by Walt Whitman
But Whitman’s most inspiring rite-of-passage poem was borne out of actual personal and professional crises he experienced between 1855 and 1856. Despite the critical and commercial failure of the first publication of Leaves, Whitman set to work almost immediately on the revisions and new poems of the Second Edition. The artist may have felt the need to write, but the man found life getting in the way. “Every thing I have done seems to me blank and suspicious,” Whitman wrote in a notebook entry in late 1855. “I doubt whether my greatest thoughts, as I had supposed them, are not shallow—and people will most likely laugh at me.—My pride is impotent, my love gets no response” (Notebooks and Unpublished Manuscripts, p. 167). “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” in which Whitman uses his twice-daily ferry ride as a metaphor, describes the poet’s journey through the “dark patches” to a moment of emotional equilibrium and spiritual poise. His movement through crisis brings him in communion with “others that are to follow me” and secures “the ties between me and them, / The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others” (Notebooks and Unpublished Manuscripts, p. 199). “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” perhaps more successfully than any other poem, unites Whitman and his reader across the “impassable” boundary of time.
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid
in my stores in advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at
you now, for all you cannot see me?
(“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” p. 320).
A few years ago, I took a group of my Cooper Union students on a literary tour of Brooklyn Heights. As we emerged from the subway onto Henry Street, I pointed left to our first “site”: the general area of the printshop where Whitman had helped typeset the First Edition of Leaves, now a housing development fittingly named Whitman Close. Our efforts to find Whitman’s spirit alive and well were not off to a promising start. In fact, the poet really seemed dead for the first time, even to me.
A sophomore art major named Alice Wetterlund decided to use the lull to perform her recitation (each student was required to memorize and present at least ten lines of Whitman’s verse or prose). As she began to recite, she struggled to make the words heard over the street bustle. Then she spotted a utility truck being used by the members of a local carpenter’s union who were staging a strike in front of the old St. George Hotel. One of the carpenters was using a megaphone from inside the truck to promote union sentiment and camaraderie among the strikers.
Before I realized what she was up to, Alice ran over to the van and addressed the speaker. His announcements suddenly ceased. Alice disappeared for a moment; in the next, her distinct voice carried over the hubbub of Henry Street, proclaiming the entirety of “A Woman Waits for Me.”
Traffic slowed down. Strikers stood still. And when Alice had finished reciting the poem, a brief silence was swallowed up by honks of approval, shouts, and cheers from the carpenters, and our own wild reactions to her stunt.
Whitman repeatedly asks his readers to be progressive in every sense of the word, and to work constantly toward the fulfillment of America’s promise. He hoped that “greater offspring, orators, days” than himself and his own would rise, and must have considered the idea that he himself would eventually fall behind the times. His followers have certainly refreshed and expanded his message, but Whitman’s own words have such powerful and continuous relevance that he seems to address us face to face, rather than talk at our backs. Deliberately leaving off the end punctuation at the close of the 1855 edition of “Song of Myself ” (p. 91), he remains ever a step ahead:
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop some where waiting for you
Karen Karbiener received her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in 2001 and teaches at New York University. A scholar of Romanticism and radical cultural legacies, she is the general editor of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of American Counterculture (M.E. Sharpe, 2006). She is currently curating an exhibit for the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass, entitled “Walt Whitman and the Promise of America, 1855-2005.” She lives in and loves her hometown, New York City.
Leaves of Grass
Brooklyn, New York : 1855.
“Christ likeness”—About 35 years old, c.1854, possibly taken by
Gabriel Harrison, although the photographer and place of sitting are
unknown. Courtesy of the Bayley-Whitman Collection of Ohio Wesleyan
University, Delaware, Ohio, and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association,
Huntington, New York. Saunders #5.
INTRODUCTION TO FIRST EDITION
Walt Whitman was a poet of great first inspiration. That fact might come as a surprise to anyone who knows how many times Whitman revised and expanded Leaves of Grass over his lifetime. But the twelve “core poems” of the First Edition are arguably Whitman at his best. This is Whitman in the raw: His stance is defiant and provocative, his vision all-encompassing, his voice uninhibited, his demands radical. The passion and energy of his message and the rushing flow of the unregulated lines still feel revolutionary, 150 years after the book’s publication. The appearance of the First Edition even heralded a new way of presenting poetry: Neither cover nor title page gave an indication of an author’s name. Instead, across from the title page appeared the image of a man who might have easily been the reader. Everything about this book signaled the author’s desire, and ability, to be an American literary pioneer. Indeed, Whitman had overseen this project from his first vision for it, to composition, to typesetting, to production and distribution; he even wrote anonymous reviews of Leaves of Grass.
