In Search of Walt Whitman, Part One: The Early Years (1819-1860)

I celebrate myself and what I assume you shall assume for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you I love and invite my soul Eileen and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems [Music] America's first great poet was born the last day of May in 1819 to a farming family in Huntington Long Island generations of Whitman's had lived on Long Island since first settling there in 1664 while Whitman was born in this two-story house that his father built just nine years before he was the second of eight children his father Walt Whitman senior was a sullen man who drank heavily and was given to spells of depression he was known to say keep a good heart the worse is to come he often read political books and journals that some would call radical what was closer to his mother Louisa Whitman she was big-boned vigorous and an imaginative storyteller she later recalled of her son he was a very good but very strange boy Walt parents were very patriotic and they instilled in their children a reverence for democracy they named three of their six sons after heroes of the new country George Washington Whitman Thomas Jefferson Whitman and Andrew Jackson Whitman Walt leader wrote the time of my boyhood was a very restless and unhappy one I did not know what to do but he always possessed an intimate connection with nature this became the subject of a poem there was a child went forth 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 the early lilacs became part of this child and grass and white then read morning glories and white and red clover and the song of the Phoebe bird and the field sprouts of April and May became part of him wintergreen sprouts and those of the light yellow corn and of the esculent roots of the garden and the apple trees covered with blossoms and the fruit afterward and wood berries and the communists weeds by the road these became part of that child who went forth every day and who now goes and will always go forth every day and these become part of him or her that pur uses them here there was a child went forth as less experimental of course then some of myself but some of the direct commentary on the mother and the father in particular and the lines about the upbringing and the coming into understanding about identity and difference between you know oneself and the objects one season in the world all of that seems to be grounded in in Whitman's own biographical circumstances that's how the self absorbs everything around and other people are absorbing it and that's what he meant by this absorption it's he's talking he's a he and Dickinson were the first boats to write about consciousness following Emerson's so that's how I see it when what was nearly four years old his father moved the family to a bustling market town of 15,000 people called Brooklyn it was booming with construction everywhere even so Walt's father a farmer and carpenter had a difficult time making ends meet Walt spent much of his childhood moving on average the Whitman's changed homes every year one of his happiest memories was on July 4th 1826 as the nation celebrated its fiftieth anniversary of Independence France's Marquis de Lafayette came to Brooklyn one of the great heroes of the Revolutionary War who fought side-by-side with George Washington Whitman fondly recalled Lafayette's visit to Brooklyn as he rode up Fulton Street to the new library where he laid a cornerstone the childish pride I experienced in being one of those who were taken in the arms of Lafayette and reached down by him to a standing place as a little boy I have been pressed tightly and lovingly to the breast of Lafayette Brooklyn only had one public school district school number one which Walt attended from 1825 to 1830 but he didn't like it few students did the teachers were very strict and emphasized rote learning even minor infractions like failing to memorize a lesson or speaking out of turn could result in a weapon or in Whitman's words other ingenious methods of child torture a teacher of his recalled him as a good-natured boy sloppy in appearance clumsy and unremarkable years later when this teacher learned that Walt had become a famous poet he seemed surprised and remarked we need never be discouraged over anyone whatever misgivings Walt may have had he didn't remain in school for long his parents forced him to quit at age 11 they needed him to earn money to help the family the boy who had become America's first great poet had only a Grammar School education and what it allowed Whitman to do is to become an autodidact he really taught himself and he took advantage of being in what at the time was a big city for the United States in the first half of the 19th century a place where there were museums a place where there were opera performances a place where he could talk to all kinds of people and learn through apprenticeships as so many people did at the time leaving school and needing to find a job Walt found work as an office boy for a law firm he would sometimes deliver legal papers to Aaron Burr best known as Thomas Jefferson's vice president and slaying Alexander Hamilton in a duel Whitman remembered burr greeting him with amused interest alertness smiling old eyes and hearty laugh who often gave the young boy in apple or pear Walt soon entered the newspaper business in the printing office of the Long Island star a weekly newspaper in those days political parties funded most newspapers and the Whig party supported the long island star the paper served as a kind of trade school in college during his three years in which Walt learned the newspaper printing trade when what was around 13 his family moved back to rural Long Island even though Brooklyn was expanding rapidly his father was unable to succeed in real estate and return to farming left alone in Brooklyn must have been difficult for the teenager but he soon discovered a great passion the theater he loved attending the theaters across the river to see melodramas and Shakespeare his favorite actor was Junius Brutus booth who Walt saw in many tragic parts like Richard the third and Estella his genius was to me one of the grandest revelations of my life a lesson of artistic expression he had much to do with shaping me in those early years he especially liked that booth defied the rules and traditions as in all heart utterance it was the subtle and powerful something special in the individual that really conquered his son John Wilkes Booth would one day change the course of American history it was during this time that Walt felt the first stirrings of becoming a writer while visiting the Brooklyn waterfront I saw a ship under a full sail and had the desire to describe it exactly as it seemed to me Whitman completed his apprenticeship and started working as a printer in Manhattan or New York as it was called then but his timing could not have been worse soon after working as a typesetter for a newspaper a great fire destroyed much of New York's newspaper industry 700 buildings around Wall Street were destroyed the Great Fire of 1835 one of the worst in New York history decimated the publishing business and newspaper workers were hurt especially hard many lost their jobs including