In a time in which we are constantly bombarded with apocalyptic tragedies, political instability, and protests against inequality and injustices, it’s possible for someone in 2019 to feel many different things when reading Whitman’s poetry, especially regarding his advocation for brotherhood, love, and political unity under poetry. This made me want to explore how Whitman’s sometimes naive view of the world can be read into 2019, how Whitman might react to it, and how we, as Whitman’s great-grandchildren, react to his poetry in a time so different from the time he was writing in.
Firstly, I’ll be writing a short research paper that skims over the responses and conversation around Whitman from some of the poets we are most immediately descended from, using our Walt Whitman: Measure of His Song, 200th Birthday Edition and other resources. I’ll most likely be looking at poets like Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, and June Jordan, but I’ll also be seeking out differing viewpoints from other poets, as most of their responses are thoughtful, but run in the same vein. For this paper I’ll also be pulling from the most modern responses to Whitman I can find, poets talking about and talking to Whitman in the 2000s, using the same book.
After compiling this grouping of different opinions, I’ll be making a creative section of the project of my own work, poems and a short story or two in which I give myself an opportunity to talk back to Whitman myself. As someone who writes poetry and grew up in America, it’s easy to distance myself from Whitman instead of talking directly to him as I study him in an academic environment. However, I want to give myself a chance to get into the dialogue with Whitman. I’ll mostly be using these poems to explore my own viewpoint, after seeing how some of the poets most influential to my own work respond to Whitman, of Whitman’s dream for America, and where we’ve ended up so far, and how I imagine Whitman responding to it.
This project is mainly significant because it waters down and personalizes the entire class thus far; what is Whitman saying in his poetry and how poets respond to it in their own way and in their own social and historical context. It also is significant because it gives a poet of Whitman’s literary lineage the chance to talk back to him for the first time, after going from barely aware of him outside of Song of Myself to being neck-deep in Whitman’s poetry and ideas for months, and finally getting to know Whitman as intimately as possible considering the multi-generational divide between the two of us. This project, above all, strives to bring Whitman into 2019 through the view of a growing writer, with influences from the family tree of American authors over the years.
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