Whitman - A National Poet

For the most part, Whitman wrote one book of poems, Leaves of Grass, which he revised and published in multiple editions throughout the course of his life. With Whitman, whom you just got done reading, we see a lot of the philosophies of the British Romantics given an American twist. By American I mean the kind of Manifest Destiny, conquering the untold wilds of a young and idealistic nation. Whitman felt that "In poems, the young men of The States shall be represented, for they out-rival the best of the rest of the earth." Whitman wrote this in a letter to Emerson in 1856, as a prefatory correspondence to Leaves of Grass.

Following are some of Whitman's own comments concerning his poetry (excerpted from the Norton Critical Edition of Leaves of Grass (pp. 763-770))--

"My poems when complete should be a unity, in the same sense that the earth is, or that the human body, (senses, soul, head, trunk, feet, blood, viscera, man-root, eyes, hair) or that of a perfect musical composition is."

"Indeed, the qualities which characterize "Leaves of Grass" are not the qualities of a fine book or poem or any work of art but the qualities of a living and full-blooded man, amativeness, pride, adhesiveness, curiosity, yearning for immortality, joyousness and sometimes uncertainty."

"Even as a boy, I had the fancy, the wish, to write a piece, perhaps a poem, about the seashore--that suggesting, dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid--that curious, lurking something (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the subjective spirit) which means far more than its mere first sight, grand as that is--blending the real and ideal, and each made portion of the other. Hours, days, in my Long Island youth and early manhood, I hunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney Island, or away east to the Hamptons or Montauk. Once, at the latter lace (by the old lighthouse, nothing but sea-tossings in sight in every direction as far as the eye could reach), I remember well, I felt that I must one day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward, I recollect, how it came to me that insead of any special lyrical or epical or literary attempt, the seashore should be an invisible influence, a pervading gauge and tally for me, in my composition."

"I will not reject any theme or subject because the treatment is too personal. As my stuff settles into sae, I am told (and sometimes myself discover, uneasily, but feel all right abut it in calmer moments) it is mainly autobiographic, and even egotistic after all--which i finally accept, and am contented so."