Walt he returned to Long Island he wasn't sure what to do in this turn of events but there were two things while loved to do spend time with his brothers and sisters and love I was a first-rate aquatic loafer I possessed almost unlimited capacity for floating on my back when autumn came Walt decided to try his hand at teaching even though he was only 17 and was younger than some of his students the next few years he taught the children of local farmers reading writing and arithmetic in towns throughout Long Island it was not an easy existence the pay was poor and the country school was usually just a shack like many teachers of the time Walt boarded with the families of his students which he described as one of his best experiences and deepest lessons in human nature behind the scenes instead of drilling his students he asked them thought-provoking questions told stories and engage them in conversation throughout his life Walt believed learning from lectures and books should never overshadow the actual experience of things as expressed in his poem when I heard the learn'd astronomer when I heard the learn'd astronomer when the proofs the figures were ranged in columns before me when I was shown the charts and diagrams to add divide and measure them when I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room how soon unaccountable I became tired and sick till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself in the mystical moist night-air and from time to time looked up in perfect silence at the Stars walt refused to use corporal punishment in the classroom leader rating in an editorial for the New York Aurora corporal punishment never produces any good effects Solomon's axiom spare the rod and spoil the child if meant to be taken literally as is questionable is a false sanguinary principle that ought to be scouted by every man of sense however this compassion did not endear him to many local school board's who did not understand his teaching style and often dismissed him so that when he was living out there on his own I think he really missed the city I think he missed the opportunities that he had in the cities and I think as a as a teacher he yah the corporal punishment he certainly wrote about that in his own journalism he was very much against corporal punishment one of his most reprinted early short stories was child's champion which was about corporal punishment and about a student who dies from being beaten by a teacher the very few reminiscences we have of Whitman as a teacher by former students are actually quite positive reminiscences about him as a teacher someone who loved the game of 20 questions and would play with his students for instance turned away from teaching Walt had an idea why not start his own newspaper he found business partners who helped him purchase a printing press and rent space above a stable at barely nineteen years old he produced his own weekly newspaper in Huntington the Long Islander Whitman was all things reporter editor printer and delivery boy riding his horse Nina delivering the papers to farms throughout the huntington area he later said he never had happier jobs than riding through the countryside with Nina delivering the paper amazingly the weekly newspaper that 19 year old Walt Whitman founded in 1838 in a room above a stable still exists today the Long Islander is a thriving local paper that serves the Long Island town of Huntington in the following summer however Walt's business partners sold the paper from under him and he was once again out of a job he would soon set his sights on the gleaming city across the river in May 1841 Walt moves to New York to try his hand again at the newspaper business and fiction rating he sets about writing a novel called Franklin Evans or the inebriate it was a temperance novel about a young man from a Long Island farm who moves to New York meets mischievous friends and succumbs to the evils of alcohol but Whitman disavowed the work later on it was damned rot rot of the worst sort not insincere perhaps but rot nevertheless published as an extra in the New World newspaper it sold 20,000 copies ironically Franklin Evans sold more copies by far during his lifetime than anything else he'd ever read during the next few years Walt works briefly for the Aurora evening toddler statesman Democrat and mirror while most editors thought Walt had decent rating skills they found him lazy and someone who had trouble sticking to a schedule one of his bosses complained there is a man about our office so lazy that it takes two men to open his jaws when he speaks if you kick him he's too idle to cry for then he'd have to wipe his eyes what can be done with him but Walt saw it differently he thought loafing was an important part of life in one of his earliest newspaper pieces he writes how I do love a loafer of all human beings none equals your genuine inborn unvarying loafer now when I say loafer I mean loafer not a fellow who is lazy by fits and starts who today will work his 12 of 14 hours and tomorrow doze and idle I stand up for no such halfway business give me your calm steady philosophic son of indolence one that doesn't swerve from the beaten track what was Adam I should like to know but a loafer did he do anything but loaf who was foolish enough to say that Adam was a working man one of the papers wall wrote for was the Broadway Journal one afternoon in 1845 he strolled into its offices to talk with its editor an owner who was none other than Edgar ho-hoo had published his poem The Raven earlier that year Whitman leader recalled Poe impressed me very favourably was dark quiet handsome southern from top to toe languid tired out it is true but altogether ingratiating walt dress meticulously during this period sporting an English style suit hi-hat and elegant cane and hand he sauntered through city streets and ports of New York watching people at work hearing the sounds of the city he soaked up the impressions of Manhattan Walt found great beauty and poetry in the everyday as expressed in his poem I hear America singing i hear america singing the varied carols I hear those of mechanics each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong the carpenter singing his as he measures his plank for beam the Mason singing his as he makes ready for work or leaves off work the boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat the deckhand singing on the steamboat dick the shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench the hatter singing as he stands the woodcutter song the plow boys on his way in the morning or at noon intermission or at sundown the delicious singing of them for the young wife at work or of the girls sewing or washing each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else the day what belongs to the day at night the party of young fellows robust friendly singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs one fateful evening whitney attends of lecture that would alter the trajectory of his life the renowned essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke about the future of poetry in America proclaiming that one day the country would bring forth a great poet the genius of poetry is here he's in the forest walks paths carpeted with leaves of