Water Profile: Walt Whitman “The Father of Free Verse”

Walt Whitman | Photo Credit: George C. Cox

Walt Whitman, often called the "father of free verse", was an American poet, essayist and journalist.  His writingreflects the era he lived in, the transitional period between transcendentalism and realism.  Whitman's major and most known work, Leaves of Grass, was self-published in 1855 but he continued to revise and add to it until his death in 1892.

Whitman was a  humanist.  Humanism is a philosophy that emphasizes the inherent value of human beings, both individually and collectively.  During the mid-18th century, a French Enlightenment periodical described humanism as a "general love of humanity".  This philosophy inspired a number of grass-roots societies dedicated to the betterment of human life through education and other philanthropic generosities.  It was only after the French Revolution that the idea of human virtue, independent of traditional religious institutions was considered and taken up by secular philosophers.

Re-examine all you have been told.  Dismiss what insults your soul.

Whitman was a religious skeptic.  He did not give any one faith more importance than any another.  He respected and accepted all religions though he believed in none of them.  His philosophical view of God was seemingly both contradictory and complementary; both metaphysical and transcendent.  He believed there is divinity within man, as well as, a divine presence in other dimensions outside of the physical reality.  He recognized that the human soul was both immortal and also in a state of progressive evolution.

I exist as I am. That is enough.

Whitman's early life narrowed his focus in one direction: the written word.  One of nine children, Whitman described his childhood as restless and unhappy, due mostly to poverty.  His formal education ended at the age of eleven when he took a job as an office boy to earn money and contribute to the family finances.  After two years, he came a printer's devil, an apprentice at a newspaper office where he learned typesetting and how to work the printing press.  While working for various newspapers as a teen, Whitman frequented the local library, joined a debate society and began attending theater performances.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

Whitman was a bit of a vagabond and loner.  He wandered from place to place, and job to job, having no real home or family, nor reliable livelihood.  He worked as a journalist, editor and book reviewer for various newspapers while writing his own free lance fiction and poetry.  After working as a teacher and founding his own newspaper, Whitman published a series of editorials, called "Sun-Down Papers—From the Desk of a Schoolmaster".  In these essays Whitman introduced a persona, a first person writing technique he would employ throughout his literarycareer.  He realized that, "every soul has its own individual voice".  In the well-known "Song of Myself", Whitman narrates the content of his thoughts on both social and personal issues with the all seeing, all knowing, all powerful "I".

I celebrate myself;

And what I assume you shall assume;

For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.

Whitman's poetry has influenced other writers and musicians.  Bram Stoker modeled his character, Dracula in the book of the same name after Whitman, whom he considered to be the quintessential male.  His poems have been set to music by a large number of composers including:  Kurt Weill, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, Paul Hindemith, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Ronald Corp, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, Roger Sessions, and John Adams.

Leaves of Grass is a compilation of Walt Whitman's life's work.  This epic volume of free verse was Whitman's response to a call to action.  In 1844, Whitman read an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson called The Poet.  In it Emerson expressed a need for the United States to have its own original poet who could provide a new and unique view of the country's virtues and vices.  Inspired, Whitman responded to the heartfelt invitation and consciously intended to be that poet, setting out to do just that with his first edition of Leaves of Grass.  Later when describing this experience, Whitman said, "I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil".

The title, Leaves of Grass was a pun that only a man working in publishing could appreciate without taking himself too seriously.  "Grass" was a term given by publishers to works of minor value.  "Leaves" is another name for the pages on which they were printed.

The oversized first edition of Leaves of Grass, which did not include the author's name, was met with mixed reviews.  Upon presentation of the newly published book, Whitman's brother George said he  "didn't think it worth reading".  Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed" and spoke highly of the book to his friends.  Henry David Thoreau thought so well of the book of free verse that he visited the poet.  Others criticized the book for its overt sexual content, calling it "trashy, profane & obscene".

The first volume of Leaves of Grass was a thin book of a dozen untitled poems preceded by a preface of 827 lines of prose.  With one exception, the poems do not rhyme or follow any standard rules for meter.  The first untitled poem was later entitled "Song of Myself".  Whitman spent his entire life writing and re-writing Leaves of Grass.  Over the four decades, from its first publication to the last revised edition leading up to his death, the small book of twelve poems became a collection of nearly 400.

I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul.

Upon completion of the final edition, Whitman wrote, "L. of G. at last complete — after 33 years of hackling at it, all times and moods of my life, fair weather and foul, all parts of the land, and peace and war, young and old".  This last version of Leaves of Grass was published in 1892 and is referred to as the "deathbed edition" which included the picture most people associate with Walt Whitman - an older, wise and sophisticated man with a full beard.  Two months before Whitman's death, an announcement was published in the New York Herald: "Walt Whitman wishes respectfully to notify the public that the book Leaves of Grass, which he has been working on at great intervals and partially issued for the past thirty-five or forty years, is now completed, so to call it, and he would like this new 1892 edition to absolutely supersede all previous ones. Faulty as it is, he decides it as by far his special and entire self-chosen poetic utterance."

Continuities, memorized and quoted by Duke, who began to read Whitman as a boy in order to overcome stammering, was featured in The Notebook:

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form--no object of the world. Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature. The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires, The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns, With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

Leaves of Grass is an epic attempt at presenting common themes relatable to the common man.  It is a celebration of life and of being human.  It speaks to the human condition and the shared life experiences of humanity.  The poems which extol the beauty of nature and revel in the sensual pleasures of the human body are loosely connected.  Within their leaves, Whitman elevates the physical form without diminishing the role of man's mind or the power of the human spirit.

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give, I give myself.

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