Looking back at last month’s celebrations of
Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, it is clear why America needs
Whitman’s unifying vision now more than ever.
“Poetry is meant to be
heard—it is an oral tradition,” said Rupert Fike, the emcee and organizer of
Poetry Atlanta’s marathon end-to-end reading of “Song of Myself” on the 200th
anniversary of Whitman’s birth, one of many such celebrations around the world.
(Photo: May 31st, 2019 at the sanctuary of Atlanta’s First
Existentialist Congregation.)
One morning back in 1979, in Beacon, NY, Pete
Seeger took the empty seat next to me on the long train ride down the Hudson to
Grand Central Station. I didn’t notice it was the famous folk singer until a
few stops later. I was reading, focused on Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of
Myself.”
When we made eye contact, he glanced at my
copy of Leaves of Grass and asked if I liked Whitman. I said I
liked Whitman a lot. Then I asked him the same question. He turned and stared
straight ahead, as if he were trying to identify something far away.
He finally said, “I like Woody Guthrie’s line
about Whitman.”
“What was that?”
He then intoned: “I must forever and ever stay
away, from the wallowing waters of Walt Whitman.”
Yes, Whitman wallowed. He did so with such
wild exuberance; it made some want to “forever stay away.” But where some stood
along divided shores, Whitman swam in a single sea.
Without having to get all wet, we can gain
clarity through Whitman’s vision for America. While Whitman drew upon ideas
from great thinkers of his day and from those of prior eras, his is a vision
grounded not in abstractions, but in his connection to Nature and in the
related voice he took on, as a representative of common American men and women.
As the Atlanta-based poet Rupert Fike said in
a recent interview with Atlanta’s NPR station, (City Lights: Poets Rupert Fike and
Kodac Harrison, 5-30-2019), “Whitman was a ground-breaker in going conversational, and in
speaking in the voice of the common man and common woman.”
Fike also noted the key role Whitman played when
it comes to the development of free verse. Most poetry in the English language
before Whitman, according to Fike, “was metered and rhymed, and was mostly
meant for the upper-class Englishmen, but Whitman broke those boundaries. And
we owe Whitman a great debt of gratitude to this day, for creating this
American voice that goes on now through songwriters and rap artists and many
others. He was a liberating influence, and his words still resonate today.”
Along with his love for common men and women,
Whitman also had a great love for all that we have in common, and he defined
democracy in precisely such terms. Whether one wants to “stay away” from his
poetry or not, none of us should stay away from Whitman’s call in “Song of
Myself” for a democracy where we “accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.”
Whitman’s call for democracy holds all of our
rights in common. Now, tribalistic views tend to pit one group’s needs against
those of another. An example in recent decades would be the idea that a law
banning unfair discrimination against a minority ethnic or racial group is
equivalent to “reverse discrimination” against the majority group.
Whitman drew many other
important circles of commonality, rather than dividing lines, in his
poems. In “I Sing the Body Electric,” he proclaims the unity of body and soul.
And in “Goodbye, My Fancy,” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” he expresses oneness
between himself and his future readers.
While some may view the common circles Whitman
drew as “feel good” poetic devices, for his devotees they are transcendent
truths.
The most important lesson for us today has to do
with the common message that runs across all of the different circles of unity
Whitman drew, because it is a message that helps to counteract the blindness
that arises when we label everything in divisive terms.
Even where the labels that divide seem real and
true, we gain a sense of balance and wisdom if we can carve out even a fleeting
moment in which to step back and look at the grander reality where our precious
labels are meaningless.
Throughout the wide sweep of the 52 verses of
“Song of Myself,” Whitman brings everyone into a circle of oneness,
famously writing “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become
the wounded person.”
In the opening of “Song of Myself” Whitman wrote
something that some people take as a mere analogy, when it seems clear that he
was also reaching for something grander. It is in the third line of the poem:
I celebrate myself, and
sing myself
And what I assume you
shall assume
For every atom belonging
to me as good belongs to you.
You can read the third line above as saying: “As good, every atom belonging to me also
belongs to you.” In this way, Whitman draws a circle around “me” and “you,”
making a unity of identity, instead of a mere “as good as” type of comparison. (Tellingly,
Whitman removed the comma from “for every
atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you” after his first few editions
of Leaves of Grass, and had it as
shown above in his so-called deathbed edition.)
We may think it is too difficult to have such a
deep sense of empathy with everyone. Can’t we simply apply the Golden Rule
instead? But if we allow ourselves to feel even an inkling of this sense of
unity, it is more powerful and real than abstractly telling oneself, “I need to
do unto others as I would want them to do unto me.”
Finally, a difficult
union in Whitman’s work spans the divide between nature and technology. It is
an important union for us to understand today. But we should first note that
the shifting line we now draw between nature and technology is very specific to
our current era.