the chestnut oak and pine he visits without fear the factory railroading dwarfed when he lifts his great voice men gather to hear him and forget all that his past as he proceeds I see their eyes sparkle and they are filled with cheer and new faith in the audience Walt felt as if Emerson were addressing him personally and wondered if he could become such a poet [Music] constantly changing jobs in the newspaper business Walt finally catches a break around the time the first real game of baseball is being played in Hoboken New Jersey in June 1846 Walt works as an editor at the Brooklyn daily eagle it was here that he became one of the very first journalists to raid about the new game of baseball in our sundown perambulations of late through the outer parts of Brooklyn we have observed several parties of youngsters playing base a certain game of ball we wish such sites were more common among us let us go forth a while and get better air in our lungs let us leave our closed rooms in the dust and corruption of stagnant places and taste some of the good things Providence has scattered around so liberally the game of ball is glorious as to his position at the Brooklyn daily eagle I had one of the pleasantest hits of my life a good owner good pay and easy work and hours he used some of his modest earnings to help his family purchase a house and furnishings in Brooklyn when his father gave up farming he gave gifts to his family sewing supplies and jewelry for his mother and sisters boots for his brothers whatever his faults may have been Walt proved to be an exceptionally generous person throughout his life working at the daily GLE he marveled at how the Telegraph which Samuel FB Morris debuted two years before revolutionized the speed of news much the same way the internet revolutionized the speed of news in this era the governor's message which we published today was transmitted from Albany to New York yesterday yet it was in type printed and for sale in Brooklyn and New York by four o'clock yet politics eventually reared its head Walt sided with the Free Soil Democrats who strongly resisted the expansion of slavery into the territories this clashed with the newspapers pro-slavery owners he's continually overwhelmingly prolific with his writing so it's not laziness I think at all it gets him moving from one paper to another I think he's a very strongly opinionated guy and on newspapers where the owner and the editors set the political agenda for the newspapers when Whitman ran into opposition with the editors he was not afraid to express that opposition and even occasionally to try to get into that person's paper views that were not what that person wanted to see expressed those were the things I think that got him moving from one paper to another editors would often try to find excuses for why they were getting rid of Walt Whitman and the laziness excuse was one that that came up once again in early 1848 Walt was out of a job but his life was about to take a very different direction a few days after being fired while attending a play well struck up a conversation during intermission with je McClure a newspaperman McClure was starting a daily newspaper in New Orleans called the Crescent and offered Whitman a job on the spot he immediately accepted during the first act of the play while was unemployed by the second he was the editor of a New Orleans daily newspaper two days later he was on his way to New Orleans with his 14 year old brother Jeff his first time outside the Northeast women was enthralled with New Orleans and the south he found the city alive with colors and aromas the peddlers hulking crabs the young women selling flowers he and Jeff arrived in New Orleans just after the mexican-american war had ended walking through the city's parks Walt encountered soldiers camping out newly returned from the war he also met the most famous general of the war Zachary Taylor who would be elected president of the United States later that year I was there at the conclusion of the Mexican War saw and talked with general Taylor and the other generals and officers who were fed it and detained several days on they returned victorious from that expedition the war with Mexico had been controversial some considered it in unjust war a land grab to extend slave territory in which the United States expanded all the way to the Pacific Ocean at war's end Mexico ceded to the u.s. nearly all the territory now part of Texas New Mexico Arizona Nevada Utah western Colorado and California for 15 million dollars yet Whitman supported the war with Mexico declaring in the Brooklyn Eagle cold must be the pose and throb less to all good thoughts no true Americans will it be which cannot respond to the valorous Emprise of our soldiers and commanders in Mexico he also embraced the idea of manifest destiny a political doctrine that the United States was truly destined to grow westward until reaching the Pacific Ocean he and his brother Jeff rented rooms across the street from the Crescent with Jeff working as an office boy for the paper while Walt was the exchange editor but despite its many charms New Orleans also brought Walt face-to-face with slavery as a child he had seen slaves for New York did not fully abolish slavery until 1827 but in New Orleans he witnessed public slave auctions and read ads from slave traders in his own newspaper this buying and selling of humans repelled him as later expressed in the poem I sing the body electric the man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred it is no matter who is it a slave is it one of the dull faced immigrants just landed on the wharf each has his or her place in the procession all is a procession the universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion a slave at auction I help the option here the Slaven does not have know his business gentlemen look on this curious creature whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for him for him the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant for him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled in that head the old baffling brain in it and below it the making of the attributes of heroes if life and the soul are sacred the human body is sacred as the months went by Walt and Jeff grew homesick and receiving few letters from home worried about their family Walt was starting to have arguments with the papers owner about slavery and money by late May they returned to New York although his time in New Orleans lasted only several months it had a strong impact on the poet I think I sing the body electric is very much New Orleans poem I think it's a poem that grows out of that experience of having witnessed slave auctions again it was Whitman experiencing something that he had read about and heard about and the experience of it changed everything for him he saw the dehumanization of black people that not only slavery but the slave auction itself actually underscored and emphasized for him in brutal ways he brought back with him from New Orleans a slave auction poster and some ads about returning runaway slaves from newspapers including the Crescent the paper he worked for which printed those ads for runaway slaves and he always would keep that above his desk as he was writing back