Come March it will be 125 years since he died. If there ever was a poet, American or otherwise, who painted his words with a broad brush, to mix a few metaphors, it was Walt Whitman. Just listen to that enthusiasm: “Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!” “I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon!” “And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self.” “Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?”He heard America singing. He heard the mechanic, the carpenter, the mason, the boatman, the shoemaker, the wood cutter, and the young mother. He would probably have heard the banker too, the realtor, the stock broker, and the IT specialist. “For you (O Democracy, he would have said) I am trilling these songs”.
He left us with an indisputable dictum: to have great poets, there must be great audiences. We introduce our children, or should, to great poetry in the expectation that the outlook thus gained by the next generation will help us to remain a civilized nation.
Unfortunately, inspiring as he might be, Whitman was not into humor. Great poets, I think, are seldom funny, a serious shortcoming. Good thing he had friends like Dorothy Parker. “This isn’t my head I’ve got on now,” she writes in one of her books. “I think this is something that used to belong to Walt Whitman.”
Cheer up, Walt. We are still a great audience!
(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
Picture credits: Biography.com