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Engaging Whitman in 140 Characters or Less

By on April 25, 2016 in Uncategorized

So much of Walt Whitman’s identity is the wise, old poet. A voice whose words have been almost prophetic as his dream of ‘containing multitudes’ and speaking to all generations came true. He wrote prolifically and widely, covering all subjects which occasionally made waves because of his love of minorities and the marginalized, use of homoerotic language, and use of highly sensual language. He acknowledged his place in history as he wrote, even then, wishing to engage in conversations with future generations and imagining that his own experiences could be shared with them and vis versa. As a result his voice has been cherished and echoed for generations; he has been credited as America’s poet and speaks for vast numbers of people. His voice has been employed for movements surrounding feminism, social justice, sexual liberation, the environment and more. It was always Whitman’s dream to be a poet whose work would go beyond the age,

“I do not expect to see myself in present magazines, reviews, schools, pulpits, and legislatures but presently I expect to see myself in magazines, schools, and legislature-or that my friends after me will see me there” (Whitman 654).

As society has evolved over the decades since Whitman’s death, the kind of responses to his work have evolved as well. From the typical literary criticisms from editors, writers, and intellectuals within universities to more popularized commentary and interpretations as his work became widely accessible and read. Now we’ve reached an age where Whitman has been firmly cemented in the literary canon and nearly every student in America has read his work by the time they’ve reached college. Simultaneously, students have grown up with the development of social media, where every voice is given a chance to be heard and anyone can engage in conversations with the public sphere. With the rapid growth and accessibility there have been a few draw backs to the kind of discourse people can engage in. On Twitter, users are forced summarize their thoughts in 140 characters or less, making conversations on fragments of what they could be generally meaning the responses are emotional responses with little room for development, explanation, or argumentation.

Many educators and literary lovers have used social media as a platform to share their favorite passages and engage with Whitman in some sort of way, a modern alternative to the more formal literary criticism. I wondered if Whitman could be fully engaged in discourse through such a medium. Could you make any meaningful comments or contributions to the literary community? Could you invoke Whitman’s voice without reducing him to nothing more than a soundbite? How restrictive is social media on intellectual discourse and can you really resurrect the author’s persona accurately? To answer these questions I decided to tweet for a week using lines from Whitman’s poetry and prose in response to tweets about current news and social issues. I thought this would work because ‘Tweets of Grass’ had already proven his poetry fits perfectly into 140 characters or less. Through tracking hashtags I created and the hashtags of popular movements I could see how people respond to his words. After watching our feed on the Whitman blog it became clear that people were engaging with Whitman’s work daily but I wanted to see how far this engagement went and determine whether it could develop into an intellectual discourse. I would study the way people used #waltwhitman to determine whether they were trying to connect with other people in the conversation or if they were just trying to use verses of his work as cliched quotes or a soundbite that fit their cause. If people engaged in conversation with my tweets then it would disprove my theory that social media is not a valuable platform for engaging with literature.

As I began tweeting it became clear that the question was less about the reception of Whitman’s work, as I’ll show you, and more about the way modern readers comprehend and engage with literature. This query is especially important in regards to Twitter, where commentary is limited to 140 characters or less. His work is more easily received now than when it was written. Modern society does not take issue with sexual liberation or issues of race nearly as much as it did in the mid-nineteenth century. Whitman’s radical voice works well in a society where freedom of speech is encouraged and especially in revolutionary movements where norms and status quo needs to be changed. From Emma Goldman to June Jordan to movements like  There are so many factors that affect the response to the resurrection of a literary persona and it is my goal to portray what does and does not work for Whitman in the age of Twitter based on my attempt to engage Whitman in modern discourse.

