Almanac of Story Tellers: Walt Whitman

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of May 31st

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    It is the 151st day of the year, leaving 214 days remaining in 2022.

 

   On this date in 1819, the poet Walt Whitman was born on Long Island, in New York.

    Whitman told his stories -- of love, of war, of  death -- in verse. He was one of the earliest, if not the greatest of, American poets.

    He showed the English language a new style of poetry, called free verse. Without rhyme or a distinct meter, free verse often spoke in the rhythms of ordinary languages, with the grace and style of the spoken tongue. 

    He also wrote more traditional poetry, with a typical rhyming scheme and verse. His most famous poem in that genre is O Captain! My Captain! which he wrote about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and published in The Saturday Press. It was one of four poems he wrote about Lincoln.

    His first book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, was self-published in 1855, and contained selected poems Whitman had wrote over the years. The first volume contained no author's name, not titles on the poems. Whitman continually updated and revised the book and what it included.

    As it gained popularity, it became controversial. It contained verses showing delight in sensual pleasures, and it contained explicit sexual images. It hinted at Whitman's homosexuality. One poem, I Sing the Body Electric, speaks of the beauty of both the male and female body.

     It was condemned as obscene; Whitman himself was fired from his clerical job in the Department of the Interior because the secretary deemed the volume indecent.

    Two later collections, Drum Taps, and Sequel to Drum Taps, show Whitman had varying views on the nature of war. He saw it as necessary to do away with evil, such as slavery, or to promote a more perfect union. But he also recognized the horrors of war, and, in Beat! Beat! Drums! show how it overwhelms all other feelings.

                                                                                                                           

               Beat! beat! drums! -- blow! bugles! blow! 

              Make no parley -- stop for no expostulation, 

              Mind not the timid -- mind not the weeper or prayer,

              Mind not the old man beseeching the young man, 

              Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties, 

              Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses, 

              So strong you thump O terrible drums -- so loud you bugles blow.