3 min. read
Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819. He is a bold poet and large soul. The rawness and transparency of his words continue to be beautiful and good over 120 years after his death.
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In his preface to the original edition of Leaves of Grass he includes this prophet-like passage:
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul …
A Humble Journey, a Learning Process
Whitman is guiding the reader on the path of humility and humane learning. To be a life-long student, to be an individual that stays connected to community, to have a life of the mind that continues to learn how to learn, we are to practice humility in our relation to nature, to others, to God, and to wisdom.
If we do these things; if we practice humility; if we continue to be teachable and discerning, something marvelous takes place. The above passage concludes with, what I would call, a truly Christian humanist bent:
… and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
How awing to think that we have the potential to be great poems, to be living poems! It seems reminiscent of St. Paul’s declaration some 1800 years earlier: a divine letter written, not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.
I leave you with a 20-year old poem I wrote in college, to Whitman, attempting to mimic his style. To you, one of my favorite poets, for your boldness, for disturbing me, for making me think better.
“Uncle Walt”
From the rebellion of youth the naive,
From all earth’s time-sands, crossing the bar where man stood then sat, wrecked,
Over my logic, intelligent giants and weak philosophies,
From innocuous insights of impalpable ideals clinging to their mother’s breast for more ocean water,
From the unspoken delight, the unbridled defiance, the uttered dirge man warbles,
You have called, I do come, we connect.
O morose old man, my dear, sweet uncle,
Alone with all but me, late and willing,
Speak your words of milk, sing your songs of madness, being utterly beautiful;
Cry in my arms my uncle;
Tears wiped away that scorch the sand of the bar,
They drop and restore to me, the cycle unending;
I your eternity, you my guide, bridging the bygone to bliss,
Embrace me, and I return to where you must be, to touch the face of isolation.
Hold me, my precious, bearded uncle,
Exude yourself as I breathe to you and cling so firm;
We end this reborn and lonely together in electric peace.