The year 2019 marks the 200-year anniversary of the birth of America’s infamous good gray poet, the “weird white father” (Jordan, 408) to which so many of America’s writers owe their literary genealogy. As a result, America has found itself celebrating, critiquing, and thinking about Walt Whitman in new ways that incorporate modern culture. This modern culture is one in which oppressed and marginalized groups have found a space to make their voices heard louder than ever before in American history, and a space to begin holding those with a platform accountable for their wrongdoings. This has led to what some have deemed “cancel culture”: a phenomenon in which a person with a platform has their past wrongdoings exposed and a demand from the public for penance or, in the more extreme cases, a complete revocation of their platform, fame, and career. While this phenomenon is useful in that it aims to remove those who abuse their influence from positions of power, it is sometimes harmful and self-defeating. This movement spares no one, not even America’s good gray poet.
Walt Whitman, despite his beautiful poetics of the equal-opportunity democracy he envisioned for America, explored some indisputably questionable racial opinions that have pulled him into the cancel culture debate. In their essay denoting exactly what sort of racial pseudo-science Whitman was dabbling in, George Hutchinson and David Drews label Whitman’s ideas on race as “confused and contradictory” (Hutchinson and Drews). While Whitman wrote of an egalitarian society, he was undoubtedly prejudiced and seemed to find himself unsure as to where he stood in the debate as to how many rights people of color in America deserved, consulting science that aimed to find biological superiority in white people. This is pretty damning information; how can an America that strives to finally start dismantling the racist, systematic institutions pervading the country, accept Whitman as their poet with this knowledge? How can he be allowed to poeticize the future of American democracy with one hand and question the humanity of people of color with the other? Is he so deeply ingrained in American literature and culture that, if it was decided to cancel Whitman once and for all, it would even be manageable?
Acknowledging Whitman’s pervasive influence in American literature and looking at how other authors, especially authors of color, have responded to him is a start in solving this impossible dilemma. After all, conversing with Whitman is a literary right of passage for American writers. As Ed Folsom puts it, “American poets still talk about, talk to, and talk back to Walt Whitman. So palpable is Whitman’s presence that it is difficult for an American poet to define himself or herself without direct reference to him.” (Folsom, 1). This tradition allows writers of all backgrounds to admire, air grievances, and unpack the complicated Whitman to whom American authors owe so much of their heritage. It also allows for a dialogue between those who find themselves in conversation with the poet as to how to grapple with the reality of Whitman, the man, and the vision he painted for his country.
In an essay titled “For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us”, commendable poet June Jordan wrestles with the issue of being an African-American poet in the literary family tree stemming from a white man. She eloquently and interestingly saves Whitman from himself, pointing a thoughtful finger to the condition of Walt Whitman’s homosexuality in a time where being gay led to, at best, social ostricization and, at worst, violence. Whitman may not be able to speak on behalf of people of color (not that that ever stopped him from trying), but he was familiar with the feeling of being an outsider. “It so happens that Walt Whitman is the one white father who shares the systematic disadvantages of his heterogeneous offspring” (Jordan, 399), as Jordan herself put it. She frames Whitman as a renegade, a poet who was rejected by his more academic peers and refused to allow this to stop his words from spreading to the world, printing his own copies and reviewing his own literature. She equates Whitman’s descendants as being grouped in this same vein, describing Whitman’s children as those who “suffer[ed] from the same establishment rejection and contempt” (Jordan, 402). By labelling Whitman and his descendents as literary outlaws, not allowing the academic restraints of the traditional literary sphere to limit the spaces to which they intended for their writing to spread, Jordan rescues Whitman from himself on account of his accessibility and penchant for writing for the working man.
Jordan also mentions Pablo Neruda in her essay, a Chilean poet famed for his political work and constant attempts to better his country, a poet who also greatly admired Whitman. In a speech of his own, “We Live in a Whitmanesque Age”, Neruda calls himself “a humble servant of a poet who strode the earth with long, slow paces, pausing everywhere to love, to examine, to learn, to teach, and to admire.” (Neruda, 220). What Neruda seems to admire most about Whitman is exactly what his poetry gained its fame for: the radical love with which Whitman the poet regarded his fellow man. Seeing as though Neruda came from a background of great political unrest and sometimes violence, his admiration of Whitman in this aspect is notable. While this may not answer the question of what Americans are to do with Whitman, it is worth noting that Whitman’s democratic visions and gospel of adoration for the average man inspired another poet a continent away in the way Neruda was able to recontextualize his words to be appropriate for his own situation.