in Brooklyn Walt Whitman never became an abolitionist but when he returned to New York he became very involved with the new Free Soil party which opposed the spread of slavery into the new states and territories he served as a delegate at that third party's national convention in Buffalo started a free soil newspaper and campaigned for Martin Van Buren the Free Soil candidate for president but his political hopes came to naught van Buren lost the 1848 election to general Zachary Taylor of the Whig party whom Whitman had met in New Orleans his newspaper folded after just a year now he would turn his attention to other pursuits [Music] feeling disillusioned with politics Walt went into business with his father and brothers they operated a print shop and house building business as Brooklyn was experiencing a building boom the Whitman's live together in the same house on Myrtle Avenue but for webmin these were days of preparation the gathering of the forces as he later called it making up for a scant education he read voraciously on religion history and science he kept a notebook to record observations and insights he was simmering as he liked to say forging the raw materials into what would be a new kind of poetry he loved riding the ferry and taking long walks befriending ferry boat captains dock workers and Broadway horse cart drivers he would often sit up front with them and recite Shakespeare he knew the workers names and stories they had immense qualities eating drinking women great personal pride in their way perhaps a few slouches here and there but I should have trusted the general run of them in their simple goodwill and honor under all circumstances once when a friend of his in omnibus driver fell ill while finished his route and gave the earnings to the man's family the group that he particularly kind of falls in with are these omnibus drivers as they were called effectively there were cab drivers many of whom gotten horrible accidents there was no safety net whatsoever and these guys were they lived paycheck to paycheck and you get in a horrible accident your body is broken well you know what are you supposed to do how you supposed to make a living now and so on so well that's actually how waltz took first started making his hospital visits visiting these young men who had been in terrible traffic accidents basically or thrown from the Omnibus from the cab because they were outside the cab and food they'd get flung off of it and that's basically where he had the first idea of visiting people in the hospital and helping them out and comforting and them and whatnot and so it very quickly then he he takes that over to the Civil War because he's done this before he knows what kind of impact it can have on other people [Music] one of Whitman's favorite activities in the evening was attending the Opera he would later raid in sung of myself about his favorite opera singer the soprano Marietta elbow knee I hear the sound of the human voice a sound I love I hear the train soprano she convulses me like the climax of my love grip the orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies it wrenches unnameable orders from my breasts a tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me the orbit flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me for [Music] but for the Opera I could not have written leaves of grass this was a happy time in Walt's life time of unlimited possibilities with the Future wide open as expressed in his poem song of the open road a foot and light hearted I take to the open road healthy free the world before me the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose henceforth I ask not good fortune I myself and good fortune henceforth I whimper no more postpone no more need nothing done within door complaints libraries querulous criticisms strong and content I travel the open road o highway I travel do you say to me do not leave me do you say venture not if you leave me you are lost do you say I am already prepared I am well being a nun denied adhere to me o public road I say back I am not afraid to leave you yet I love you you express me better than I can express myself you shall be more to me than I am hail great drafts of space the East and the West are mine and the North and the South are mine I am larger better than I thought I did not know I held so much goodness all things beautiful to me and I'll whoever you are come travel with me traveling with me you find what never tires the earth never tires the earth is ruled silent incomprehensible at first nature is wooed and incomprehensible at first be not discouraged keep on there are divine things well enveloped I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell the city inspired him but there was one building in particular that stood out these days people enjoy spending the afternoon at Bryant Park next to the New York Public Library but what few know is that this was once the site of a magnificent building covering nearly five acres built in 1853 who was called the Crystal Palace and was one of Walt Whitman's favorite places to visit shaped like a Greek cross with a largest dome in the Western Hemisphere it hosted the first World's Fair in the United States in 1853 Whitman called it an edifice certainly unsurpassed anywhere for beauty and all the other requisites for a perfect edifice one of the few that put modern times not beneath old times but on an equality within a 17-year old Mark Twain called it a perfect fairy Palace beautiful beyond description Walt loved the exhibits on art and science and the staggering variety of objects on display I went a long time nearly a year days and nights especially the latter sometimes he visited with Omnibus drivers he befriended his frequent visits may have even shaped his poetry especially his tendency to catalog many diverse items that are thematically linked his visits to places like the Crystal Palace and the new Egyptian Museum were were very important part of his day-to-day education as was going up and down Broadway and encountering the diversity of human life in New York City these were the things that he absorbed and and then refracted and expressed in his poetry one of the most majestic buildings in New York the Crystal Palace was destroyed in a fire just five years after it was built in only 20 minutes the building and all the exhibits burned to the ground it has been almost completely forgotten by history as Walt's altered throughout the city he jotted down poetic lines and ideas in notebooks that he carried it I often wander all day on Manhattan Island through streets toward the East River on purpose to have the pleasure of hearing the voices of the native born and bred workmen and apprentices in the spa yards drivers calling to their horses and the like poetic lines came to him spontaneously he reminded himself make it plain lumber the writing with nothing let it go as lightly as a bird flies in the air or a fish swims in the sea in another notebook he wrote keep it simple and clear being not a cult too much attempt at ornament is the blur upon nearly all literary styles it's part of the intimacy and part of the part of the realism that was happening as as well that he was at the he said the crux of Romanticism changing