Every once in a while, I get the notion that I would like to meet someone, past or present. Walt Whitman is one of those people, for me. I think he was wise in ways unknown to most.
I mean, who sets out to be a poet, really? It isn’t high on the list, when we lean over and ask a small child what they would like to be when they grow up? In fact, I don’t ever remember any of them saying, “poet.” But there he was, making every word exist, so powerfully.
Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in Long Island, New York. His parents, while not full-blown Quakers, had the Quaker mindset. His father was also Walter (1789–1855), and his mother was Louisa Van Velsor Whitman (1795–1873). There were nine children born into that family, and he was the second. They called him “Walt” to distinguish him from his father.
Walt Whitman described his childhood as being unhappy, mostly. He said it was due to the financial hardships they constantly experienced. When he was 11 years old, he ended his formal schooling and went to work.
I can’t possibly tell you about his entire life here. He held many jobs over the years, but most of them were centered around the printing and writing industry. He worked from typesetter to newspaper founder, publisher, and editor.
Probably during the late 1840s, he made his first inner advances toward becoming a poet. He said he’d had years of competing for “the usual rewards.” It was around 1850 when he began writing Leaves of Grass, his amazing collection of poetry. For all of his life, he would continue editing and revising this work.
But he was an empathetic, caring, and kind soul. During the Civil War, he was worried for his brother, George, who was serving for the Union. He walked day and night to find him, and along the way, he saw the sights of war, the wounded. This journey, to his brother George (wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg), motivated him to visit and care for injured soldiers. Whitman estimated he made 600 hospital visits and visited 100,000 wounded Union and Confederate soldiers during this time.
His life was full. He loved to sunbathe in the nude. He appreciated the world around him.
Whitman died on March 26, 1892. His autopsy revealed that his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their normal breathing capacity, a result of bronchial pneumonia. And so it goes.
I think I would have liked to meet the man who thought the way he did and wrote the things he wrote. He sounded his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
And this, from Leaves of Grass.
Miracles
Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?
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“Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.”
― Walt Whitman
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“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.”
― Walt Whitman
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“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
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They called him Walt. Me too.