The idea of recontextualizing Whitman appears in “With Whitman at the Crossroads”, an essay by Meena Alexander, an Indian poet who immigrated to America, in which she meditates on how she defines her relationship with Leaves of Grass. Being a straight Indian woman, Alexander acknowledges that she bares no similarity to Whitman in the physical sense. However, this seems to be a resolvable issue for her, even as she notes that “to get to him I had to cross over borders of race and sexuality and gender, of language (entering his American cadences) and indeed of breath.” (Alexander, 495). While she may have originally been journeying to Whitman, it appears that Alexander found that Whitman was simultaneously journeying to her, as he has journeyed to thousands of other authors across the years and the barriers that separate us from him. In Alexander’s words, “Whitman is a poet whose vision of the world, while rooted in the body and the details of the American landscape, reaches out into the world. Allowing his breath to support me, I try to translate his ineluctable male vision into the female voice that is mine. And I should add, a female body of color in a powerfully racialized world.” (Alexander, 497). Here, Alexander is poignant in addressing the fact that Whitman’s words belong to whoever stumbles across them, a significant perspective to consider in the conversation as to how Whitman’s 2019 descendants should view him.
Whether this notion is to be accepted or not, Whitman was the first to consider himself America’s poet. While in some poems, he refuses to be separated from his work, such as in “So Long” where he writes “I spring from the pages into your arms- decease calls me forth.” (Whitman 59). In other instances, however, Whitman seems to give himself fully to his descendants, to his country, to implement his vision as they see fit, like in his Preface where he coined one of his more famous expressions: “The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” (Whitman, 26). This may be interpreted as Whitman blatantly voicing his desire to become a cornerstone for American literature, but it also may be interpreted as Whitman fully dedicating his lengthy body of work to whoever reads it, namely, America. If Whitman has gifted his poetry to Americans, allowing us to reclaim his words as their own battle cry towards the country they demand, is it not up to Americans to decide what to do with the infuriatingly complex Whitman?
If Americans are to reclaim Whitman’s words for their own purposes, to remove his poetry from the questionable moments of his racial beliefs, it seems appropriate to start by revisiting his most famous work, the beast that is “Song of Myself”. “Song of Myself” is Whitman’s most recognizable, widely-read piece, despite its existence as a behemoth of a poem. It declares loudly Whitman’s vision for American democracy, for self-love, for the love of a neighbor, no matter their standing in society. It is hard to follow at times, bold, blatant, and seems to be in conversation with itself as much as it is with the outside world, reminiscent of America itself. The Whitman, Alabama project picks up on this particular stepping stone, pulling “Song of Myself” out of its cozy nook in Leaves of Grass and returning it to where Whitman intended it to exist: on the tongues of everyday Americans.
The Whitman, Alabama project can be summarized as a collection of short videos, each one a recitation of a different section of “Song of Myself” by a different person or group of people, all taking place in the hazy heat of Alabama. The brainchild of filmmaker Jennifer Crandall, born out of a trip in which she was “captivated by Alabama, the feel of it and the people I met here” (Whitman, Alabama), Whitman, Alabama aims to combine the medium of film and Whitman’s words to find the commonalities between Americans that ultimately come together to form a nation. In her own words, Crandall considered “Song of Myself” perfect for the project because:
“It was about sex, race, religion, immigration, politics. Everything we’re wrestling with today. The poem centered itself around one idea: Everyone is an individual —everyone is connected — we all contain many selves. Despite being considered trashy, disgusting, and the worst thing ever written, “Song of Myself” is now considered to be a perfect embodiment of democratic ideals. The quintessential American poem.” (Whitman, Alabama).
By choosing the American poem by the American poet to be recited by Americans, the Whitman, Alabama project perfectly embodies the notion of reclaiming Whitman’s words to exist in modern-day America. After all, operating on the notion that Whitman’s poetry belongs to America, that it is the very birthright of an American, this is one of the most appropriate ways to aim to discover what Americans are to each other through the poet that strived to put this connection into words.
Since the collection covers over twenty verses so far (it is still a work in progress), a close evaluation of three of the most compelling videos for three of the most significant “Song of Myself” verses will be performed in an attempt to summarize the far-reaching project and examine some of the most important elements of it.
