by Walt Whitman
City of the world! (for all races are here,
All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in
and out with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores-city of tall façades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
(“City of Ships,” p. 444).
If the poet’s heart was based in Manhattan, the title “Leaves of Grass” for not one but several of his books seems an odd choice. And what of the green cover and gold-embossed, organic-looking lettering that made the book resemble a volume of domestic fiction more than a serious effort? The title and appearance were not the only surprises of the 9- by 12-inch, 95-page volume: Most notably, no author’s name appeared anywhere on the cover or first pages. Though the image of Whitman as a provocative and confident working man looked up from the frontispiece, his name came up only about halfway through the first poem-which was, confusingly, also entitled “Leaves of Grass,” as were the next five poems.
The quirky details were all deliberate. The title echoed the names of literary productions by women (such as Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio, Fanny Fern’s popular book of 1853), and the outward appearance also was designed to get readers to question the sexist boundaries of the book industry (note, too, that Whitman’s preferred trousers through the late 1850s were “bloomers,” the loose-fitting pants that were the male equivalent of those worn by women’s rights activists, such as Amelia Bloomer). “Leaves of Grass” was also an obvious metaphor for the unregulated, “organically grown” lines of the poems in the “leaves” of the book. But Whitman was also using “grass” as a symbol of American democracy. Simple and universal, grass represents common ground. Each leaf (Whitman thought the proper word “blade” was literally too sharp) has a singular identity yet is a necessary contributor to the whole. Likewise, each reader will find that he or she is part of Leaves of Grass—a book about all Americans that could have been written by any American (hence, the absence of the author’s name).
When the first publisher Whitman approached refused to print the manuscript on the grounds of its offensive contents, he took it to the Rome printing shop on Cranberry and Fulton Streets in Brooklyn Heights. The Rome brothers were friends and neighbors, and they agreed to work on the volume if Whitman would lend a hand with the job. “800 copies were struck off on a hand press by Andrew Rome ... the author himself setting some of the type,” noted Whitman (Correspondence, vol. 6, p. 30). Legend has it that most of the copies remained in a back room of the shop “until they were finally discarded as liabilities” (Garrett, The Rome Printing Shop, p. 4). The price of two dollars was apparently deemed too high by Whitman, because a second issue printed later that year with a plain paper cover cost one dollar. “All in all a thousand copies were printed but practically none sold,” writes Florence Rome Garrett, the granddaughter of Tom Rome (Garrett, p. 4).
Leaves of Grass was bound to be a quiet release, since the book was not printed or supported by a large publishing house with wide distribution, and did not even have a recognizable author’s name on the cover. A British name, in particular, would have helped, since midcentury America still looked toward England for artistic models and inspiration. Though political freedom had been established for decades, America was still a long way from gaining cultural independence. “Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not a history of theirs?” asked Emerson in Nature. Whitman replaced Emerson’s interrogation with imperatives in his preface. “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,” he insists in the preface to the First Edition (p. 10). This twelve-page, double-columned preface that stood between the reader and Whitman’s twelve poems remains his definitive declaration of independence: These new American poets would represent and inspire the people, assuming the roles of priests and politicians; the new American poetry would be as strong and fluid as its rivers, as sweeping and grand as its landscapes, as various as its people.
As a living embodiment of the new poetry, the American reader was responsible for its grace, power, and truth. The urgent tone of the preface exposes Whitman’s desperation over the state of 1850s America—a country corrupted by its own leaders, torn apart by its own people, and facing an imminent civil war. His demands on readers were meant to shake awake a slumbering, passive nation and inspire a loving, proud, generous, accepting union of active thinkers and thoughtful doers:
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body (p. 13).
