In the preface to “Leaves of Grass,” Whitman believes that America “is the race of races” (pg. 7) and that Americans “of all the nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature” (pg. 5). This is a claim which he takes a step further by claiming that there will be a bard “to be commensurate with” Americans (pg. 7), that this will be the greatest poet. There follows a long paragraph which describes Whitman’s America, the daunting expanse which the poet will not just relay but himself encompass – he will not just write of the trees, “[o]n him rise solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and liveoak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and…” (pg. 7). Most importantly, perhaps beyond nature, this bard will know the hearts of the men and women of America. Great, small, free, and slave are all equally imbued within this poet and he is to be “their common referee” (pg. 8). This poet is “the most deadly force” in war, the “equalizer of his age,” his “brain is the ultimate brain,” “he sees the farthest he has the most faith” (pg. 9).
Whitman sets down many qualifications for this poet, I will list more, but what is most striking is that Whitman is calling for some great one to come claim the title. This is not a notion he thinks impossible or vague, Walt Whitman believes that America will produce such a poet. What he does not say is that “I, Walt Whitman, am this greatest poet.” However, this seems to be the goal of the work to follow. Whitman does not explicitly say that this is his aim, nor does he boast or put down other poets by name. He simply sets up a frame for what he believes to be the end to all poetry. So, it stands to reason that he will attempt to obey the “rules” he has set down. At one point, it seems as though he is excluding himself from the running. Whitman writes that the greatest poet “shall not deign to defend immortality or God or the perfection of things or liberty or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul” (pg. 25), which comes after pages of worshipping the soul and liberty and, to an extent, God. This seems perplexing, maybe this preface and the work to follow are meant only to pave the way for the bard to come, or maybe the greatness of these things will be taken for granted in the poem. Maybe Whitman is giving us a primer so he does not need to justify his claims in the body of the text.
Whitman wants to write a poem that will “help breed one goodshaped and wellhung man, and a woman to be his perfect and independent mate” (pg. 26). It could be that this is his desire; to foster a truest poet. If Whitman is right and the “proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it,” then this title of “greatest poet” may be one which can only be awarded posthumously (pg. 26). Surely Whitman loved America, absorbed it, how truly is did so is a matter which I hope to discover in his writings.
Great attention to the way the Preface avoids claiming the title of the grant poet-figure described. He is, in a sense, creating a sort of map, a set of prescriptions, that his own work after the Preface, will work to fulfill. I look forward to talking about the difficulty of the task he sets for himself (there are many contradictions) but also the bold ambition of a writer to truly not only speak, to but incarnate, the world he sings. When he writes of not deigning to defend, I think it means that he accepts these things as given: he sings them, rather than arguing around them; he “worships,” to borrow your own language, rather than “deign to defend.”