VERSE 21: This verse is read by members of a dance group located in Birmingham, all of which are adolescents. The group is a healthy mix of girls and boys, all African-American and all of whom seem to be comfortable and friendly with one another. The choice of the filmmakers to use an entirely African-American group of children to read Whitman’s verse in light of recent revelations pertaining to his views on race is particularly significant, especially in the context of all Americans being given a space to reclaim Whitman through this project. Not only this, but the choice to use younger subjects lends itself to the most notable thing about the cinematography of this verse: the relaxed, playful energy to it.
The filmmakers seem to have let the group dynamic carry the video, a choice that plays off the happier tone of this verse well. Allowing time to leave in shots of giggles between friends, funny faces at some of the more mature diction of the verse, outtakes of freestyle dancing, and capturing stumbles over some larger words only to have a friend chime in and finish the line all highlight the sense of loving camaraderie that Whitman utilizes this verse to build, not only between himself and his reader, but between neighbors, friends, and citizens. This verse is also one of the least-poised videos in the collection so far; whether this is due to the nature of adolescence, the dynamic of a group of friends, or an artistic choice allowing the media to reflect the content of this more laid-back verse is hard to tell.
Choosing a group of mixed gender and a single setting for this verse particularly works well here as Whitman calls on both men and women to come together through his voice, to extend love to one another. The selection of a young group of narrators for this video is also useful in that it manages to capture the childlike naivety and optimism with which Whitman is so often accused of viewing the world. While Whitman is wise, he is also innocent and playful, sometimes inappropriately so, as Jack Spicer reminds us in his piece “Some Notes on Walt Whitman for Allen Joyce”: “Forgive me Walt Whitman…You did not ever understand cruelty.” (Spicer, 204). Whitman can sometimes be infuriating in his determined optimism with which he saw America, extending a love difficult to comprehend as it was given to a broken, flawed country. In this regard, Whitman can sometimes be seen as exuding the essence of a child, just as Whitman cares for his readers, they sometimes have to care for him, and this aspect of his writing only amplifies in a video of children reading his verse.
VERSE 24: This verse, shot inside a prison, begins with what may be the most startling instance of something akin to Whitman speaking directly through the first character of the video. It is an African-American man who begins, again significant in the 2019 gaze that Whitman is now being viewed in, looking up from his work cutting another man’s hair and addressing the camera directly, speaking boldly and without faltering over any words. It is almost jarring in its clarity, and complements the commanding tone of verse 24 wonderfully, a loud voice demanding justice, demanding equality. The choice of setting this verse inside of a prison in Alabama only emphasizes this tone.
This verse travels through four different voices, two men and two women, one of each pairing is African-American and one of each is white. This video features more narrators than most in the collection, but this difference amplifies the meaning of the verse itself. This verse finds its center in the struggle of a power dynamic and Whitman speaks on behalf of many silenced voices, themes heavily present in the setting of a prison. This is clearly one of the intentions of the project, as Crandall notes in her artist’s statement that one of her main goals is “…creating spaces intimate enough for voices to be heard” (Whitman, Alabama). Whitman was many things, but he was not one to shy away from giving a voice to the perceived “outsiders” of society. As Alice Ostriker puts it in her essay, “Loving Walt Whitman and the Problem of America”, “He solves the problem of marginality by denying the existence of a center, transforming the figures of self, nation, cosmos into a vast floodplain of sensations, affections, filiations. For him there is no outsider position, hence no dilemma of powerlessness. High and low, rich and poor, the enslaved and the free are for him all actors in a pageant.” (Ostriker, 448). In Whitman’s view, there are no background characters to America’s story, and being that prisoners are often one of the most marginalized and least-heard groups in the country, at least one verse being set in a prison is an excellent way to nod to this Whitman trait.
VERSE 44: Verse 44 seems to call into play the collective soul that Jordan speaks of in her previously-mentioned essay, embodied and speaking through the voice of Whitman himself, as well as Whitman’s obsession with writing about and for the ordinary working man. Jordan writes of Whitman and his poetry as “This great American poet of democracy as cosmos, this poet of a continent as consciousness, this poem of the many people as one people, this poet of a diction comprehensible to all…a great poetry hidden away from the ordinary people it celebrates so well.” (Jordan, 406). This description of Whitman is especially pertinent in the video of this verse, the verse in which Whitman pens “Births have brought us richness and variety, /
And other births will bring us richness and variety. / I do not call one greater and one smaller,
/ That which fills its period and place is equal to any.” (Whitman 1140-1143), reminding us that no matter the station of one’s birth, there is no man born above another, in his eyes.
