Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song

By Holy Cow Press

First pulished edition (1981) sold 1,000 HC and 2,000 PB copies. (Holy Cow!) Has long been unavailable. OP for 3 years. Over 30 favorable reviews (Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Choice, et al.). Wide use as classroom text in Amercian Literature, etc. New Edition will include new contributions form: Gary Snyder Adrien Rich Meridel Le Sueur Patricia Hample among others...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Holy Cow Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9780985981860

Book preview

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Praise for

WALT WHITMAN: THE MEASURE OF HIS SONG

I know of no more convincing proof of Walt Whitman’s impact upon the poetic mind (both at home and abroad) than this collection of tributes by poets—in prose and verse. Its value is aesthetic, critical, and historical, with a fine scholarly and perceptive introduction by Ed Folsom and a chronological bibliography of poems to and about Whitman. If the list is not complete (for all countries), it is nearly so; the most comprehensive in print. This book makes a major contribution to Walt Whitman criticism and scholarship. On second thought, I’ll call it colossal!

—Gay Wilson Allen

This is a book to browse, to study, to cherish; for, as much as any one book can, it lets the reader know who and what Whitman was and still is—a vital presence.

—Choice, Outstanding Academic Book citation

" Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song measures not only the great shadow that Whitman casts over 20th century poetry but also the usefulness of the kind of small press operation that produced this remarkable collection."

—Jerome Loving, American Literary Scholarship

"The authenticity of Whitman’s vocation accounts for why his admirers have always responded in extraordinary ways to him…. Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, a remarkable anthology edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, and Dan Campion, is a record of precisely this…. What is striking is the continuity of love expressed in all this—gushing, reserved, off the wall, begrudging, levelheaded, scholarly, ecstatic, yet love nonetheless."

—Village Voice Literary Supplement

Sometimes readers open literary anthologies only to find jewels in disarray…. Not so this fine volume from Holy Cow! Press. Out of America’s heartland, the terrain celebrated in Whitman’s ‘Song of the Prairies,’ comes one of the most vital anthologies of recent time. The avowals and expressions in this fascinating anthology record the liberating power for other poets of Whitman’s compassionate vision of a universalized self.

—Christian Science Monitor

" Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song is the most impressive Whitman collection ever made, and there have been many, many of them."

—C. Carroll Hollis

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.

—Song of Myself

"Recorders ages hence,

Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me,

Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, …

Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour’d it forth…."

—Recorders Ages Hence

"Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will measure myself by them….

O I see how that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,

I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death."

—Night on the Prairies

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walt Whitman—the measure of his song/edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, and Dan Campion ; introduction by Ed Folsom. — 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-930100-78-6 (pbk.)

1. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892—Criticism and interpretation.  2. American poetry— 20th century—History and criticism.  3. Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)  4. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892—influence.  I. Perlman, Jim, 1951-. II. Folsom, Ed, 1947-. III. Campion, Dan, 1949-.

PS3238.W37 1998

811’ .3—DC21                       98-14190

                                                   CIP

Copyright ©1998, 2014 by Holy Cow! Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission of the publisher.

Photographs of Walt Whitman are from the Bayley Collection, Beeghly Library, Ohio Wesleyan University and used by permission. Front cover and title page woodcuts by Rick Allen. Cover design by Marian Lansky and Rick Allen.

Grateful acknowledgement to Kenneth R. Newhams, Katherine Whittaker (Plum Graphics), and Marian Lansky (Clarity) who provided invaluable assistance in typesetting and designing this book. We are grateful to Karen Hoeft (Hoeft Design) who prepared the corrected second edition.

The publication of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (First Edition, 1981) and the second revised edition has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., a Federal agency, Elmer L. Andersen, the Beverly J. and John A. Rollwagen Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation, Charles Feinberg (as administered by Walt Whitman Quarterly Review at The University of Iowa), Grace and Everett C. Perlman, and other generous individuals.

