A few months ago I ordered Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" on a whim. Because when I searched "best modern poetry" on Google, Whitman's eccentric person flanked on my screen along with the eccentric title "Leaves of Grass." Bear in mind that I had never read poetry in my life. Not because I'm more of a prose junkie, but because I'm more of a poetry illiterate. I never understood how intricate ideas, existential questions and even sheer romantic thoughts don't need to be substantiated by 500 pages of prose, and can be weaved equally beautifully in a mere sentence or two.
I received the hard copy in the mail and carried it with me during the hour and a half long subway ride from home to college. That hour and a half seemed never ending once I started reading. I hated the book (for the lack of a better word), and thus tossed it away in the corner among "things I don't want to remember." Considering that I am not one to give up a book midway, even if I loathe it with every inch of my existence, that one hit close to home.
Then, a few weeks ago my English teacher seemed overtly exhilarated about one specific Modernist. "The Big Guy," she called him. To my utter surprise, "The Big Guy" was none other than Whitman himself. The work we read was "Song of Myself" (a few excerpts). And I must say that I have not read anything quite like it. What I had so ignorantly missed in "Leaves of Grass" during my first reading suddenly seemed so surreal. Initially I didn't understand why there was no rhyme scheme or meter in the poems, the so called "staple" of poetry. But soon I realized that Whitman was so expansive and all compassing that no literary "staple" had the might to restrict him from expounding new enclaves.
Whitman in Song of Myself celebrates America and Americans.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Whitman was the true embodiment of the expression “bleeding red, white and blue.” He fostered so strong a love for his nation that even when his work was dismissed as “mass of stupid filth” by the 20th century "Trumpites" (or maybe Trumpets?) he continued to champion his belief in the American credence of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. One can say that his poetry is truly, “of the people, for the people and by the people”.
Whitman also says,
And I'm not contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and everyone good,
The earth good and the starts good, and their adjuncts all good.
In 19th century America, although we claimed that “All men are created equal”, that “all men” was a euphemism for rich white men, and excluded people of color and women. However, Whitman by saying that “no two alike and everyone good” stirred the foundations of the bigotry on which our country was created. He, hence, not only promoted a sense of pluralism but provided for a cosmic approach to being an American.
In the 51st section of “Song of Myself” Whitman affirms, “Do I contradict myself? Very Well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes). Whitman was a romantic-modernist (or perhaps a modern-romantic). The subject of his romance, however, was his nation. His poetry transcended the worldly pettiness. He didn’t write to appeal to the juggernaut of literary elites and neo-critics, but to reveal to the masses. He wrote “to stir, to question, to suspect, to examine, to denounce!”
Walter Whitman said that he "contained multitudes," so did the country he loved so dearly. But in the 21st Century, his country has lost its multicity. It has become one single whole of compressed bigotry. We Americans need someone like him who will help us transcend the notion of "making America Great" to the understanding that America's greatness lies in its multitudes.