into realism and he can be seen with elements of both but in order to talk in an intimate way he needed to to use ordinary language to he wants the reader to come close and touch he wants this intimate contact with the reader and so it's the language of intimacy as well in the language of all the people the working people on the blab of the pavé and the chuff of the neck and the the the he also would use French and sometimes Spanish even one of the enduring mysteries of Walt Whitman's life that nobody has been able to answer is how could an ordinary newspaper writer who never published poetry before and had little education or training create a work of such genius unprecedented in world literature the emergence of leaves of grasses truly one of the mysteries of you know world literature of human creation dr. Richard Maurice buck was a close friend of Whitman's during the poet's later years buck wrote one of the earliest biographies on Walt Whitman and served as co-executor as his literary state buck believed that in June of 1853 or 1854 when Whitman was around 35 years old he had a cosmic and transcendent experience that played a role in infusing his poetry with a profound spiritual wisdom Buc describes this belief in his book Cosmic Consciousness in which he profiles Whitman and others throughout history who had spontaneous transcendent experiences that deeply changed them and their work offering them a glimpse into the immortality of all things buck himself was no stranger to such a mystical experience he reports that in 1872 he experienced a transcendent vision after reading leaves of grass and other poetry with friends William James the father of psychology in the United States describes Buck's mystical account in his classic 1902 book the varieties of religious experience although while Whitman never spoke publicly about a profound mystical experience there are hints throughout his notebooks from the 1850s while he was writing leaves of grass I am in a mystic trance exhortation something wild and untamed half-savage he later wrote about being in a trance yet with all senses alert with the objective world suspended or surmounted for a while and the powers in exultation freedom vision have you any doubt of mortality I said there can be no more doubt of immortality then there is a mortality never speak of the soul as anything but intrinsically great the adjective affixed to it must always testify greatness and immortality and purity although some scholars disagree with bux theory others are open to his interpretation as a contributing factor it must have been even more stunning for him as the creator than it is for us as the recipients and readers to have gone along in life and to be a rather ordinary guy who you know didn't wasn't especially well-educated in the formal sense you know yeah he kicked around from one journalistic job to another yeah he worked a bit in carpentry yeah he worked a little bit in investments in Brooklyn and did a few other things but none of this predicts kind of a world literature changing volume and and yet there it is it suddenly emerges and so perhaps this account of you know there's no ordinary me and then every once in a while and I'm able to access some some other layer that that gets me access to powers I didn't even realize I had that seems to be what happened because he didn't need to read books if he had the experience of it that he was describing and if he had read the books he wouldn't have understood it really in the way that probably the divine is flowing through everybody and he sees that and everybody's equal what he got and so perhaps nowhere is the spiritual wisdom as clearly expressed as in Whitman's longest and most renowned poem some of myself and so he does seem to think about distinctions between the self and between one person that is the person that we offer to the world in our day-to-day interactions and it is the person that you know meets obligations and rounds the edges of otherwise blunt ideas or gets along etc and then there's some other more profound self for Whitman I think to some extent that more profound self was in the role of the observer I believe in you my soul the other I am must not a base itself to you and you must not be a base to the other my mind how we lay in June such a transparent summer morning you've settled your head a thought my hips and gently turned over upon me and parted the shirt from my bosom bone and plunged your tongue to my bare stripped heart and reached till you felt my beard and reached till you held my feet swiftly arose and spread around the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth and I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own and I know that the Spirit of God is the eldest 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 calcine of the creation is love I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women and the hints about old men and mothers and the offspring taken soon out of their laps what do you think has become of the young and old men and what do you think has become of the women and children they are alive and well somewhere the smallest sprout shows there is really no death and if ever there was it led forward life and does not wait at the end to arrest it and ceased the moment life appeared all goes onward and outward and nothing collapses and to die is different from what anyone supposed and luckier has anyone supposed it lucky to be born I hasten to inform him it is just as lucky to die and I know it I pass death with a dying and birth with the newest babe and them not contained between my hat and boots and peruse manifold objects no two alike and everyone good the earth the good and the stars good and their adjuncts all good and I think for Whitman God is ultimately everything that is existing in any particular moment of now so I'm I'm not questioning God because I see God every time I touch something taste something here's something say something I am NOT an earth nor an adjunct of an earth I am the mate and companion of people all just as immortal and fathomless as myself they do not know how immortal but I know have you reckoned a thousand acres much have you reckoned the earth much have you practiced so long to learn to read have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems you shall possess the good of the earth and son there are millions of Suns left you shall no longer take things and or third-hand no look through the eyes of the dead nor feed on the specters in books you shall not look through my eyes either nor take things from me you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself the idea that for Whitman now is the only eternal moment there will always be a now and that's all there will be we don't live in a past we don't live in a future we only live in a now I have heard what the stalkers were talking the talk of the beginning and the end there was never any more inception than there is now nor any more youth or age than there is now and will never be any more perfection than there is now nor any more heaven or hell than there is now urge and urge and urge always the proprietary of the world logic and sermons never convince the damp of the night drives deeper into my soul only what proves itself to