Walt Whitman, 1819-1892

The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanks-giving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, . . .

Unmistakably Whitman. Unmistakably pagan, or unimaginably religious, Walt Whitman, a poet whose barbaric yawp I heard in college, did much to shape me, even though today--so many years later--I find him just as dense as I ever did. 

The lines above are from Song of Myself, a huge poem he never stopped writing. Its place in the canon of American literature is safe and sound, as long as there is a canon of American literature. That snippet is quintessential Whitman, a compendium of American life, a picture book of men and women he claimed to love, even to embrace. As a poet, he embraced the world, or tried, wanted--desired!--everything and everybody. He knew both the impossibility and the seduction of such a quest, to truly love, and love, well, everything.

The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,

What is removed drops horribly in a pail; . . .

Nothing escapes him or his embrace. He won't let it. Hence, accusations of lewdness made his poems scandalous in their time, maybe even ours. Here was a preposterous egotist who claimed to love the scent of his own armpits, a man whose "self" threatened American sensitivities, even though he taking great joy in that "self" made him--or so he claimed--a part of everything and everyone else. Go ahead and curl your mind around that.

Confusing? Yes. Always. But in 1968, when I was 20 years old, in the middle of a divided nation whose war was beginning to look like a horrible national mistake, Whitman's expansive embrace, his very "common grace," felt somehow like gospel. The game his poetry still plays--"what on earth does he mean?"--I found stimulating, not because there were answers but because there weren't. Leaves of Grass meant something fascinating, that much I knew. But what exactly?--I wasn't sure.

I'd learned my church catechism well as a boy, mastered q and a's well enough to pass muster when I met with the church's ruling council. Whitman's shadowy love poetry threatened the powerful walls catechism answers. In part, I suppose, I grew to love that which I could not know.

Whitman didn't ruin me, but he did please me, even helped me determine what I would do in my life. I remember walking to an American literature class on a sidewalk that's still there, and suddenly telling myself that if a life of teaching literature meant I could play with Whitman's odd singing, that life might be pleasing.

That's a poem, you say? Yes, that's a poem. That's Walt Whitman. 

The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not know him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle,
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other,
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale,
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways,
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,. . .

On and on it goes, a Sears catalog of Americans, all of it of America, Whitman says. That's Whitman.

"It's a poem, you say?"

I don't know what else to call it. Today, Walt Whitman is as outlandish as he ever was. He's buried in a strange-looking vault in Camden, NJ, a stone haunt setup for Halloween, a place where trees all around bear the initials of those who loved him.

Walt Whitman had a birthday this year. Had he lived, he'd be 200 years old.

"Had he lived. . ." I don't know how to say it, but it seems to me he has.