Whitman was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. His one desire was to be a poet for all ages, to ‘contain multitudes’, ‘of today I am momentary, untouched-I am the bard of the future’ (Whitman 525). He wrote so much to people of the past and future that it was easy for them to oblige him a response and with his prolific number of works and wide range of topics, writers had plenty to respond to. Though his poetry was initially slow to public acceptance, it has attracted such a large following and body of responses that it now requires it’s own archives. Whitman offered his voice to whomever it would would like it and that included radical feminists and anarchists like Emma Goldman. Timothy Robbins spoke on the ways in which Emma Goldman adopted, used, and relied upon Whitman’s work and ideals to develop her own. The trouble with borrowing an author’s voice or persona or reading their text from your own angle, is that anyone else with the opposite agenda can do the same. Because most of the responses to Whitman came post-humous, we can only cross-reference an individual’s use of the work with his other work to determine if it is at all an accurate or fair representation of the author’s voice. Whitman’s value of freedom and comradery made his work fitting for an anarchist interpretation and they “read in Whitman a discontinuous yet always rechargeable spirit of rebellion” (Robbins 85). According to Robbins it was Whitman’s ability to breakdown the heirarchy of dichotomies like body vs. soul, good vs. evil, man vs. nature, and community vs. individual and put all things on an equal playing field that made his work so fitting for Leftist propaganda. Even within her own uses Goldman would turn to different sides of Whitman to have him support her issues, “Calling on “Children of Adam” to articulate women’s rights, “Calamus” to declaim sexual liberation, and Democratic Vistas to combat the rise of totalitarianism,” (Robbins 82)

We know Whitman was vocal about sex, sensuality, and human touch so for his voice to be lent to a cause like sexual liberation isn’t surprising but his views on women were so confused and back and forth that for him to represent female empowerment might be a little confusing. Whitman’s voice has also been borrowed for matters of race and social injustice which is ironic because though he had strong affections for black people, their histories, and their bodies, he also skirted around the issue of race frequently and used stereotypical names for them. Whitman once used the line, “I am the poet of slaves and of the masters of slaves, I am the poet of the body, and I am, I am the poet of the body, and the poet of the soul.” (Iowa Press 7) It is typical of Whitman to claim a multitude of things as his own, to make great lists and catalogues and then take some sort of ownership over them whether it’s as a power move or out of affection isn’t always clear. For example, in Salut au Monde he addresses the world but as he catalogues different races he treats them with different levels of respect. To many of the Europeans, he addresses them solely by name or accomplishment, “you Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!” (Whitman 146). As he continues onto the more ‘primitive’ cultures his descriptions become more degrading, “You haggard, uncouth, untutor’d Bedowee! You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!”(Whitman 147). So you have this unfiltered and not politically correct Whitman  juxtaposed against the good, grey poet that June Jordan adopted as “the one white father” and believed that he shared in the systematic disadvantages that Africans suffer now (Jordan 1). It is here, where the conflicting sides of Whitman meet, that critics and other writers struggle to prove who and what he is ‘for’. His availability to be used by numerous groups as a spokesperson for their own cause is part of the appeal of Whitman, that is why he has accumulated such a following. The hardest part of resurrecting his famous persona is not to force him to a box of your own construction because a portion of his writing aligns with your beliefs, you have to take the writer as a whole.

Tweeting in the persona of Walt Whitman proved to be far more difficult than what I had anticipated. Having never used Twitter before I felt inept and knew that I was missing out on certain conversations and communities I could begin a discourse with. Luckily, the learning curve is steep and by the time I was through with day 2 I had an idea of how to format a tweet, what to read, and how to accumulate more likes and followers, and the most effective hashtags to use. I had to scan and scan to find news or commentary that merited a response, then I had to find the proper response from Whitman, and lastly make sure that fit in less than 140 characters. The struggle of this project was that I was trying to engage people with Whitman’s exact words, I was paraphrasing entire poems with just one line and they couldn’t be made up. All lines couldn’t just sound like him, they had to be his. I didn’t want to post a line and only receive likes or retweets, I was hoping people would have some of their own dialogue to add to the conversation. But as I became acquainted with the Twitter world, I learned that retweets and likes are the bread and butter of communication. People don’t always find it necessary to join in the conversation; it is as much about tracking an exchange as it is about starting your own. People will rapidly scroll through tweets and make a flash decision as to whether it is boring or worth a retweet. According to a study done by Paul Andre at the Human Computer Interaction Institute, “Three components that increased the likelihood of a post’s popularity were information, humor, and conciseness”(UWIRE 1). So in following this advice I tried to use Whitman quotes that were a bit snarky such as a tweet I sent Donald Drumpf,

“The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him”. That received the most likes and retweets so far, a whopping four. The problem is that I was gaining followers but no one was engaging with my quotes unless they were really well aimed. I tried to follow through with more tweets aimed at specific people instead of just using popular hashtags. I used the hashtag #Whitmanspeaks to follow my own conversations and see where they led but as of right now they have not picked up any real momentum. A tweet ‘being boring’ was the most common reason to dislike it, accounting for 82 percent of why a tweet was rated NotWR” (UWIRE 2). This motivated me further to stop digging for deep, thought-provoking quotes and look for ones that were socially relevant, perhaps humorous, and spot on for the conversation I was entering. Which again was a bigger challenge than anticipated.