every man and woman his self only what nobody denies is so a Morning Glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics in books I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars and the running blackberry would adorn the palace of heaven and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery and the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue and a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sex trillions of infidels in sung of myself Whitman distinguishes between one's personality and the larger self the deeper self is of the same essence as the universal spirit and that true knowledge is acquired not through the senses or an intellect but through union with this self the latest news the real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love or loss or lack of money or depressions or exultation z' they 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 with its side curved head curious what will come next both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it I and this mystery here we stand clear and sweet as my soul and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul lacks one lacks both and the unseen is proved by the scene till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn I am of old and young of the foolish as much as the wise regardless of others ever regardful of others maternal as well as paternal a child as well as a man shall I pray shall i venerate and be ceremonious I have pried through the strata and analyzed to her hair and counseled with doctors and calculated clothes and found no sweeter that sticks to my own bones do i contradict myself very well then I contradict myself I am large I contain multitudes just as literature had sort of taken the top part of the body it had also taken the top part of society so it was you know the wealthy the successful the upper class or aristocrats if it was in Europe or the royalty but it wasn't the you know bricklayer and it wasn't the butcher and it wasn't the immigrant and it wasn't the you know mixed-race person hunting in Montana or Wyoming and Whitman sets himself the task of writing about the entire country and and try to view all people on an equal footing this is the meal pleasently said this is the meat and drink for natural hunger it is for the wicked just the same as the righteous I make appointments with all I will not have a single person slighted or left away the kept woman and sponger and thief are hereby invited the heavy-lift slave is invited the vinny really is invited there shall be no difference between them and the rest Walt Whitman and American one of the roughs a cosmos disorderly fleshy and sensual eating drinking and breeding no sentimentalist no stander above or apart from them no more modest than immodest in all people I see myself none more and not one a barley : less and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them I am the poet of the woman the same as the man and I say it is as great to be a woman has to be a man and I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men I think that's exactly what witness trying to do is awaken the reader awaken the reader to the readers own thoughtless acts of discrimination awaken the reader to the kinds of contradictions that we all contain within us to awaken the reader to his or her own body and the power of having senses that are awake to the world to awaken the reader to the idea that when you open your eyes on the world every time you open your eyes and look out of a window or look out on to a landscape that you see it as if you're the first human being ever seeing it and become overwhelmed and amazed I think that awakening the reader to the power and the vitality and the majesty of living in a body is exactly what he is out to do long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams now I wash the gum from your eyes you must have it yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life it is you talking just as much as myself I act as the tongue of you it was tied in your mouth in mine it begins to be loosened I have said that the soul is not more than the body and I have said that the body is not more than the soul and nothing not God is greater to one than oneself is and whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral dressed in his shroud and I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth and to glance with an eye or show up being in its part confounds the learning of all times and there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero and there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the Weald universe and any man or woman shall stand cool and supercilious before a million universes everything every leaf is a miracle the mouse is a miracle enough to stagger sextillion infidels the piss mire the ant is is equally important and beautiful every the smallest thing in and the largest thing that's the humility I think that even an ant is no great is great and I call to mankind be not curious about God for I Who am curious about each I'm not curious about God no array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death I hear and behold God in every object yet I understand God not in the least nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself why should I wish to see God better than this day I see something of God each hour of the 24 and each moment then in the faces of men and women I see God and in my own face in the glass I find letters from God dropped in the street and every one is signed by God's name and I leave them where they are for I know that others will punctually come for ever and ever and as to you life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths no doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before the spotted Hawk swoops by and accuses me he complains of my gab and my lorry I too am NOT a bit tamed I too AM untranslatable I sound my barbaric yawp over the roots of the world you in leaves of grass Whitman describes himself not only as the poet of the soul but also the poet of the body he celebrated sensuality and the beauty of the human body in a way very few poets did before him I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul the pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me if life in the solo Sigrid the human body is sacred I believe in the flesh and the appetites seeing hearing and feeling are miracles and each part and tag of me is a miracle divine am i inside and out and i make holy whatever I touch or I'm touched from the scent of these armpits is aroma finer than prayer this head is more than churches or Bibles or Creed's part of Whitman's inclusiveness of vision was that the entire body every part of the body is crucial that frontispiece of the 1855 leaves of grass is the first full-body portrait of a poet it's had more influence on poetry through the 20th century and 21st century than any other image now every poet portrays himself or herself in outdoor clothes casual clothes sometimes wearing a hat but it's the full body 'no support with a crotch the first poet with a torso before this poets were always shoulder and heads he most celebrates the body in his poem I sing the body electric the expression of the body of man or woman box account