet, but also America’s gay, politically radical, socially liberal spokesperson. And few books of poetry have had so controversial a history as Whitman’s brash, erotically charged
Leaves of Grass
. When the First Edition appeared in 1855, influential man of letters Rufus Griswold denounced the book as a “gross obscenity,” and an anonymous
London Critic
reviewer wrote that “the man who wrote page 79 of the
Leaves of Grass
[the first page of the poem eventually known as ”I Sing the Body Electric“] deserves nothing so richly as the public executioner’s whip.” Finding himself on the defensive early on, Whitman wrote a series of anonymous self-reviews that clarified the goals of Leaves and its author, “the begetter of a new offspring out of literature, taking with easy nonchalance the chances of its present reception, and, through all misunderstandings and distrusts, the chances of its future reception” (from Whitman’s unsigned
Leaves
review in the
Brooklyn Daily Times,
September 29, 1855).

Five years later, Whitman’s own mentor Emerson, who advised against including the highly charged “Children of Adam” poems, tested his “easy nonchalance.” Holding his ground yet again, Whitman explained to Emerson that the exclusion was unacceptable since it would be understood as an “apology,” “surrender,” and “admission that something or other was wrong”
(The Correspondence,
vol. 1, p. 224). In 1882 Boston publisher James R. Osgood was forced to stop printing the Sixth Edition when the city’s district attorney, Oliver Stevens, ruled that
Leaves of Grass
violated “the Public Statutes concerning obscene literature.” After looking at Osgood’s list of necessary deletions from
Leaves of Grass
, Whitman responded: “The list whole and several is rejected by me, & will not be thought of under any circumstances” (Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life, p. 20). The sixty-three-year-old immediately sat down and wrote the essay “A Memorandum at a Venture,” a diatribe condemning America’s close-minded and unhealthy attitudes toward sexuality. Whitman’s poems continued to provoke harsh criticism and calls for censorship through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: As recently as 1998, conservatives were given another opportunity to condemn the book’s suggestive content when President Clinton gave Monica Lewinsky a copy as a gift. Lewinsky’s own critique of Whitman, enclosed in her thank you note, facilitated the controversy: “Whitman is so rich that one must read him like one tastes a fine wine or good cigar—take it, roll it in your mouth, and savor it!”

Whitman would have probably laughed in approval of Lewinsky’s reading. Despite the relentless public outcry and his permanent defensive posturing, he also “took in” and “savored” his poems as well as the writing process. From the publication of the First Edition in 1855 until his death in 1892, he continued to revise and expand his body of work.
Leaves of Grass
went through six editions (1855, 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871, 1881) and several reprints—the 1876 “Centennial” Edition that included a companion volume entitled
Two Rivulets;
the 1888 edition; and the “Death-bed” Edition of 1891-1892. He also published a collection of Civil War poems entitled
Drum-Taps
(1865) and added a
Sequel to Drum-Taps
(1865-1866). Though he began writing poetry relatively late, he never stopped once he started: Plagued by bronchial pneumonia for three months before his death, Whitman completed his last composition (“A Thought of Columbus”) on March 16, 1892, ten days before he died. So ended a literary life that had not seen the rewards of wealth, love, or the recognition of his fellow Americans; the poet could only hope that future readers and writers would embrace his message and carry it forth. Acknowledging that he had “not gain’d the acceptance of my own time” in 1888, Whitman described the “best comfort of the whole business”: “I have had my say entirely my own way, and put it unerringly on record—the value thereof to be decided by time” (“A Backward Glance O‘er Travel’d Roads,” p. 681).