As my days of tweeting continued I started to realize that communication and conversations didn’t happen like I thought they did on Twitter. People cannot have long winded arguments so opinions must be short and concise and most responses are nothing more than a reaction to what was said. I wanted to do more research on Twitter and social media to see if I just didn’t know what I was doing or if literature, Whitman in particular just wasn’t something you could engage with anymore. I was inspired to do this project by @TweetsofGrass, the person that has tweeted all the way through Leaves of Grass by line, numerous times. That account currently has 31.9K followers and countless retweets; so what were they doing that I wasn’t? The first and biggest factor was time, I had only been at this a few weeks but she/he had been tweeting since 2011. In an interview with The Atlantic the ‘tweeter’ said something that I connected with and had found to be true so far, “people tend to tweet Whitman in tiny snippets, without any sense of the larger work… @TweetsofGrass does not approve of people who tweet “the cheesiest stuff” out of context.”(Rosen). This is what I had been encountering endlessly on the Walt Whitman feed. People knew three to five of his most popular quotes and I would just watch them recycle again and again and again. The person in charge of the handle @TweetsofGrass also felt that Whitman worked well here because most of his lines were less than 140 characters and worked as little vignettes. But Tweets of Grass was trying to accomplish something different than I was. They were trying to make Whitman’s work available to the public and the format for this opened up his work, expanded it for closer examination. When read in this way, “the lines are familiar and expected; sometimes they are utterly unexpected, and appear newly fresh and relevant. A line you might have read many times before will jump out at you. This happens all the time when reading or re-reading poetry, of course, but Twitter certainly assists the process with its line-by-line presentation,”(Rosen).

The approach I was taking when employing Whitman on Twitter looked very different. I was condensing the meaning of an entire poem into one line and it often felt forceful, there was very little room for poetry when you were trying to speak directly. I had difficulty finding a line that said something relevant or fitting for a question or issue posed on my feed so I felt like I was grasping at straws. I began to understand why many readers or fans of Whitman stuck to quoting only the easiest and most compact lines. In my search of the Walt Whitman hashtag I found a website that was entirely quotes by Whitman with a direct link to either Twitter or Tumblr.

Lines such as, “I accept reality and dare not question it.” or “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.” were the kinds of lines I had anticipated and found all over Twitter (Openquotes). They were the kind of confident, declamatory lines that fit the young, brazen, lusty Whitman sounding his ‘barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world’ (Whitman 89). They were self-contained and frankly could come from anyone. They didn’t speak to any issue outside of themselves. I began to understand more and more why I couldn’t engage Whitman in any kind of intellectual discourse on social media when I understood the nature of it’s use.

Twitter is a great platform for tracking and following, issues, events, trends, and news. But it is a not meant for intellectual or developed conversations due to the nature of its design. You cannot conceivably develop a conversation in that kind of space and under those constraints,  you cannot even really fit Whitman’s work into that space unless approaching it with a longer timeline in mind. Twitter is a great site for tracking and connecting, for attaching and tagging URL’s that can connect to a broader conversation, it can be an addendum but not the source of  discourse. As for Whitman, I discovered that his work is not irrelevant or dated. On the contrary, I believe his work is just coming into an age where it can be truly used and appreciated and that in the number of social movements around the globe there is an opportunity to connect to and reexamine his literature. The radical nature of this poet as well as his deep desire for human connection fits as cultures across the globe seek camaraderie and as mediums such as Twitter seek to connect us. The challenge of social media and this generation, is ensuring that these connections are genuine because as Whitman stated in Paths Untrodden, “clear to me now standards not yet published, clear to me that my soul, that the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades”.

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