Lose Walt Whitman, and we lose America
michelleelise
Posts: 346
This editorial was a nice mental health break for me this week 
And it's from Wasilla, the day after health care reform passed. Thought maybe you guys might enjoy it, too...
Lose Walt Whitman, and we lose America
By David Cheezem
Spectrum
Published on Monday, March 22, 2010 7:00 PM AKDT
Militia groups are busy these days handing out copies of the Constitution. They call themselves “Patriots” — with a capital “P.’” They believe the Constitution — or at least their peculiar understanding of what the Constitution means — is the heart of American patriotism.
I do admire the Constitution of the United States of America. I think its principles of fairness, checks-and-balances and rule of law are worth preserving, debating and appreciating. So in that sense, passing around the Constitution is a good thing. But after reading the Constitution, they should also read that other statement of American meaning: Walt Whitman’s poem “Leaves of Grass.”
I think it’s odd in a way that people want to place the soul of America in a legal document. To me, the soul of America is in its poetry — Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Haydon Carruth, Robert Frost, Joy Harjo — the list goes on. But especially Walt Whitman. That’s the kind of Patriot group I could join — the kind that has people standing at street corners passing out copies of Walt Whitman’s poetry.
Imagine how different the American conversation would be if we understood that our national DNA contains the words:
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself
“And what I assume you shall assume,
“for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
Everything that is good and pure about the United States of America is in those lines. The first line embraces individuality, the beauty, dynamism and uniqueness of the self; the next two lines embrace community. Together, the three lines embrace a sense of self that identifies with all of humanity.
And then there’s that word that seems so foreign to tea-party politics: “celebrate.”
Walt Whitman is writing before, during and after the darkest period of our history — the Civil War — but he finds it in himself to celebrate all of life.
“Clear and sweet is my soul,” he writes, “and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.”
But the life he celebrates is not just his own. He embraces the life of the runaway slave, the Native American, the farmer, the opium eater and the whole catalog of classes, ethnicities and characters that fold together to form a national identity.
It might seem strange that I would want to place the foundation of American patriotism in a poem published 79 years after the Declaration of Independence. But there are two reasons for this:
1. American ideals did not gel until after the Civil War. The America that we celebrate today is the America that banned slavery, setting the stage for equal rights and full personhood for all.
2. It took some time for immigrant Americans to distinguish themselves from the culture of their homeland — for a uniquely American poetry to emerge. “Leaves of Grass” is our cultural declaration of independence.
The Constitution represents an abstraction. It’s easy for political manipulators like Glenn Beck to use it for their purposes precisely because it is abstract, easy to turn into a symbol that embodies their frustrations, pathology and rage. But a poem like “Leaves of Grass” emerges out of the muliti-faceted details of life — the land, the people, the joys and struggles of human beings. The poem represents a patriotism that is just as alive with or without a scapegoat. It’s a poem that celebrates our differences and our similarities — the highest form of patriotism. Our nation would be healthier, our dialog more civil, if we all took the time to read it.
http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/20 ... 932457.txt
And it's from Wasilla, the day after health care reform passed. Thought maybe you guys might enjoy it, too...
Lose Walt Whitman, and we lose America
By David Cheezem
Spectrum
Published on Monday, March 22, 2010 7:00 PM AKDT
Militia groups are busy these days handing out copies of the Constitution. They call themselves “Patriots” — with a capital “P.’” They believe the Constitution — or at least their peculiar understanding of what the Constitution means — is the heart of American patriotism.
I do admire the Constitution of the United States of America. I think its principles of fairness, checks-and-balances and rule of law are worth preserving, debating and appreciating. So in that sense, passing around the Constitution is a good thing. But after reading the Constitution, they should also read that other statement of American meaning: Walt Whitman’s poem “Leaves of Grass.”
I think it’s odd in a way that people want to place the soul of America in a legal document. To me, the soul of America is in its poetry — Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Haydon Carruth, Robert Frost, Joy Harjo — the list goes on. But especially Walt Whitman. That’s the kind of Patriot group I could join — the kind that has people standing at street corners passing out copies of Walt Whitman’s poetry.
Imagine how different the American conversation would be if we understood that our national DNA contains the words:
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself
“And what I assume you shall assume,
“for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
Everything that is good and pure about the United States of America is in those lines. The first line embraces individuality, the beauty, dynamism and uniqueness of the self; the next two lines embrace community. Together, the three lines embrace a sense of self that identifies with all of humanity.
And then there’s that word that seems so foreign to tea-party politics: “celebrate.”
Walt Whitman is writing before, during and after the darkest period of our history — the Civil War — but he finds it in himself to celebrate all of life.
“Clear and sweet is my soul,” he writes, “and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.”
But the life he celebrates is not just his own. He embraces the life of the runaway slave, the Native American, the farmer, the opium eater and the whole catalog of classes, ethnicities and characters that fold together to form a national identity.
It might seem strange that I would want to place the foundation of American patriotism in a poem published 79 years after the Declaration of Independence. But there are two reasons for this:
1. American ideals did not gel until after the Civil War. The America that we celebrate today is the America that banned slavery, setting the stage for equal rights and full personhood for all.
2. It took some time for immigrant Americans to distinguish themselves from the culture of their homeland — for a uniquely American poetry to emerge. “Leaves of Grass” is our cultural declaration of independence.
The Constitution represents an abstraction. It’s easy for political manipulators like Glenn Beck to use it for their purposes precisely because it is abstract, easy to turn into a symbol that embodies their frustrations, pathology and rage. But a poem like “Leaves of Grass” emerges out of the muliti-faceted details of life — the land, the people, the joys and struggles of human beings. The poem represents a patriotism that is just as alive with or without a scapegoat. It’s a poem that celebrates our differences and our similarities — the highest form of patriotism. Our nation would be healthier, our dialog more civil, if we all took the time to read it.
http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/20 ... 932457.txt
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Leaves of Grass=This Land is Your Land
Wash me in the blood of Rock & Roll
Coincidentally, I just read a little short story yesterday called 'A Visit to Walt Whitman' by Sir Edmund Gosse (1896).
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night,
and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and
poke-weed.
The brahmins are favorites of mine - especially Whitman and Emerson, and it does a body good to read that other people are like-minded. That Whitman was held up as an example in an editorial fills me with cautious hope. Reading the posts on this thread do the same. There are far too many bashers and haters who raise their voices often, and loudly, to drown out what is pure and beautiful about this country and its citizens. Thanks to the OP and byrnzie for posting the voice of one of the most talented and cherished Americans who ever lived. Made my day.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
~I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.~
Henry David Thoreau
his childhood home is on my beloved long island. took a tour once, very cool.
coincidently appropriate for america, and long island
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Walt Whitman mall! How unabashedly tacky and American!
I'm so glad other people liked this, too.
Thanks, Byrnzie for posting the excerpt. I always imagine all poets experimenting with drugs, maybe because I have such an overly-analytical mind that it's impossible for me to get poetic without a little wine
I was googling the article Byrnzie mentioned, I think I put in "visit with Walt Whitman" or something similar... and anyway, the first hit was for that mall in Long Island
exactly....a perfect fit!
btw michelle - i think the TRULY genius, don't need mind-altering substances to harness amazing creativity, their minds just actually WORK that way, no assistance needed. :shock: thus why i always thought how fascinating it would be to just get into the head of a truly great mind, just for a day, to feel and get just a wee bit of comprehension just such mind power and what occurs in there!
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow