Understanding Poets and Their Poetry: Walt Whitman

Who was that strange hairy man? Gandalf? Dumbledore? In fact, that was Walt Whitman in 1887, poetic revolutionary. He achieved incredible impact upon 19th century America whilst including some of our favourite topics, such as homosexuality and drugs. Historical influences and the society in which Walt Whitman lived shaped the man and his poetry; we need to appreciate the context to understand this.

His life's work and life's story was the book Leaves of Grass. This collection of poems forms an epic saga focused on, and narrated by, Whitman himself. While initially it contained only twelve poems, yet the final edition contains over 400. Something must have inspired this. Today's vodcast explores how the historical events and socio-cultural context influenced Whitman and his poetry.

The historical context of Walt Whitman's time, 1819 to 1892, underpins the meaning of his poetry. It even affects the title, why did he name his life's work after something as common as grass? Hold your horses, the drug references aren't here yet. A child asks this question in the poem Song of Myself. Whitman responds obscurely:

"...it is a uniform hieroglyphic,

And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,

Growing among black folks as among white.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves...

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

and if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the

end to arrest it..."

(Whitman, 1891)

The grass represents something which binds America together. Grass is commonplace and indiscriminate, which is key to its meaning. Grass grows everywhere indifferent to race or location. Racism and slavery were primary causes for the American Civil War in 1861 (History Learning Site, 2013). As a northerner during this war, Whitman opposed the racist views of southern states, as is clearly embodied in his poetry.

During Civil War times, Whitman worked as a nurse tending to wounded soldiers in an emergency ward. As he tended to some of the thousands who were dying in conflict (Folsom, n.d), America's population was actually booming from immigration. (Ward, 1984) In the same way that grass dies and regrows seasonally, Whitman assimilated the death of young soldiers for a greater purpose, the circle of life.

In his original twelve poems, written pre-Civil War, Whitman warned of mass bloodshed arising from racism. His prediction was correct. The war provided inspiration for further poems in Leaves of Grass, leading to the epic 400 poem saga it is today. While Leaves of Grass isn't war poetry, it is focused on Whitman's life; the Civil War played a major part in his life and thus majorly influenced him and his poetry.

Transcendentalism and the young American culture deeply influenced the subject matter and style of Whitman's poetry. Equality, the cycle of life and death, the beauty of nature and individuality are central to the transcendentalist outlook. These values propagate throughout his poetic works. In the poem Ode to Earth these are particularly obvious:

"Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid

and liquid,

You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,

For none more than you are the present and the past,

For none more than you is immortality."

(Whitman, 1891)

The socio-cultural standards of the time not only influenced Whitman's subject matter, but his poetic technique. In the 19th century, America was still a new country, yet to develop a unique culture; Transcendentalists aimed to create a culture separate from Britain. As a giant middle finger to the English romanticists, Whitman used a free-verse form in direct contrast to their rigid poetic structure (Merriman, 2006). This distinguished him from the existing poetic styles, making him renowned as 'the father of free-verse' (Brigham Young University, 2011).

The cultural influences on Whitman's poetry is further emphasised in the poem 'I Hear America Singing'. Here, he uses lists to describe a variety of races performing labour based jobs; Blacks, Whites, Mexicans and Asians included. This racial comment was a reaction to the prominent racism of the time. Whitman's fellow Northern Americans had a clear vision of the future. He subscribed to this vision and advocated it through his poetry.

The influence of transcendentalism on Whitman led to him referencing experimentation with contextually inappropriate behaviour. He is famous, or perhaps infamous, for his homosexual and drug motifs. I believe this is a reaction to the conservative culture of the time. In the set of poems entitled Calamus he writes:

"We two boys together clinging,

One the other never leaving,

Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions

making,

Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,

Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving..."

(Whitman, 1891)

The phrase 'Arm'd and fearless' is a double entendre. Whitman isn't