{"id":8661,"date":"2008-12-05T07:20:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T12:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8661"},"modified":"2015-04-06T09:46:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T13:46:45","slug":"the-books-the-norton-anthology-of-modern-and-contemporary-poetry-walt-whitman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8661","title":{"rendered":"The Books: \u201cThe Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry\u201d \u2013 Walt Whitman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"15210828.JPG\"Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry<\/p>\n

The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 1: Modern Poetry<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair<\/p>\n

A gorgeous two-volume edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry is the next book on the shelf.<\/p>\n

\"Walt_Whitman_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_16786.jpg\"<\/p>\n

I just finished Richard Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde<\/a>\"\", and when Wilde visited America for his whirlwind tour, he made it a point to make a pit-stop to visit (and bow down before) Walt Whitman. The story of their encounter is just amazing – who knows what really happened … but the thought of the two of them in the same room together is too much.<\/p>\n

Wilde initiated the conversation by saying, ‘I come as a poet to call upon a poet.’ Whitman replied, ‘Go ahead.’ Wilde went on, ‘I have come to you as one with whom I have been acquainted almost from the cradle.’ He explained that his mother had purchased a copy of Leaves of Grass<\/i> when it was published; presumably this was in 1868 (Wilde put it two years earlier), when William Michael Rossetti edited a selection of Whitman’s poems. Lady Wilde read out the poems to her son, and later, when Wilde had gone up to Oxford, he and his friends carried Leaves of Grass<\/i> to read on their walks. Whitman, in pleased response, went to the cupboard and took out his sister-in-law’s bottle of homemade elderberry wine. Wilde drained without wincing the glass Whitman had filled, and they settled down to consume the rest of the bottle. ‘I will call you Oscar,’ said Whitman, and Wilde, laying his hand on the poet’s knee, replied, ‘I like that so much.’ To Whitman, Wilde was a ‘fine handsome youngster.’ Wilde was too big to take on his lap like other youngsters who visited the sage, but could be coddled if not cuddled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The encoutner goes on. It was not all smiles and adoration. There were disturbing undertones.<\/p>\n

The den was filled with dusty newspapers preserved because they mentioned Whitman’s name, and Wilde would complain later to Sherard of the squalid scene in which the poet had to write. It was hard to find a place to sit down, but by removing a stack of newspapers from a chair, Wilde managed to. They had much to talk about. Whitman was eager to know about Swinburne, who had long ago been his English advocate and had written the tribute ‘To Walt Whitman Across the Sea’. Wilde knew Swinburne well enough to promise to relay Whitman’s message of friendship to him. …<\/p>\n

Wilde pressed his advantage to ask what Whitman made of the new aesthetic school. Whitman replied with an indulgent smile befitting his sixty-three years, ‘I wish well to you, Oscar, and as to the aesthetes, I can only say that you are young and ardent, and the field is wide, and if you want my advice, go ahead.’ With comparable politeness Wilde questioned Whitman about his theories of poetry and competition. Prosody was not a subject on which Whitman had ever been articulate, except in relentlessly extolling free verse. He responded with wonderful ingenuousness, ‘Well, you know, I was at one time of my life a compositor and when a compositor gets to the end of his stick he stops short and goes ahead on the next line.’ He went on unabashed, ‘I aim at making my verse look all neat and pretty on the pages, like the epitaph on a square tombstone.’ To illustrate, h e outlined such a tombstone with his hands in the air. Wilde treasured the remark and the gesture, and re-enacted them to Douglas Ainslie some years later. But Whitman concluded with impressive simplicity, ‘There are problems I am always seeking to solve.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

God, if we could all always see ourselves as being faced with “problems we are always seeking to solve” … as opposed to feeling that we have the answer, that we know the answer … it would be a better world. And at least for an artist, it is essential to never be “done”. It’s like Rainer Maria Rilke’s great line: “Live the questions.”<\/p>\n

After this encounter, Wilde had this to say about Whitman:<\/p>\n

He is the grandest man I have ever met in my life. I regard him as one of those wonderful, large, entire men who might have lived in any age and is not peculiar to any people. Strong, true, and perfectly sane: the closest approach to the Greek we have yet had in modern times.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A bit of code there (“Greek”), but everyone would have known to what he had referred. Wilde also said something like, “The kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips”. Whitman, while troubled by some of the aesthetes’ poses, defended Wilde from criticism. I am not sure if the two men, both homosexuals, admitted such a thing openly to one another – I don’t know if those words would have even been necessary. Wilde lived openly as a gay man, and Whitman? Well, you need only read his poems with the glorification of the male body, to understand what was going on.<\/p>\n

Whitman is a self-involved poet, predicting the confessional poets of the 50s and 60s. He looks inward, and looks to see himself reflected in the outer world. He is one of the first major American poets to really use the “I” in a powerful way. The “I” that speaks in Walt Whitman’s verse is not general, or universal, or in any way a character – it is a voice, it is the poet himself. And it is American<\/i>. The celebration of self – of the “I” – is one of Walt Whitman’s greatest contributions. <\/p>\n

The Civil War impacted his life personally (as was true of everyone at the time). He was pro-Union, but he traveled to Washington, to the battlefields as well, saw the carnage, and felt the agony of BOTH sides. He was obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. He gave lectures on Lincoln after Lincoln’s death – here is a ticket stub from one of those lectures I found online!<\/p>\n

\"ww0034as.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Whitman was that rare phenomenon: a poet celebrated and famous during his own lifetime. He was controversial. If you read Leaves of Grass<\/i>, you can feel the sexual energy behind it. It ruffled feathers.<\/p>\n

Whitman did not live a life of tragedy, as Wilde did. I think he might have even been disturbed by how openly Wilde flaunted who he was. That wasn’t Whitman’s thing. <\/p>\n

He became an elder statesmen of sorts. America had always been looked down upon by Europeans as an artistic backwater because everyone in America was so damn industrious<\/i>, it wasn’t set up for artists! And it actually was true for some time. We didn’t have much homegrown literature here for the first century or so of our existence – there was just too damn much to do. In the 19th century that began to change, and voices began to emerge. Voices that were not imitating Europe, or following in that tradition – but voices all their own. The American cadence.<\/p>\n

I love his stuff. Some of it I find to be quite silly, I admit … but I recognize it for the stunning breakthrough that it is. There was nothing like this in American letters before he came along.<\/p>\n

There is not neatness to his work, or politeness. It is self self self … and lots of people get annoyed by that (to this day), but it was the raw material of his life, and it was the only possible way he could create. You read his stuff and you can hear Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton … He was so far ahead of his time that he became timeless.<\/p>\n

“Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry<\/a>” is my favorite of Whitman’s poems. It still, to me, expresses the beauty and energy of New York, and, by association, all of America. It is a song of celebration, a lifting-mine-eyes-up evocation of all that is good and beautiful here.<\/p>\n

Often poets are silenced by war. Whitman was not. Here is one. It was written in 1865.<\/p>\n

\nBy the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame<\/u><\/p>\n

By the bivouac’s fitful flame,
\nA procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow–but first I note,
\nThe tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline,
\nThe darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence,
\nLike a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,
\nThe shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me,)
\nWhile wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,
\nOf life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away;
\nA solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
\nBy the bivouac’s fitful flame.<\/p>\n

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