Whitman, Walt

Walt (1819-1892), an American poet. He was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 31, 1819, and died at Camden, New Jersey, March 26, 1892. He attended the public schools of Brooklyn, ran errands for a doctor and a lawyer, learned to set type, and taught several terms of district school in Long Island. He next got into editorial work. Possessed by unrest he traveled afoot in the United States and Canada and supported himself for a time by working at carpentry. In 1855 he published his first volume, Leaves of Grass. During the Civil War, he went to the front to assist a wounded brother, and remained in the service as a hospital nurse. On the return of peace he obtained a clerkship at Washington. In 1873 he was overtaken by partial paralysis and took up his residence in Camden where he continued to live up to the time of his death. Other small books, as Drum Taps and November Boughs, are now included in a single volume with Leaves of Grass.

Whitman was a large, hearty, robust young fellow. He slouched about in coatless attire--his shirt open at the neck, hands in his pockets. Or, if he dressed otherwise, his cravat was tied in a negligent fashion and his vest half buttoned. He affected a world-wide, breezy, intellectual swing, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, as becoming the heir of all the ages. Maintaining that to the pure all things are pure, he introduced topics bordering, if not on the obscene, certainly on the indelicate. In this respect his poetry stalks through society full-statured and unclad, yet claiming the blessed privilege of a babe to go caressed and uncriticized. His poems have been abused by the prudish and glorified by his admirers with equal unreason. One of the most impassioned criticisms of Whitman is a small volume by John Burroughs. Whitman's finest poem is the burst of agony called forth by the assassination of President Lincoln, beginning:

O Captain! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done.

The following passage from Leaves of Grass illustrates Whitman's chanting style and is a partial statement of his creed:

Dead poets, philosophs, priests.

Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,

Language-shapers, on other shores, Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate, I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted hither: I have perused it--own it is admirable (moving awhile among it), Think nothing can ever be greater--nothing can ever deserve more than it deserves; Regarding it all intently a long while--then dismissing it, I stand in my place, with my own day, here.

Whitman is poetry's butcher. Huge, raw collops slashed from the rump of poetry--and never mind gristle--is what Whitman feeds our souls with. As near as I can make it out, Whitman's argument seems to be, that, because a prairie is wide, therefore debauchery is admirable, and because the Mississippi is long, therefore every American is God.--Sidney Lanier.