ISBN 978-0-9859818-6-0 (eBook)

Corrected Second Printing – Spring, 2014

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Published by Holy Cow! Press titles are distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, c/o Perseus Distribution, 210 American Drive, Jackson, TN 38301. Please visit our website: www.holycowpress.org

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CONTENTS

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Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Table of Illustrations

Preface

Preface to Corrected Second Edition (2014)

Talking Back to Walt Whitman: An Introduction, Ed Folsom

1855 - 1905

Ralph Waldo Emerson, A Letter to Whitman (1855)

Henry David Thoreau, A Letter to Harrison Blake (1856)

Matthew Arnold, From a Letter to W. D. O’Connor (1866)

Algernon Charles Swinburne, To Walt Whitman in America (Poem, 1871)

Joaquin Miller, To Walt Whitman (Poem, 1877)

Ernest Rhys, To Walt Whitman from Some Younger English Friends (Poem, 1889)

Gerard Manley Hopkins, From a Letter to Robert Bridges (1882)

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1897)

Louis Sullivan, A Letter to Walt Whitman (1887)

Rubén Darío, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1890), trans. Didier Tisdel Jaén

Hamlin Garland, A Tribute of Grasses (Poem, 1893)

Edmund Gosse, From Walt Whitman (Essay, 1893)

Robert Buchanan, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1892)

Morris Rosenfeld, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1890s)

Willa Cather, Whitman (Essay, 1896)

George Cabot Lodge, To W. W. (Poem, 1902)

1905 - 1955

Ezra Pound, A Pact (Poem, 1913)

Ezra Pound, What I Feel About Walt Whitman (Essay, 1909)

Fernando Pessoa, Salutation to Walt Whitman (Poem, 1915), trans. Edwin Honig

Edgar Lee Masters, Petit, the Poet (Poem, 1915)

Emanuel Carnevali, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1919)

Witter Bynner, Whitman (Poem, 1920)

D. H. Lawrence, Whitman (Essay, 1921)

D. H. Lawrence, Retort to Whitman (Poem, late 1920s)

Carl Sandburg, [Bouquets and Brickbats] (Essay, 1921)

Vachel Lindsay, Walt Whitman (Essay, 1923)

Hart Crane, Cape Hatteras (Poem, 1929)

T. S. Eliot, From Whitman and Tennyson (Essay, 1926)

Sherwood Anderson, Walt Whitman (Essay, 1933)

Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1929), trans. Didier Tisdel Jaén

Federico García Lorca, Ode to Walt Whitman (Poem, 1929), trans. Betty Jean Craige

Zona Gale, Walt Whitman (Poem, late 1920s)

Edwin Markham, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1931)

Michael Gold, Ode to Walt Whitman (Poem, 1935)

Stephen Vincent Benét, Ode to Walt Whitman (Poem, 1936)

Wallace Stevens, Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery Part 1 (Poem, 1936)

Langston Hughes, The Ceaseless Rings of Walt Whitman (Essay, 1946)

Langston Hughes, Old Walt (Poem, 1954)

Kenneth Patchen, The Orange Bears (Poem, 1949)

Muriel Rukeyser, Whitman and the Problem of Good (Essay, 1949)

Pedro Mir, Countersong to Walt Whitman: Song of Ourselves Parts 9, 15 (Poem, 1952) trans. Didier Tisdel Jaén

Henry Miller, Walt Whitman (Essay, published 1957)

William Carlos Williams, The American Idiom (Essay, published 1961)

1955 - 1980

Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California (Poem, 1955)

Jack Kerouac, 168th Chorus (Poem, 1959)

Jack Spicer, Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce (Poem, late 1950s)

Richard Eberhart, Centennial for Whitman (Poem, 1955)

Richard Eberhart, Comments (Essay, 1978)

Edwin Honig, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1955)

Pablo Neruda, Ode to Walt Whitman (Poem, 1956), trans. Didier Tisdel Jaén

Pablo Neruda, I Begin By Invoking Walt Whitman (Poem, early 1970s) trans. Teresa Anderson