Consider how we may now
tend to think of the voyage in 1620 of the Mayflower as something closer to
nature than, say, a cross-country drive in a nice new 2019 pickup truck. But in
another 400 years, it is likely the pickup truck will be viewed as being
similar to the Mayflower 800 years earlier, with people saying things along the
following lines: “Look how much closer to nature this car and ship were than
our warp-drive starships—all of their components were made from terrestrial plants,
animals, and minerals, and they were both fueled by energy directly from the
Earth!”
Labels become blinders. We think we know what we
mean with the label “nature” and the label “technology.” But what matters,
ethically, is what we do or don’t do as a result of how we apply those labels.
This is where we can gain some healthy confusion, if not clarity, from the
circle of unity Whitman drew around the two.
By healthy confusion I refer to our asking
questions that help us clearly examine (and consider partly erasing) the hard
and fast lines we have drawn. For starters, let’s note that we romanticize
nature’s awesome power at times, while at other times we seek to protect it
like a fragile baby.
Some people oppose sustainable approaches by
insisting that economic growth comes first. They believe the prime importance
of economic growth should allow us to use technology to treat nature as a
resource we can exploit, even though the long-term result of unchecked
over-exploitation is economically ruinous.
Other people view rolling green meadows, and fields
of corn or wheat as being “natural” even though they are the product of
thousands of years of interactions where human beings deforested vast regions
of the planet and domesticated wild plants into more productive varieties.
A related (and deliciously confusing) insight
comes from the author of the best-selling book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari, who argues that we may be giving
ourselves too much credit when we claim that human beings domesticated
wheat—step by step he shows how it is much more likely that wheat domesticated
human beings.
Finally, in total disregard of our nature vs.
technology distinction, the laws of physics apply equally to things we label as
coming from “nature” and things we label as coming from “technology.” Along
these lines, tellingly, Whitman said, “I see that the elementary laws never
apologize.”
Armed now with our “healthy confusion” we can
look with fresh eyes at how, more than 150 years ago, Whitman expressed wonder
at the renewal that occurs every spring, and wrote, “Now I am terrified at the
Earth, it is that calm and patient,” in his haunting poem “This Compost.”
In a similar state of healthy confusion, we can
look at Whitman’s poem “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” where he lists “Log-houses,
clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers,” but then also includes “multiform
agriculture,” as well as mines, factories, and “labor-saving machinery” in the
same list!
In the radio interview referenced at the opening
of this piece, the host, Lois Reitzes, mentions how Whitman looked back with
nostalgia at agrarian life. This is a romantic and unrealistic view, one where
we forget that log cabins often had door-latches made with iron from mines, and
rugs made with labor-saving machinery, from farms’ wool or cotton.
Whitman was actually looking forward. Multiform
agriculture and labor-saving machinery were the high technology of Whitman’s
day, along with the first use of electricity for communication—the telegraph.
Whitman used the word “electric” in several poems, perhaps partially because it
is a beautiful and exciting word, but also because it is a force of nature and
was a new technological marvel in his day.
Also in “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” Whitman
says:
Fear grace, elegance,
civilization, delicatesse,
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of
honey-juice,
Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness
of states and men.
Fundamentally, when we draw a line between nature
and technology, we lose a certain level of connectedness. We have to revisit
how we use those labels. In some situations they shed light. But in other
situations, we are better off dropping the labels so as to see the presence of
a fundamental larger unity. If we focus how we use technology so as to be more
aligned with nature, the economics of decisions will take into account the
longer-term perspective required for healthier lives for future generations.
Similar benefits come to the forefront when we
approach other lines we have drawn. Remembering we live in our body, and it is
connected to our soul, enables us to be more present, simply breath, and to
think and live in a healthier manner. Similarly we may need to keep a line
between “I” and “you” to negotiate in a business or job situation or to make
our way through traffic jams or to balance our checkbooks, but occasionally
erasing the line between “I” and “you” is still a good way to get past
resentments and to reconnect with a healthier way of looking at our
relationships with one another.
Whitman’s circles of unity force us to find the
common factors that unify the things we label as being separate. It is, ultimately,
as simple an observation as saying two divided by two equals one. But simple is
not easy!
So whether we enjoy wallowing with Whitman or
not, when it comes to addressing challenging issues we face as Americans,
let’s honor Whitman’s great vision by tapping into “nature without
check,” and a sense of our unity with everything. And everyone.
******************************************************************************
Peter Arvan Manos has written
extensively about renewable energy and smart grid trends in Transmission & Distribution World and his poems have appeared in The New York Times, AbstractMagazineTV.com, Yellow Chair Review, and other
publications.
References
The three quoted poems
utilize Whitman’s final edition of Leaves
of Grass. The referenced page numbers below are from the Walt Whitman
Archive at this link: Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
1.
"Song of Myself," Page 29, Leaves
of Grass, (1891-92)
2.
"This Compost," Page 285, Leaves
of Grass, (1891-92)
3. "By Blue
Ontario's Shore," Page 264, Leaves
of Grass, (1891-92)
