A tip of the fedora to Brian Clements, who, in conjunction with North American Review, initiated "Every Atom" on Walt Whitman's birthday, May 31. On that day and for two hundred days after, poets and lovers of poetry cited, quoted, and commented on select passages from Whitman's oeuvre to honor the bard of democracy's two hundredth birthday.
Martín Espada kicked off the project with a post celebrating the passage beginning:
Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
Disorderly, fleshy and sensual…eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist... no stander above men and women
In Espada's words,
<< Whitman gives the “sign of democracy”—and declares himself the advocate for those excluded from democracy’s embrace. Speaking for “the rights of them the others are down upon” is the poet’s way to electrify and illuminate American democracy with his egalitarian vision, the ideal of democracy as it could be and should be.
<< In so doing, Whitman confronts a history of silence, charging himself with the responsibility to “remove the veil.” If the alternative is silence, then the “long dumb voices” of the despised and the “forbidden voices” of the indecent must speak through him. The question, even now, is whether this country is ready for Whitman, open to his “way of being” when we need it most. >>
Kudos to Martín for choosing the 1855 edition of "Song of Myself," to my mind far superior to later editions. The lines he chose exemplify how Whitman, as he aged, tended to revise for the worse. "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos" is hands down better than "Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son."
On November 20, Marie Howe responded to the challenge with a poem of her own, "The Singularity," incorporating line three of "Song of Myself." Ellen Bass (September 3) quoted lines (ending in "Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from") that she read when she "was nineteen and on LSD"; Whitman gave her permission to transgress the sexual norms of the time. Richard Deming (Nov. 26) examines the impulse to "loafe" ("I loafe and invite my soul") and speculates on how sloth, one of the seven capital sins, gave rise to one of the greatest poems in the language. Ethelbert Miller (Sept. 7) considers "I am the teacher of athletes. . ." in connection with the "black bodies [of football players] touching the leaves of grass before each kickoff. On June 11, Richard Jackson brought up Whitman’s belief that he had the right to contradict himself because he “contains multitudes.” Does this assertion not amount to an anticipatory defense of personae, masks, and heteronyms?
I chose the last line of "Song of Myself" -- "I stop somewhere waiting for you" -- arguing that it could serve as the first line of a poem. I did it in verse and have a hunch it will be the 200th in the series.
Thank you Brian Clements, for curating this extraordinary tribute to Whitman. Here is a link to the index for twenty summer days beginning with June 28. -- DL