Pablo Neruda, We Live In A Whitmanesque Age (Prose, 1972)

Jorge Luis Borges, Camden, 1892 (Poem, 1966), trans. Richard Howard and César Rennert

Jorge Luis Borges, Note on Walt Whitman (Essay, 1947)

Jonathan Williams, Fastball (Poem, 1959)

John Berryman, From Song of Myself: Intention and Substance (Essay, 1957)

John Berryman, Despair (Poem, 1970)

Denise Levertov, From A Common Ground (Poem, 1961)

James Wright, The Delicacy of Walt Whitman (Essay, 1962)

David Ignatow, Communion (Poem, mid 1950s)

David Ignatow, Son to Father (Essay, 1979)

David Ignatow, Waiting Inside (Poem, late 1960s)

Louis Simpson, Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain (Poem, 1960)

Louis Simpson, Pacific Ideas—A Letter to Walt Whitman (Poem, 1963)

Theodore Roethke, From The Abyss (Poem, 1964)

Edward Dahlberg, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1966)

Howard Nemerov, A Modern Poet (Poem, 1967)

Ronald Johnson, Letters to Walt Whitman, V, IX (Poems, 1966)

Charles Olson, I, Mencius, Pupil of the Master… (Poem, 1960)

Robert Creeley, Introduction (Essay, 1972)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Populist Manifesto (Poem, 1975)

Norman Rosten, Face on the Daguerreotype (Poem, 1965)

Calvin Forbes, Reading Walt Whitman (Poem, early 1970s)

Derek Walcott, Over Colorado (Poem, 1976)

Dave Smith, With Walt Whitman at Fredericksburg (Poem, 1976)

Philip Dacey, Hopkins to Whitman (Poem, 1978)

Ted Berrigan, Whitman in Black (Poem, late 1970s)

William Stafford, For You, Walt Whitman (Poem, 1979)

Theodore Weiss, The Good Grey Poet (Poem, 1976)

Diane Wakoski, For Whitman (Poem, 1973)

Galway Kinnell, Whitman’s Indicative Words (Essay, 1973, rev. 1980)

1980s

Allen Ginsberg, Allen Ginsberg on Walt Whitman: Composed on the Tongue (Discourse, 1980)

Allen Ginsberg, I Love Old Whitman So (Poem, 1984)

Louis Simpson, Honoring Whitman (Essay, 1980)

William Heyen, Essay Beginning and Ending with Poems for Whitman(1980)

Joseph Bruchac, To Love the Earth: Some Thoughts on Walt Whitman (Essay, 1980)

Alvaro Cardona-Hine, I Teach Straying from Me—Yet Who Can Stray from Me? (Essay, 1980)

Larry Levis, Whitman (Poem, 1981)

Calvin Hernton, Crossing Brooklyn Bridge… (Poem, 1980)

Patricia Goedicke, For Walt Whitman (Poem, 1980)

Patricia Hampl, The Mayflower Moment: Reading Whitman During the Vietnam War (Essay, 1980)

Judith Moffett, Reaching Around (Poem, 1980)

Thomas McGrath, Revolutionary Frescoes—The Ascension (Poem, 1978, rev. 1980)

Robert Bly, My Doubts About Whitman (Essay, 1980, rev. 1998)

June Jordan, For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us (Essay, 1980)

Meridel LeSueur, Jelly Roll (Essay, 1980)

Sharon Olds, Nurse Whitman (Poem, 1980)

Robert Duncan, The Adventure of Whitman’s Line (Essay, 1985)

Gillian Conoley, Walt Whitman in the Car Lot, Repo or Used (Poem, 1989)

1990s

Adrienne Rich, Beginners (Essay, 1993)

Gary Snyder, Walt Whitman’s New World, Old World (Essay, 1993)

Marge Piercy, How I Came to Walt Whitman and Found Myself (Essay, 1992)

Alicia Ostriker, Loving Walt Whitman and the Problem of America (Essay, 1992)

