Walt Whitman

Joy is a perverse topic. And I don't trust anyone who appears unfailingly cheerful.

It may appear overly grim and off-puttingly pessimistic, but it's also a fact that life can, indeed, be a bitch. Its bitchiness is often ironically exacerbated by those who insist on pretending that all is well, that we are all entitled to unicorns and rainbows, that world peace is an achievable social norm.

I mean, has Disney done us any favors? By filling everyone's head with a notion of The Ideal, the Magical Other, the Whatever that's Better than Whatever You've Got, people tend to grow depressed about what they'll likely never get, and start to neglect, devalue, or overly criticize what they've actually got.

Which is why Whitman, a joyous poet, restores a little of my hope in life, and people, and what they're capable of. It's cliche to say, but his words - his style - roars off the page. Relentless. Descriptive, like his mouth and brain were desperately trying to keep up with the hand that wrote the verse. Somewhere between the mind's chaos and the poem's control, that tension remains, and thus his poetry is vivid, alive, and breathing.

Yet he's never a schmuck. He's bursting with life, and joy, and love for others - but it's rooted in love for himself, and a very naked, raw love at that. Whitman embraces his body and its every ugly function. He adores the trash on the sidewalks, the dying soldier, the "mossy scabs of the worm fence" (Song of Myself, 5). Whitman feels almost Buddhist in his embrace of the present, which in turn reflects the universal, and his unconditional acceptance of what simply is.

I hope I meet people like Whitman in my own life.

I love his personal story, too. He moved back in with his parents in his 30's, supported himself part-time with carpentry, and published only "Leaves of Grass." Granted, he re-printed it several times as it gained fame and acclaim; even Oscar Wilde visited him. But in the beginning, he was kind of a loser, and for a day job he acted as a government clerk.

Individual poem notes:

"Song of Myself" feels like a simultaneous river of joy and melancholy - a perfect balance of what life is, in other words:

"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." (verse 3)

Too perfect to comment on.

The entirety of Verse 5 is a love-song which I too love. I think it's the most romantic, sensual, accurate vision of what true love means, is; yet it begins with such ambiguity:

"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."

I've been toying with this line. I love that the poet addresses his soul, his-self, and differentiates it from "the other I am." By affirming his love of his own soul, we see that there is a gap between its internal privacy and purity, and that peculiar, risky, external "other." I consider that other to be the mask we must all wear in order to survive in society, even amidst would-be lovers. Even if you don't subscribe to my new-age-esque articulation, I think it's safe to say that everyone has the sense, at one time or another, that we are misunderstood - that who we are or how we present ourself is only the tip of the iceberg. Humans are unfathomably complex creatures, after all, and it's so easy for Others to stereotype us, define us, and judge us simply by this external presentation. We ourselves must try, as much as we can, to prevent our external "other" from "abasing" itself by behaving honorably and lovingly. Likewise, I believe Whitman's second reference to "the other" refers to literally - the other lover, our 'soul-mate' if you will - someone who also strives to behave honorably and lovingly; an act of reverance primarily for the self, which will naturally benefit our ability to truly bond with The Other.

Whitman taps into the social and individual psychology which Freud would later articulate in biological terms. This search to describe and define the interior is beautifully in step with Romantic/Modernist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries; I wonder if Whitman read any Schopenhauer. I imagine he would have quite liked his idea of the "universal will" of the world (I myself quite fancy his essay).

I will also briefly point out that verse 46 is fucking incredible. It again is unconditional in its love for the other, yet this isn't a mystical love. Nor does the poet demand perfection from his beloved:

"You are also asking me question and I hear you, / I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself."

In this sequence, the poet "tramps a perpetual journey," that of life - "no chair, no church, no philosophy" but for his love of men and wmen, and the open horizon before him. The Other he encounters and loves has questions, is unsure about his path, and the poet offers to temporarily take on his burden for "in due time you shall repay the same service to me." I find the non-chalant confidence he has that The Other will be strong enough, one day, to forge his own path, to be incredibly moving. He hooks his arm around the companion to provide support and compassion, not to satisfy lust, yet we are quietly reminded of love's physical element. Platonic love, kin love, passionate love, are all bound up as the poet admonishes the timid beloved that "long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams... You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life."

Hell yeah!

Walt Whitman, I love you, too. Thank you for keepin' it real.