the male is perfect and that of the female is perfect the expression of a well made man appears not only in his face it is in his limbs and joints also it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists it is in his walk the carriage of his neck the flex of his waist and knees dress does not hide him to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem perhaps more this is the female form a divine Nimbus exhales from it from head to foot it attracts with fierce undeniable attraction I am drawn by its breath as if I would no more than a helpless vapor all falls aside but myself and it on the 4th of July 1855 walt whitman self-published leaves of grass it was a slim green book that did not bear the author's name or publisher on the title page a portrait of the poet on the opposite page showed his plain shirt open at the collar his hat cocked upon his head one hand on his hip the other in his pocket the book had no table of contents and none of the twelve poems had a title Whitman published the book himself even doing much of the typesetting in a Brooklyn print shop one positive review stated self-reliant with haughty eyes assuming to himself all the attributes of his country steps Walt Whitman into literature talking like a man unaware that there was ever hitherto such a production as a book or such a being as a writer the author of his glowing review Walt Whitman in fact Whitman anonymously wrote several favorable reviews using his connections in the press to publish them one of Whitman's character flaws was a willingness to be underhanded when it came to promoting his work Walt was sort of his he was a one-man band and he understood the value of promotion Americans overall we are terrible poetry readers we generally don't read poetry and I think Walt was ambitious he wanted to be known as America's great poet and so he early on began writing his own reviews under different names and publishing them he also got the ability to write articles about himself and say the the evening star in Washington DC because he was friends with the publisher he printed 795 copies and offered them for sale at a local shop but they barely sold Whitman said he doubted if even ten were sold and that he ended up giving away most of the copies to friends and relatives Whitman's frank depiction of the human body and sensuality made some reviewers dislike the book it is impossible to imagine how any man's fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth another wondered if its author must be some escaped lunatic raving in pitiable delirium even Walt's family was apathetic his brother George said I saw the book didn't read it at all didn't think it was worth reading the world may never have heard of Walt Whitman were it not for a letter he received later that July Whitman had sent a copy of the book to Ralph Waldo Emerson the most widely respected American essayist whose lecture on poetry years before greatly inspired Whitman Emerson sent him a glowing letter July 21 1855 Concord Massachusetts dear sir I am NOT blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of leaves of grass I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed I find incomparable things said in comparably well I greet you at the beginning of such a great career which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start I rubbed my eyes to see if this Sunbeam were no illusion recognizing the promotional value of this letter Whitman had it printed in the New York Tribune and other newspapers without Emerson's permission even though Emerson's letter was a private communication not intended for publication the following year when whitman self-published a second edition of Leaves of Grass he placed Emerson's praise on the book spine in gold letters I greet you at the beginning of a great career the second edition in 1856 had 20 new poems the most famous is crossing Brooklyn ferry about a ferry that Walt often rode across the East River connecting Brooklyn with Manhattan but on another level the poem connects the poet's time with future generations [Music] flood-tide below me I see you face-to-face clouds of the West Sun there half an hour high I see you also face-to-face crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes how curious you are to me on the ferryboats the hundreds and hundreds that cross returning home are more curious to me than you suppose and you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me and more in my meditations than you might suppose others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore others will watch the run of the flood tide others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east others will see the islands large and small fifty years hence others will see them as they cross the Sun half an hour high a hundred years hence or ever so many hundred years hence others will see them will enjoy the sunset the pouring in of the flood tide the falling back to the sea of the ebb tide I am with you you men and women of a generation or ever so many generations hence just as you feel when you look on the River and sky so I felt just as any of you as one of a living crowd I was one of a crowd just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river and the bright flow I was refreshed just as you stand and lean on the rail yet hurry with the swift current I stood yet was hurried what is it then between us what is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us several times in some of the poems he said you up there are you listening to me he's talking to you up there who's the you up there me reading the book each person reading the book it's an intimate or you've got me in my pocket in your pocket in your back pocket meaning his book but that's him who reads this book reads a man he didn't always distinguish between word and poetry and himself in this moment of reading it now where Whitman collapses his past and our present into a single moment of now and I think that is the magical act in Whitman he gets in that poem something that I don't think he ever quite achieves anywhere else and that is what he says we understand then do we not what the preachers have preached but could never prove we've just proven it and what we've proven is that the dead and the living can speak to each other whatever it is it avails not distance avails not and place avails not I to lift Brooklyn of ample Hills was mine I to walk the streets of Manhattan Island and bathed in the waters around it I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me in the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me in my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me closer yet I approached you what thought you have of me now I had as much of you I laid in my stores in advance I considered long and seriously of you before you were born who knows for all the distance but I am as good as looking at you now for all you cannot see me Whitman sent a copy of the second vision to the writer Henry David Thoreau who had published Walden two years before Thoreau returned the gesture by visiting Whitman in November 1856 along with fellow Concord resident Bronson Alcott when the New Englanders visited Whitman in his apartment that he shared with his severely disabled younger