Source: Thomas Struth
Whitman’s poetry spans generations and has touched the minds of readers, future authors and poets. During Whitman’s life, he perceived the world, primarily his home of New York, with great admiration. From poems like “Mannahatta” to “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and so many others, Whitman was enthralled by not only the beauty of his home, but the industrial and distinctly American pride that residents of New York developed in their everyday lives. From the people milling around on the street, to the buildings and Staten Island Ferry, Whitman was possessed by its alluring and awe-inspiring qualities. In “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, he writes assuredly how “ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?” Whitman would not be the same author if it was not for the experiences he had living in and around New York and his writing has stuck with future authors. However, the world in which Whitman lived has changed and with time has forced authors to become depressed and saddened by this Post-Whitman world. For poets like Garcia Lorca and Calvin Hernton, this new world in which they live, and more specifically New York, has left them yearning for the world of Whitman’s past and wondering where it all went wrong.
In a poem entitled, “Ode to Walt Whitman,” from his collection of work entitled Poeta en Nueva York, the prolific writer of the Harlem Renaissance, Garcia Lorca, expresses his pain and disgust with the “lost America of Whitman,” and more specifically Whitman’s corrupted Mannahatta (Folsom, 34). Lorca begins his poem by describing how disoriented the world he sees is, from the East River to the Bronx and to Queensboro. From the boys “exposing their waists,” to the miners “taking silver from the rocks,” Lorca is ashamed by their lack of attention and direction. He feels as if they are focused on the wrong things, that they go through their everyday lives not looking closely at life’s details like Whitman would. Lorca sees that none of these people “[want] to be the river” or “[love] the huge leaves.” Whitman, although he admired the industrial work of people like the miners, always had his mind on the minute, but still pervasive details of life and the Nature that surrounds us. Lorca is clinging to the Romantic personality in Whitman’s work and is saddened by its lack of existence in his present world. He calls out the city of New York calling for its “mire and death”. He is outraged by the broken picturesque image that Whitman would conjure in the minds of the generations after him and Lorca continues this panning of New York and the Post-Whitman world throughout much of the poem. The America of today is no longer as Whitman described it, but rather “flooded in machines and sobs”. As Ed Folsom writes in his Talking Back to Whitman: An Introduction, Lorca’s tone is that of a “deep despair over the degraded present, but an even deeper affirmation of hope, only vaguely realized (34).
Although despairing as Lorca does, Calvin Hernton in his poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Bridge at 4 O’clock in the Morning,” looks for salvation and rescue with the poetry and past of Whitman. The speaker stands in front of the bridge in the dark of night, “shoulders hunched,” staring at the face of the Brooklyn Bridge. Where Whitman shows his admiration and love for his Mannahatta and everything within it in his poems, Hernton uses negative, dark imagery and language to fill the lines of his work. Standing in front of the bridge, the speaker can only feel the “night’s sorrow” and the “ache to plunge into oblivion”. It is as if the speaker is on the verge of killing himself, wanting to be freed from the shackles of his present world. As they stare into the deep and never-ending abyss of water below them, the speaker calls out Walt Whitman’s name in an attempt to find some sort of sanctuary. To the speaker, and presumably Hernton, Whitman is the “nurse of eternal compassion,” and will be his guiding light across the ferry and into the future. Hernton, like Lorca, is so troubled by the world in which he lives that he yearns to be with Whitman and his “America,” a place that will finally allow him to “shed this grief”.
Great post — and thanks for starting this conversation in class as well. In comparing these two poets coming after Whitman, I note the similarities (the similar post-Whitman despair) but there is a stark tonal difference in the two poems as well. Hernton’s poem is much quieter, its despair not so much angry as numbed. It’s anger is directed not at the world or at Whitman but at the self. Lorca, however, channels a great deal of anger and energy in his poem, as though Whitman is somehow to blame as some kind of naiveté is projected back upon him. In that sense, Whitman is cast out of Lorca’s vision at key moments in the poem. Hernton, on the other hand, never casts Whitman out. He just beseeches the poet to return. There’s an earnestness and deep sadness there that really compels me.
It’s such an easy move for poets to cast Whitman as this naive poet of endless hope and optimism as a way to offset their own despair. That’s why I appreciate the honesty and vulnerability of Hernton’s poem in particular. His is less a city of sobs and machines than wrecked psychic landscape of the body.