“An American Bard at last!” Whitman proclaimed of himself in a self-review published in 1855. Whitman wrote two such reviews that year to offer explanations of his unusual project and stir up interest in Leaves of Grass. According to Florence Rome Garrett, granddaughter of the printers who helped Whitman produce the First Edition, “practically none sold.” The public’s ambivalence may have been fostered in part by the lack of an author’s name-not that placing “Walt Whitman” on the cover would have done much to encourage sales. At best, fellow Brooklynites might have recognized Whitman as a writer and sometime editor of the city’s more liberal newspapers; others might have remembered that he and his father had both worked as carpenters, and that while Whitman Senior’s weakness may have been alcohol, Walt’s was laziness. The name “Walt Whitman” had rarely been associated with poetry before 1855. The “Additional Poems” section of this Barnes and Noble Classics edition contains the only poetic efforts Whitman is known to have published before the arrival of Leaves of Grass in 1855. Even the single poem in the 1855 edition that had previously been published—“Resurgemus,” published in the New York Tribune on June 21, 1850—underwent radical transformation before becoming the eighth of the twelve poems. The interest in reading through the first edition of Leaves of Grass, then, derives not only from looking at it as a point of departure for later editions, but also from marveling at this remarkable, as-yet mysterious first effort.
—Karen Karbiener
[PREFACE1]
AMERICA does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions ... accepts the lesson with calmness ... is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms ... perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house ... perceives that it waits a little while in the door ... that it was fittest for its days ... that its action has descended to the stalwart and w
ellshaped heir who approaches ... and that he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes.... Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies ... but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors ... but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships-the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage ... their deathless attachment to freedom-their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean-the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states-the fierceness of their roused resentment-their curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy-their susceptibility to a slight-the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors-the fluency of their speech—their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul ... their good temper and openhandedness—the terrible significance of their elections—the President’s taking off his hat to them not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
The largeness of nature of the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not nature nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous business nor farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal of man ... nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest ... namely from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of present action and grandeur and of the subjects of poets. -As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in North and South America were less than the small theatre of the antique or the aimless sleepwalking of the middle ages! The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all returns of commerce and agriculture and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory to enjoy the breed of fullsized men or one full sized man unconquerable and simple.
The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other continents arrive as contributions ... he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country’s spirit... he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes.2 Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and Saint Lawrence with the falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him. The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over Champlain and Erie and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast stretches longer he easily stretches with them north or south. He spans between them also from east to west and reflects what is between them. On him rise solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and liveoak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and limetree and cottonwood and tuliptree and cactus and wildvine and tamarind and persimmon ... and tangles as tangled as any canebrake or swamp ... and forests coated with transparent ice and icicles hanging from the boughs and crackling in the wind ... and sides and peaks of mountains ... and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie ... with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wildpigeon and highhold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and redshouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white-ibis and indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. To him the hereditary countenance descends both mother’s and father’s. To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present events-of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines—the tribes of red aborigines—the weatherbeaten vessels entering new ports or making landings on rocky coasts—the first settlements north or south—the rapid stature and muscle—the haughty defiance of ‘76, and the war and peace and formation of the constitution ... the union always surrounded by blatherers and always calm and impregnable—the perpetual coming of immigrants—the wharfhem’d cities and superior marine—the unsurveyed interior—the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and hunters and trappers ... the free commerce—the fisheries and whaling and gold-digging-the endless gestation of new states—the convening of Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates and the uttermost parts... the noble character of the young mechanics and of all free American workmen and workwomen ... the general ardor and friendliness and enterprise—the perfect equality of the female with the male ... the large amativeness—the fluid movement of the population—the factories and mercantile life and laborsaving machinery—the Yankee swap—the New-York firemen and the target excursion—the southern plantation life—the character of the northeast and of the north- west and southwest-slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease. For such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their eras and characters be illustrated and that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative and has vista. Here comes one among the well- beloved stonecutters and plans with decision and science and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms.
Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest.3 Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good and nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key. He is the equalizer of his age and land ... he supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and commerce�
��lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality—federal, state or municipal government, marriage, health, freetrade, intertravel by land and sea... nothing too close, nothing too far off... the stars not too far off. In war he is the most deadly force of the war. Who recruits him recruits horse and foot... he fetches parks of artillery the best that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it ... he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach he stands turning a concentrated light... he turns the pivot with his finger... he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands and easily overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith... he spreads out his dishes... he offers the sweet firmfibred meat that grows men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer... he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. As he sees the farthest he has the most faith. His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In the talk on the soul and eternity and God off of his equal plane he is silent. He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement... he sees eternity in men and women... he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul... it pervades the common people and preserves them... they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist.... The power to destroy or remould is freely used by him but never the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose superior models and prove himself by every step he takes he is not what is wanted. The presence of the greatest poet conquers... not parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way see after him! there is not left any ves tige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or color or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell... and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin.
