Whitman, A Man of the People

So far the most interesting persona of Walt Whitman that I have encountered is the advocate, man of the people. I love how connected he is to people of all ages, races,  and times in history. I am also fascinated by the way he has been adopted as the voice for individuals or groups of people that lack the words or support that he can provide, even decades after his death. He was adopted by Martin Espada in “Another Nameless Prostitute Says He Was Innocent” and “Rain Without Rain”, by June Jordan to support the New World poets and speaks for the world in “Salut Au Monde”. Whitman tries to include men, women, children, black, white, rich, poor, in his own words,

“I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,” “I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,” “I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the
poet of wickedness also.” “I am large–I contain multitudes.”

I feel like Whitman is very much a nationalist but above all else he is a humanist, caring for the individual as much as the multitudes. I tried to imagine Whitman in modern America and what his views might be on the current issues around us, who he might lend his voice to. I thought of course he would be an environmentalist, perhaps a feminist (to the point of equality), and an advocate for civil rights. For my project I wanted to place myself within the perspective of Whitman in modern America and lend his voice to a cause by way of searching his poetry and using it in a blog or some sort of media outlet to speak out on behalf of a cause. It is very much like what advertising firms have done for their own purposes but I want to keep mine as true to Whitman as possible. The young, bold, lusty Whitman unleashing his barbaric yawp from the rooftops to the benevolent wound-dresser to the old and reflective Whitman.

I have struggled with finding the proper cause for Whitman to support because I want it to be something I am passionate about but something that Whitman would believably lend his voice to. I decided that immigration, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the civil rights issues surrounding those two topics are something that would mean a lot to the Universal Whitman. The format I’m choosing to take with my project is still uncertain but an idea that I had (which may be completely off the wall) is to create a blog and twitter account for the modern Whitman, speaking as him by using nothing but his own lines. I will be responding to statements made about the issue in other tweets, interviews, political debates, and articles. I think it would be particularly funny to start a celebrity feud between Donald Trump and Whitman, maybe I’ll get a retweet. This may be a little too broad to fairly capture the voice of the universal, man-of-the-people Whitman but I think it has some potential. Are there any suggestions on how I can revise this?