Living Whitman (CS Feb 23, Desmond)

As we have previously discussed, Whitman’s success as an author stemmed from both his ability to push boundaries, and his willingness to do so. His poems spoke about a visceral but very human element that many writers had been loathe to touch before him. I don’t think it’s anything profound for me to claim that Whitman was a fantastic writer, but I struggle to wonder how someone like Whitman might be received today. We as a culture obviously see sex in a significantly more positive light, but I can’t help but wonder if this would inevitably cause Whitman and his messages to be drowned among his new contemporaries. With the advent of the internet, access to personal creative projects has become easier than ever, but as a result, the pool of creative voices has also grown much wider. Could it be possible then for someone like Whitman to add depth to that pool, or would his poems be seen as sexual for the sake of being sexual, attempting to push boundaries that had long since been moved forward?

Before discussing the content of his poems, there is one thing above all that I believe would push Whitman ahead of many of the poets of today: sheer volume. Holding an entire anthology shows a unique dedication to the craft and while he would be far from the only one to achieve this milestone, it would certainly establish him as someone serious about conveying his message. Whitman is notable for his popularization of the longer form of free verse prose, but he also has more than one short poem that would be an easier step into his more complex pieces.

While I think the content surrounding sex might be seen as hit or miss by today’s audience, I believe that his content addressing elements of the nation would be seen as much more impactful in this time of great political strife. While there are many allusions to the United States as a whole throughout his poems, namely by way of ambiguously using “I” to mean both himself and the nation, he does also make some very direct comments regarding it. “One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same,” he says emphasizing its place within a network that makes up the collective ‘world’ (Song of Myself, 202). Our cohesiveness matters as much on a global scale as it does an internal one however the former cannot exist without the latter, whether that appears in small or large ways. In this sense, I believe that Whitman’s poems concerning sexuality could have gone either way (as someone who was continuously pushing for sexual liberation or someone writing sexual poems for the sake of it) while his poems forcing us to revaluate our political mindsets would be consumed with much more vigor.

We’ve briefly talked about the “modern Whitman” on an occasion or two, but I am curious as to how you think the connectedness of the world today might work for or against someone like Whitman and his ilk. Are there poets that you know of who are active today that work in the same vein as Whitman who might be unknown to us? If so, what barriers are they attempting to cross?

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Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Walt Whitman, Poetry and Praise, edited by Justin Kaplan,  The Library of America, 1996, pp. 202