The video accompanying this verse is conceptualized around water; first featuring a late-night trip into a shallow body of water on the hunt for snakes and turtles and secondly featuring a look at a day working on a river barge. The diction of verse 44 is powerful and heavy, while still maintaining an air of clearheadedness towards the promise of change, and the first half of the video balances this depth by allowing breaks between groups of lines for shots of the chosen narrator and his fishing partner to wade through the water, spurts of free-flowing dialogue between the two punctuating the Whitman lines. The second half of the video also allows for some breaks, but the breaks are silent save for the background music, and mostly consist of shots of the chosen narrator sitting atop the floating office in which he works.
While most of these videos take place among members of the working class, this verse in particular takes an opportunity to highlight it, to remind us that Whitman, above all, is a poet for the people, not the academics and not the lofty rooms of the government where he has been championed before. By connecting Whitman’s verse back to one of his base values, Crandall captures Whitman’s essence perfectly, and succeeds in handing his words back to the people they were originally intended for. In the case of all of her videos, perhaps more obviously in the Verse 44 video in particular, she greatly succeeds in allowing Americans to reclaim Whitman, no matter their race, and champion his words as their own.
By accomplishing this goal of returning Whitman to his roots, to his people, Whitman, Alabama takes a big step in the right direction as to what 2019 America is to do with Whitman. Whitman always intended for his poetry to belong to Americans, citing himself as America’s poet not (always) due to his own hubris, but due to his desire to create a common language for Americans through his poetry. In his verse, Whitman set out, above all, to give Americans a megaphone, a shoulder to lean on, a hand to hold, not his shoulder or hand, but the body of their fellow Americans extended through his voice. While it may be undeniable that Whitman was a confused, prejudiced man in his ideas of what to do in terms of racial tensions in America, this perspective of his gift to Americans to do with it as they pleased separates his championing verses from his muddled racial ideas.
Once Whitman’s person has been successfully amputated from his verse, America can experience a revitalization of Whitman at a time when it is desperately needed. As political tensions rise, immigrants are detained, and schools suffer casualties on a weekly basis, it becomes clear that America is no less broken than when Whitman was penning his poetry, perhaps even more so in some aspects. As complicated of a father as he may be, Whitman left America with a word to lean on, a verse to sing in celebration of themselves. As America grapples with the eventual struggle of separating Whitman’s problematic persona from his verse, Whitman, Alabama portrays an example of one way that Americans can begin setting about reclaiming their birthright and simply speaking Whitman, instead of allowing Whitman to speak for them. Whitman, sitting at the head of the table of American literature, belongs to America, and his verse embodies the American people so completely that it would be impossible to stop Americans from singing it. June Jordan puts it best as she concludes her essay, declaring that “Walt Whitman and all of the New World poets coming after him, we, too, go on singing this America.” (Jordan, 408).
Works Cited
Alexander, Meena. “With Whitman at the Crossroads (May 2018).” Walt Whitman: the Measure of His Song edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, & Dan Campion, Holy Cow! Press, 2019, 494-499.
Folsom, Ed. “Talking Back to Walt Whitman: An Introduction.” Walt Whitman: the Measure of His Song edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, & Dan Campion, Holy Cow! Press, 2019, 1-62.
Hutchinson, George, and David Drews. “Racial Attitudes.” The Walt Whitman Archive, https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_44.html.
Jordan, June. “For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us.” Walt Whitman: the Measure of His Song edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, & Dan Campion, Holy Cow! Press, 2019, 399-408.
Neruda, Pablo. “We Live in a Whitmanesque Age (A Speech to P.E.N.).” Walt Whitman: the Measure of His Song edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, & Dan Campion, Holy Cow! Press, 2019, 219-221.
Ostriker, Alice. “Loving Walt Whitman and the Problem of America.” Walt Whitman: the Measure of His Song edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, & Dan Campion, Holy Cow! Press, 2019, 442-450.
Spicer, Jack. “Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce.” Walt Whitman: the Measure of His Song edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, & Dan Campion, Holy Cow! Press, 2019, 204-205.
Whitman, Alabama, 2019 Advance Local Media LLC, https://whitmanalabama.com/about/.
Whitman, Walt. “Preface” Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose edited by Justin Kaplan, Library Classics of the United States, Inc., 1982, 5-26.
Whitman, Walt. “So Long!” Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose edited by Justin Kaplan, Library Classics of the United States, Inc., 1982, 609-612.
Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose edited by Justin Kaplan, Library Classics of the United States, Inc., 1982, 188-247.
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