What is requested here is just as astonishing as how it is stated. The unidentified speaker of the preface possessed an extreme, provocative confidence that could be seen in the eyes and stance of the image on the frontispiece. His prophetic message for America was delivered in lines that evoked the passages and rhythms of holy books; the above section, for example, may be compared with Romans 12:1-21 in the New Testament. But while the writer had perhaps elevated himself to the status of a prophet, his run-on sentences, breathless lists, and general disregard for proper punctuation suggested that he was neither scholar nor trained or “proper” writer. Most outrageous of all was his direct confrontation of the reader—the use of “you” that really meant “you.” This personal advancement from writer to reader, this attempt to jump off the page into the audience’s immediate space and time, was a new and startling literary technique. And if the combination of audacious demands and prophetic, finger-pointing tone in the preface did not deter readers from moving on to the poems, they would find the same revolutionary style and content in the very first lines.
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you
(“[Song of Myself],” 1855, p. 29).
First-time readers of these lines still find the egotism tremendous and off-putting. The irregular length and randomness of the lines, along with the use of ellipses of various sizes, looks strange enough to the eye trained on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s neat verse or Alfred Tennyson’s stately measures. But the idea of engaging in a conversation with this relaxed figure, who sensually melds with the natural landscape around him (to the point where one is uncertain of the definitions of “loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine”), puts a more cautious reader on the defensive. In 1855 the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne was appalled by the poet’s position on the grass, claiming that he “abandons all personal dignity and reserve, and sprawls incontinently before us”; 150 years later, one might still wonder at a man who unabashedly declares that he will “become undisguised and naked”—and what’s more, celebrate every “atom” of himself.
“Song of Myself (as the poem was finally titled in 1881) may begin with ”I,“ but the poem’s last word is ”you.“ In between, the poet does inject a great deal of ego; his posture is clearly that of the poet-prophet with instructions and predictions for his listeners. The most important part of his message, however, concerns the reader’s intellectual and spiritual
independence:
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun .... there are
millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand .... nor
look through the eyes of the dead .... nor feed on the spectres
in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself
(“[Song of Myselfl,” 1855, p. 30).
In Leaves of Grass, Whitman recognizes the role of the poet as of the highest order. But he also notes that the role is open for everyone (hence, the lack of an author’s name on the front cover). This seeming irony is the first that Whitman’s readers must get past: the idea that the poet is inspired and must be heeded, but must be heeded regarding a lack of adherence. “He most honors my style,” explains the poet in “[Song of Myself],” “who learns under it to destroy the teacher” (p. 86). Throughout the poem, Whitman encourages the reader’s active participation and independent thinking with unpredictable breaks as well as provocative questions without “right” answers (many of them bear a resemblance to Buddhist koans). At the end of the poem one is left with a sense of the poet’s spirit not shining over but running under the bootsoles of his protégés.
Equality between writer and reader was not the only difficult balance Whitman attempted to achieve in the poems of Leaves of Grass. As part of his plan for a new democratic art, he questioned and disrupted many other long-standing cultural boundaries: between rich and poor, men and women, the races and religions of the world. His most direct way of doing so was by observation and aggressive questioning, as in his discussion of a slave at auction in “I Sing the Body Electric”:
This is not only one man .... he is the father of those who
shall be fathers in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless
embodiments and enjoyments.
How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his
offspring through the centuries?
Who might you find you have come from yourself if you
could trace back through the centuries?
(“[I Sing the Body Electric],” 1855, p. 125).
Such passages were obviously meant to shock and provoke the American conscience, especially considering that slavery was still a legal and accepted activity. Whitman, who was close friends with Paulina Wright Davis, Abby Price, and several other reformers, also attacked the common acceptance that women were the “weaker sex.” Eight years after the first women’s rights convention took place in Seneca Falls, New York, he set out to liberate a population still falsely confined by their society’s written and unwritten rules, their own fears—even their clothing:
They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear,
well-possess’d of themselves
(“A Woman Waits for Me,” pp. 263-264).
A less confrontational method for “democratizing” his image of America was the “catalogue,” a list of people, places, items, events that sometimes went on for pages. Whitman might have been inspired by the new art of photography in creating these lists; reading through them has an effect that’s similar to looking through a photograph album, though a closer comparison may be to watching a video montage. By verbally connecting the marginalized and the mainstream, Whitman puts them “on the same page”—in the book, and hopefully in the mind of the reader.
