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WALT
(Walter) WHITMAN
(For
continuation of the poem, read below)
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WALT WHITMAN
( 1819 - 1892 )
Born: May 31, 1819, in
West Hills, near
Huntington, Long Island, New York, United States
Died: March 26, 1892, in Camden, New Jersey, United States |
Walt Whitman is considered one of the
greatest American poets. His style is solidly American, with colloquial
language and descriptions of common events. Whitman's work was recognized
in European countries before his popularity grew in his own locale.
Whitman was the second of nine children. His father was a carpenter who
moved the family to Brooklyn when Walt was four years old. He went to
public school for six years and then was apprenticed to a printer. After
an apprenticeship of two years, he started working as a printer himself.
One of Whitman's first works, The Half-breed and Other Stories, was
published in 1927. However, like most of his early works, this volume was
undistinguished. In 1835, he started teaching in Long Island and began
editing The Long- Islander, a newspaper in Huntington. Many believe that
he also hand delivered the paper.
In 1839, Whitman returned to New York where he enjoyed luxuries that
hadn't been available in the country, such as theater, opera, and
libraries. For the next several years, he worked in New York and New
Orleans as a printer and journalist. For a brief period, he was associated
with the Tammany Hall Democrats, but this ended when he printed radical
editorials in papers such as the Brooklyn Eagle.
It was in the New York area that he began his poetic career. With a
borrowed press and his own money, he printed the first run of his
best-known work, Leaves of Grass in 1855. This first run was comprised of
twelve untitled poems, which included Song of Myself. The volume is noted
for its radical, irregular style and content, which strongly contrasted
with the sentimental rhymes that were popular at the time.
With the encouragement of Ralph Waldo Emerson regarding Leaves of Grass,
Whitman published a second edition in 1856, adding twenty new poems,
including Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. He continued to use his contacts to
publish six more editions of the book, adding more poems to each
publication. Themes, which changed with
each additional collection of poems, range from nationalism to sexual
love. Some interpretations see the sexual love as homosexual in nature,
reflecting the poet's own preferences.
Whitman nurtured the wounded during the Civil War, a work that influenced
his writing. His poems often voice a hope for peace between the two sides.
After the war, he worked in the government until he was partially
paralyzed by a stroke.
Whitman lived with his brother until his death. Near his death, he wrote A
Backward glance O'er Travel'd Roads as a resolution to his life.
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Walt Whitman : Comments
on His Work
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Beginning students of
Whitman will find it easiest to study the poems separately "Leaves of
Grass". They should try to understand each poem's Imagery, symbolism,
literary structure and unity of theme.
Song of myself, the longest
poem in Leaves of Grass is considered Whitman's greatest. It is a lyric poem
told through the joyful experiences of the narrator, simply called "I" who
chants the poem's 52 sections. Sometimes "I" is the poet himself. Walt
Whitman, an American "In other passages, "I" speaks for the human race, the
universe or a specific character being dramatized. Like all Whitman's major
poems, Song of Myself contain symbols. For eg. in the poem, he describes
grass as a symbol of life - the "babe of vegetarian", the handkerchief of
the lord/A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt"
"Out of the cradle endlessly
rocking" tells of a man reminiscing over a boyhood experience in which a
mockingbird lost its mate in a storm at sea. The memory of the bird's song
teaches the man the meaning of death and thus, the true vocation of a poet:
to celebrate death, as merely part of the cycle of birth, life, death and
rebirth.
Whitman wrote "When Lilacs
last in the Dooryard Bloom'd on the death of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln died
in April, a time of rebirth in nature. As his coffin is transported from
Washington DC to Springfield, Illinois, it passes the young wheat", every
grain from its shroud in the dark brown fields up risen. Whitman says that
each spring the blooming lilac will remind him not only of the death of
Lincoln but also of the eternal return to life. The evening star Venus
symbolizes Lincoln, who has 'droop'd in the western sky.'
In Passage to India, Whitman
sees modern achievements in transportation and communication as symbols of
universal brotherhood. First, individuals are to be united with themselves
and then with God, the "Elder Brother."
A group of Civil war poems
called "Drum Taps" describes battlefield scenes and Whitman's emotions
during wartime. "O Captain! My Captain!" another poem on Lincoln's death, is
Whitman's most popular poem, but differs from his others in rhyme and
rhythm. The "Children of Adam" poems defend the sacredness of sex. The "Calamus"
poems praise male companionship.
Whitman wrote in a form
similar to thought-rhythm or parallelism. This form is found in Old
Testament poetry. It is also found in sacred books of India, such as the
Bhagvad Gita, which Whitman may have read in
translation. In his poetic verses, the rhythm of his lines suggests the rise and fall of the sea
he loved so much. This structure is better suited to expressing emotion than
to logical discussion.
In general, Whitman's poetry
is idealistic and romantic while his prose is realistic. His best prose is
in a book of essays, mostly autobiographical called Specimen Days (1882).
Whitman's essay Democratic Vistas (1871) deals with his theory of democracy
and with the creation of a democratic literature.
"O Captain, My
Captain"
By Walt
Whitman on Lincoln's death
CAPTAIN! my
Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle
trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths - for you the shores
a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces
turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and
done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Learn more about Walt Whitman
in the National Portrait Gallery's online exhibition "One
Life: Walt Whitman, A Kosmos."
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Read More
For
You O Democracy
- Walt Whitman
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of
America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.
For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.
READ MORE WALT
WHITMAN POEMS HERE ON ABOUT.COM
A
Noiseless Patient Spider
Beat!
Beat! Drums!
I Hear America Singing
I Sit and Look out
Miracles
O Captain! My Captain!
O Me! O Life!
On the Beach at Night
Reconciliation
There Was a Child Went Forth
To You
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
I HEAR AMERICA SINGING
- WALT WHITMAN
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 or 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 deck-
hand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing
as he stands,
The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way
in the morning,
or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,
or of the girl 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.
Proud Music of the Sea Storm
There was a child
went forth
- Walt Whitman
There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look'd upon, 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 and red morning-glories, and white and red
clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and
the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the
pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there--and
the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads--all became
part of him.
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of
him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the
esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms, and the fruit
afterward,
and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;
And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the
tavern, whence he had lately risen,
And the school-mistress that pass'd on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass'd--and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls--and the barefoot negro boy
and girl,
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.
His own parents,
He that had father'd him, and she that had conceiv'd him in her
womb, and birth'd him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day--they became part of him.
The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the
supper-table;
The mother with mild words--clean her cap and gown, a wholesome
odor
falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture--the
yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay'd--the sense of what is
real--the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time--the curious
whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and
specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets--if they are not
flashes and specks, what are they?
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in
the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves--the huge crossing at
the ferries,
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset--the river
between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables
of white or brown, three miles off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide--the little
boat slack-tow'd astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away
solitary by itself--the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt
marsh and shore mud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who
now goes, and will always go forth every day. |
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