Garrett Hongo, "On Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass" (Essay, 1992)

Yusef Komunyakaa, Kosmos (Poem, 1992)

Chou Ping, Walt Whitman: Whispers of Heavenly Death Murmur’d I Hear! (Poem, 1993)

Sherman Alexie, Defending Walt Whitman (Poem, 1996)

Rudulfo Anaya, Walt Whitman Strides the Llano of New Mexico (Poem, 1996)

The Poets Respond: A Bibliographic Chronology

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint materials from the following sources:

Defending Walt Whitman by Sherman Alexie. From The Summer of Black Widows, copyright © 1996 by Sherman Alexie and reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press.

Ode to Walt Whitman by Stephen Vincent Benét. From Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Benét (Holt, Rinehart & Winston) copyright © 1935 by Stephen Vincent Benét and renewed 1963 by Thomas C. Benét, Stephanie B. Mahin, and Rachel Benét Lewis. Reprinted by permission of Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents, Inc.

Song of Myself: Intention and Substance (an excerpt) by John Berryman. From The Freedom of the Poet, copyright © 1976 by Kate Berryman and reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

Despair by John Berryman. From Love & Fame, copyright © 1970 by John Berryman and reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

A Note on Whitman by Jorge Luis Borges. From Other Inquisitions 1937-1952, trans. Ruth Sims, copyright © 1964 by the University of Texas Press.

Camden, 1892 by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Richard Howard and Cesar Rennert. From Selected Poems 1923-1967, ed. Norman DiGiovanni, copyright © 1972 by Delacorte Press.

Whitman by Witter Bynner. From A Canticle of Pan, copyright 1920 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright renewed 1948 by Witter Bynner. Reprinted with permission of the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, Inc.

Walt Whitman by Emanuel Carnevali. From Poetry 14, no. 2 (May 1919), copyright 1919 by The Modern Poetry Association. Reprinted by permission of John F. Nims, Editor of Poetry.

Cape Hatteras by Hart Crane. From The Bridge, copyright 1933, © 1958, 1970 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

"Introduction to Whitman Selected by Robert Creeley" by Robert Creeley. From Was That A Real Poem & Other Essays, by Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1979 by Robert Creeley and reprinted by permission of Four Seasons Foundation.

Hopkins to Whitman: from The Lost Correspondence by Philip Dacey first appeared in Poetry Northwest.

Walt Whitman by Edward Dahlberg. From Cipango’s Hinder Door, copyright © 1965 by the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas. Reprinted by permission of the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, and the Estate of Edward Dahlberg.

Walt Whitman by Rubén Darío. From Homage to Walt Whitman, copyright © 1969 by the University of Alabama Press. Reprinted by permission of the translator, Didier Tisdel Jaén.

The Adventure of Whitman’s Line by Robert Duncan. From Fictive Certainties, copyright © 1985 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Centennial for Whitman by Richard Eberhart. From Collected Poems 1930-1976, copyright © 1976 by Richard Eberhart. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

Comments by Richard Eberhart first appeared in West Hills Review, 1, no. 1 (Fall 1979), copyright © 1979 by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Whitman and Tennyson by T. S. Eliot. From The Nation & Athenaeum (18 December 1926), copyright © 1926 by The Nation Limited. Reprinted by permission of The Statesman & Nation Publishing Company Ltd.

Walt Whitman by Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. From Homage to Walt Whitman, copyright © 1969 by the University of Alabama Press. Reprinted by permission of the translator, Didier Tisdel Jaén.

Populist Manifesto by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. From Who Are We Now?, copyright © 1975, 1976 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

Allen Ginsberg on Walt Whitman: Composed on the Tongue by Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg read and discoursed on consecutive pages of the Modern Library Edition of Leaves of Grass in a sound studio in Boulder, Colorado (1980) for use by Centre Films as a spontaneous sketch of Whitman’s works as a soundtrack for a film.

Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg. From Howl and Other Poems, copyright © 1956, 1959 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.

