I Have Let Whitman Alone

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From The New York Review of Books:

In 1855 no one had yet heard anything like the raw, declamatory, and jubilant voice of the self-proclaimed “American, one of the roughs, a kosmos”—Walt Whitman, who in Leaves of Grass, his dazzling poetic debut, announced, “I celebrate myself,/And what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Whitman was unequivocally declaring his own independence from poetic conventions and niceties. Here was a poet of the people for the people, without pretension or pomp, who wrote verse that captured everyday speech, both its fluency and its clank. “The best writing,” Whitman would say, “has no lace on its sleeves.”

In Walt Whitman Speaks: His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America, he again speaks to us, this time from his house at 328 Mickle Street in Camden, New Jersey. “I seem to be developing into a garrulous old man—a talker—a teller of stories,” he told his friend Horace Traubel, who was transcribing in shorthand most of what Whitman said to him during the last years of his life. By the time Whitman died in 1892, Traubel had accumulated about five thousand pages of these conversations, a monumental chronicle of Whitman’s reflections, ruminations, analyses, and affirmations.

Whitman and Traubel had been collaborating on this joint project since 1888. Although Whitman didn’t know exactly what Traubel was jotting down, he understood that Traubel would write of their relationship one day, telling him, “I want you to speak for me when I am dead.” As Whitman further explained, “You will be called on many a time in the future to bear witness—to quote these days, our work together, the talks, anxieties—the victories, defeats. Whatever we do, we must let our history tell the truth: whatever becomes of us, tell the truth.” He didn’t want to be mummified. “Do not prettify me: include all the hells and damns,” Whitman instructed. When Traubel read back to Whitman some of what he’d transcribed, as he sometimes did, Whitman replied with satisfaction, “You do the thing just as I should wish it to be done.” He had found his very own Boswell.

. . . .

“I wonder whether you understand at all the functions you have come to fulfil here! that you’re the only thing between me and death?” Whitman exclaimed in 1889. As Whitman’s biographer, which is essentially what he had become, Traubel also sifted through the heap of manuscripts, letters, books, envelopes, magazines, and slips of paper strewn all over Whitman’s second-floor bedroom. “I live here in a ruin of debris—a ruin of ruins,” Whitman sheepishly admitted. If he proposed to burn or tear up a letter, Traubel intervened, and whenever the young man asked for some document, Whitman handed it over without protest.

. . . .

The result is Whitman whole, presented informally and without polish; it reveals the breadth of his interests—from science and literature to petty gossip: “a human phonograph,” one reviewer called it. Whitman emerged as spirited and vain, judgmental and broad-minded, stoic and easygoing, enduringly warm-hearted—not unlike the courageous and brash poet who had promised in 1855 “a perpetual journey,” perpetually unfolding in a verse where “past and present and future are not disjoined.”

For though he savored untrodden paths and the open road, Whitman was also the poet of the city. “New York’s the place!” he told Traubel. “If you wish the profound, generous, encompassing things, New York is your natural center of gravity.” In 1881, in the sixth edition of Leaves of Grass, he was calling himself “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son.”

Link to the rest at The New York Review of Books

A couple of the shorter Whitman poems:

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 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 deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’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.

And a poem written following the death of Abraham Lincoln.

O Captain! My Captain!

O 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.