brother Eddie they were surprised to see the bed unmade and home very messy but Thoreau and Whitman got along very well Thoreau was a great admirer of leaves of grass even if he did not always agree with Walt's frankness in describing the human body the first two editions sold very poorly it seemed the public was uninterested in his work and Whitman could not find a publisher he began to wonder would he ever fulfill Emerson's prophecy of a national poet arising from America at this spa at 6:47 Broadway underground was once a beer cellar called fats beginning in a late 1850s this is where Walt spent his evenings laughs was the center of New York Bohemia a precursor to Dorothy Parker's Algonquin table a place for writers actors and artists who gather around a table for a witty conversation they discussed are traded barbs ate drank and knew Mary Henry cloud editor of a Saturday press known as the King of Bohemia possessed a razor-sharp wit and led the carousing the free-spirited Charleston actress a declare the Queen of Bohemia was a regular as was the actor Edwin Booth regarded as the greatest tragic actor of his day Artemus Ward considered the first stand-up comedian in America often visited fast is where Walt found friends and lovers among New York's counterculture he began a relationship with Fred Vaughn an Irish horse cart driver who likely inspired some of Walt's most romantic poems his involvement with FAFSA begins in the very late 1850s and and into the beginning part of the Civil War and it was during this period that he seems to have met Fred Vaughan and Fred Vaughan may have been the inspiration for the sequence of love poems Live Oak with moss that eventually becomes the calamus poems around this time Walt wrote one of his most renowned poems out of the cradle endlessly rocking originally called a word from the sea that recalls the moment Walt first became a poet a man yet by these tears a little boy again throwing myself on the sand confronting the waves I chanter of pains and joys uniter of here and Hereafter taking all hints to use them but swiftly leaping beyond them a reminiscence sing he's a young boy observing two birds that had been mates and then suddenly one of them is gone so there's the experience of death and and but it's also sort of an awareness of the young boy who's just at the age of sort of coming into an understanding of his own sexuality in his own maturity his own sort of glimmerings of love and longing and loss he also hears in the bird song something that he wants to respond to and so he begins to hear himself as it were translating the bird song and in doing that he discovers his own vocation till of a sudden maybe killed unknown to her mate one forenoon the sea bird crouched not on the nest no return that afternoon nor the next nor ever appeared again he called on his mate he poured forth the meanings which I of all men demon or bird said the boys soul is it indeed towards you made you sing or is it really to me now in a moment I know what I am for I awake and already a thousand singers a thousand songs clearer louder and more sorrowful than yours a thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me never to die by the sea under the yellow and sagging moon the messenger there aroused the fire the sweet hell within the unknown want the destiny of me a very end of out of the cradle endlessly rocking ends with a five-fold repetition death death death death death and that's the cradle out of which we all come and it's the bed into which we all eventually return that is if this sound of the repetition of death is when he finally hears the waves saying to him as he sits on the Shore of Long Island and listens to the ocean coming in and finally says AHA that's what it's saying death death death because the sea is the ultimate composter you know until we've managed to figure out ways in the 20th and 21st century to sow poison it that it can't compost all that we're throwing into it in Whitman's time it still was the ultimate composter anything that got thrown into the ocean eventually would be broken down into the elements and become part of that ocean itself and that every sound that that ocean is bringing to the shores is the sound of death even though it contains and is full of life that for Whitman is what's delicious about that sound the warmth death a word then for I will conquer it are you whispering it and have been all the time you see waves where to answering the sea delaying not hurrying not whispered me through the night and very plainly before daybreak this to me the low and delicious word death and again death death death death my own songs awake from that hour and with them the key the word up from the waves the word of the sweetest song and all songs that strong and delicious word which creeping to my feet or like some old crone rocking the cradle swathed in sweet garments bending aside the sea whispered me [Music] Whitman added 78 poems to a third edition of Leaves of Grass but still struggled to find publisher then in early 1860s finally turned he received a letter from the Boston publishing firm Thayer and eldritch the publishers were very impressed with leaves of grass and offered to publish the third edition Walt soon left for Boston and went to work in their publishing office correcting page proofs and setting type for the new edition that was even more blatantly sexual one section entitled calamus contain many homoerotic poems the poem a glimpse could have occurred at facts a youth who loves me and whom I love silently approaching and seating himself near that he may hold me by the hand a long while amid the noises of coming and going of drinking and oath and smutty jest they are we to content happy and being together speaking little perhaps not a word another section children of Adam had poems overtly sexual between men and women Emerson visited Whitman and the two strolled for hours in Boston Common the city's main public park Emerson advised Whitman that some of his poetry with shocked readers who were not accustomed to overt sexuality if the books were to sell Walt needed to remove or expurgate the offending lines but Walt refused if I had cut sex out I might just as well have cut everything out expiration is apology an admission that something or other was wrong Emerson said expurgate I said no no I have not lived to regret my Emerson now the dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book while at the publishing office Walt meets a fellow author William O Connor who would become a very important friend in Walt's life although hopes were high to make the third edition a success the Boston publishing company went out of business by year's end as most Americans were preoccupied with the Secession graces as 1860 drew to a close not in his wildest dreams or worse nightmares could while Whitman have imagined all that would soon happen to him his family and his country [Music] you you [Music] you

Channel: East Rock Films

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Rating: 4.9067054 out of 5

Keywords: walt whitman, poetry, leaves of grass, song of myself, crossing brooklyn ferry, emily dickinson, civil war

Id: RHgfTd9zbJ8

Length: 87min 36sec (5256 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020