Essay 3

Tate Andrie

Essay 3

American Literature I

Walt Whitman- A True American Poet

            According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, a poet is described as “the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty... [h]e is the beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and causal” (Emerson 296-297). Walt Whitman embodies these qualities throughout his works, most notably “Song of Myself”, “Beat! Beat! Drums!”, and “Wound Dresser”.  In these pieces, Whitman showed he is a visionary, a seeker of truth, and a representative of American aesthetic.

            Throughout Whitman’s poetry, he praises the individual and imagines a democratic nation composed of unique but equal individuals. This especially comes out in “Song of Myself”, where in the very first line of the first section he states: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself/ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (Whitman 1-3). Throughout “Song of Myself”, he connects his belief of the importance of the individual and his ideal idea of democracy through an important metaphor: Grass. Whitman connects grass with his belief that everyone is equal, including slaves, explaining that the grass is a sort of “hieroglyphic” that symbolizes equality among everyone, saying: “…I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord/ And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones/ Growing among black folks as among white” (106-108). Thus, the grass in this section of the poem represents everyone as equal, as it grows the same everywhere and for everyone. Further reinforcing his belief that all people are ultimately equal, he also connects the grass to that of the “voice” of those who are deceased. He thinks about the vast range of people buried in the graves; how death is not selective in who it takes, and imagines the voices (or grass) of “the dead young men and women/ And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon/ out of their laps” (Whitman 121-123).  We get a sense that Whitman is seeking the truth about life and death, showing us that we are part of something bigger and how death is not necessarily a bad or a good thing because we never truly vanish. It also symbolizes democracy, an important characteristic in American aesthetic, because we are all individuals playing an equal part in the same web of life.

            Whitman is a visionary in the ways he addressed sexuality, which we see in his famous “twenty-ninth bather” example. In the poem, a woman gazes at twenty-eight men bathing in a river. He shows us the woman is watching the men while remaining unseen, writing “she hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window” (203). Whitman gets erotic in his language, as the woman starts imagining to bathe and touch them. Right away, we can imagine that a woman doing something of this nature would have been considered extremely inappropriate, and in addition even writing about a woman doing this would have been a taboo subject. There was also a hint of homoeroticism in his writing, as it can interpreted that Whitman is writing from his viewpoint through the woman when explaining details about the men. One could get this perception from the poem when reading the line “The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long/ hair,/ Little streams pass’d over their bodies” (Whitman 209-211). Whitman’s way of addressing the taboo subject of woman being sexual beings, as well as the subtle hints of homosexuality, shows how Whitman was ahead of his time and insightful regarding these subjects of sexuality.

            In “Beat! Beat! Drums!” Whitman again shows how he is a representative of American aesthetics through his enthusiasm for the Civil War. The instruments talked about in the poem, drums and bugles, are both instruments that are used in the military, and thus we can derive that Whitman is talking about a military band. Whitman attempts to recruit his readers through the urgency of his tone, saying “Beat! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow!/ Through the windows- through the doors- burst like a ruthless force,/ Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,/ into the school where the scholar is studying;/ Leave not the bridegroom quiet- no happiness must he have now with/ his bride” (1-5). The sounds of the drums and bugles overpower all other sounds of the citizen’s normal life, ultimately leading them into the war. When combining this poem with “Song of Myself”, we get an understanding Whitman believed democracy is everyone’s right, and democracy is worth fighting for. Even though Whitman’s writing often touches on war, we see him bring out the truth of how war effects people in his poem “The Wound-Dresser”, in which he opens with a veteran being asked by children to tell his war stories. The narrator even admits that in the beginning he was “Arous’d and angry…and urge[d] relentless war” (Whitman 4). Later on in the poem, though, he is overcome with compassion for the wounded soldiers, saying “[o]ne [soldier] turns to me his appealing eyes- poor boy! I never knew you, / Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would/ save you” (Whitman 37-38). Here Whitman showed himself to be a seeker and teller of truth during a traumatic time in history.

            In these examples, we can see that Walt Whitman definitely depicts Emerson vision of a poet. He is a visionary through his addressment of taboo subjects, allowing his readers to even briefly glimpse these topics as normal for the time period. Often times throughout his writing we see him as a seeker of truth getting to the core of peoples true feelings on difficult subjects like war and death. Finally, he is a representative of American aesthetic, promoting democracy and equality throughout his poems.

           

          

Works Cited

Whitman, Walt. “Beat! Beat! Drums!” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed.        Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. N. 1395-1396. Print.

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. N. 1330-74. Print.

Whitman, Walt. “The Wound-Dresser”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8^th ed.Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. N. 1399-1401. Print.