The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the
nominee that is chosen and the nominee that has failed,
The great already known, and the great anytime after to day,
The stammerer, the sick, the perfectformed, the homely,
The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and
sentenced him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,
The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow,
the red squaw ...
I swear they are averaged now .... one is no better than the
other (“[The Sleepers],” 1855, pp. 116-117).
Whitman’s idea of a “passionate democracy” encouraged an awareness and appreciation of others as well as one’s own self. The strong sensual and erotic passages in Leaves must have been especially shocking in the mid-nineteenth century, when underwear was called “unmentionables” and piano legs were covered with pantaloons because of their suggestive shape; but even in the twenty-first century Whitman’s openness about sexuality makes readers question their own body consciousness and personal taboos. “Spontaneous Me” is but one of the poems describing masturbation; “I Sing the Body Electric” includes a lengthy catalogue of all body parts-including sex organs—described with the meticulousness of a physiognomist; “Unfolded Out of the Folds” takes place at the entrance of the birth canal (also described as the “exquisite flexible doors” in “Song of Myself”); “To a Common Prostitute” honors the profession of the most marginalized of women; “[Song of Myself]” contains passages suggestive of oral sex (“Loafe with me ... ,” p. 32), voyeurism (“Twenty-eight young men ... ,” p. 38), and homoeroticism (“The boy I love ... ,” p. 86). Whitman also describes scenes of shame, as in the “wet dream” episode of “[The Sleepers]” (“Darkness you are gentler ... ,” p. 111). Whitman apparently realized that, in order to institute change regarding societal sexual hang-ups, he had to sympathize with his embarrassed readers as well as provide models for a healthy, open-minded attitude.
Once the doors of perception were cleansed, the relationship between body and soul would be seen as it really is: connected, infinite, divine.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch
or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds
(“[Song of Myself],” 1855, p. 53).
It would be a mistake to overlook Whitman’s down-home sense of humor, tickling the edges of some of his touchiest passages (“I dote on myself,” he purrs later in the same passage. “There is that lot of me, and all so luscious”). But there is serious, deliberate provocation here. He is raising the significance and worth of the physical realm to meet that of the spiritual. Whitman was not denying the existence and importance of God, or attempting to lower the soul’s worth: He simply saw God in everyone and divinity in everything, and wanted to encourage his fellow Americans to do so, too.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each
moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face
in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is
signed by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will
punctually come forever and ever
(“[Song of Myself],” 1855, p. 88).
Simple language, complex ideas: This is Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Achieving balance between contrary notions, questioning the accepted or unquestionable, pushing every known limit or boundary-all characterize the work. And Whitman made things more difficult by sometimes modifying some of his basic tenets, such as the idea that all men are created equal: His elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom‘d” celebrates the “redeemer-president” Abraham Lincoln above all humanity,
even himself. Whitman’s glorification of the physical, too, changed as his body aged. In later masterpieces, such as “Passage to India,” he finds inspiration in the amazing output of the intellect (such as the Suez Canal and the transatlantic cable crossing) rather than in the miracles of the human form. Though unconditional truisms seem to run through his oeuvre, they are often more nuanced than casual readers recognize: His interrogations in such poems as “To the States,” for example, have taught generations of radicals that one can be actively critical and still patriotic. Even his ultimate vision of America as an abstract ideal, as expressed in his aptly titled 1888 poem “America,” seems far removed from the voluptuous, fluid, fertile image of the nation in the 1855 preface.
All these revisions and reconsiderations are signs of an active and flexible mind, one unwilling to settle or stagnate despite the appeal of worldly success and the acceptance and burdens of heartache, disease, loss, and age. Whitman was himself pleased with his unending evolution and wrote some of his finest poems about his passages as man and artist. In “There Was a Child Went Forth,” the poet details the people, places, and events that form the character of he “who now goes and will always go forth every day.” The “doubts of night- time” that trouble him are further explored in “The Sleepers,” in which he learns to embrace the continuous, ever-changing cycles of life rather than fear the darkness and the unknown.