For Walt Whitman by Patricia Goedicke first appeared in Big Moon magazine. From Crossing the Same River, copyright © 1980 by The University of Massachusetts Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Essay Beginning and Ending with Poems for Whitman by William Heyen is expanded from its first appearance in West Hills Review: A Walt Whitman Journal, 1, no. 1 (Fall 1979), edited by Vince Clemente.

The Traffic and Witness by William Heyen. From Long Island Light: Poems and a Memoir (New York: Vanguard Press, 1979), © 1979 by William Heyen and used with the permission of Vanguard Press.

Walt Whitman by Edwin Honig appeared in The Moral Circus (Contemporary Poetry, 1955). From Selected Poems 1955-1976 (Dallas: Texas Center for Writers), copyright © 1979 by Edwin Honig. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Introduction by Langston Hughes. From I Hear the People Singing, ed. Langston Hughes, copyright © 1946 by International Publishers.

Old Walt by Langston Hughes. From Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Communion by David Ignatow. From Poems 1934-1969, copyright © 1970 by David Ignatow. Reprinted by permission of the author and Wesleyan University Press.

Son to Father by David Ignatow first appeared in West Hills Review, 1, no. 1 (Fall 1979), copyright © 1979 by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Letters to Walt Whitman, nos. V and IX, by Ronald Johnson. From Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses, copyright © 1969 by Ronald Johnson. Reprinted by permission of the W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us by June Jordan. From Passion, copyright © 1980 by June Jordan. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.

168th Chorus by Jack Kerouac. From Mexico City Blues, copyright © 1959 by Jack Kerouac and reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc.

Whitman’s Indicative Words by Galway Kinnell. First appeared in an earlier version in The American Poetry Review (March/April 1973).

Retort to Whitman by D. H. Lawrence. From The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence, copyright © 1964 by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc.

Whitman by D. H. Lawrence. From The Nation & Athenaeum (23 July 1921), copyright © 1921 by The Nation Limited. Reprinted by permission of The Statesman & Nation Publishing Company Ltd.

A Common Ground, Part iii, by Denise Levertov. From The Jacob’s Ladder, copyright © 1961 by Denise Levertov Goodman. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

To W. W. by George Cabot Lodge. From George Cabot Lodge: Selected Fiction and Verse, ed. John W. Crowley, copyright © 1976 by The John Colet Press.

Ode to Whitman by Federico García Lorca. From Lorca’s Poet in New York, trans. Betty Jean Craige, copyright 1977 by the University Press of Kentucky. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

Revolutionary Frescoes—the Ascension by Thomas McGrath first appeared in Praxis, in a shorter version.

Walt Whitman by Edwin Markham. From New Poems: Eighty Songs at Eighty, copyright 1932 by Edwin Markham. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Petit the Poet by Edgar Lee Masters. From Spoon River Anthology, copyright 1914, 1915 by William Marion Reedy, copyright 1915 by the Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of Mrs. Ellen C. Masters.

Walt Whitman by Henry Miller. From Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, copyright © 1962 by Henry Miller. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

Countersong to Walt Whitman: Song of Ourselves by Pedro Mir. From Homage to Walt Whitman, copyright © 1969 by the University of Alabama Press. Reprinted by permission of the translator, Didier Tisdel Jaén.

Reaching Around by Judith Moffett. From The Kenyon Review, 2, no. 4 (Fall 1980) and reprinted by permission of Judith Moffett.

A Modern Poet by Howard Nemerov. From The Blue Swallows by Howard Nemerov. Copyright 1967 by Howard Nemerov and published by the University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.

I Begin by Invoking Walt Whitman by Pablo Neruda. From A Call for the Destruction of Nixon . . ." trans. Teresa Anderson. Copyright 1980 by the Estate of Pablo Neruda. Published in 1980 by West End Press. Reprinted by permission of West End Press.

Ode to Walt Whitman by Pablo Neruda. From Homage to Walt Whitman, copyright © 1969 by the University of Alabama Press. Reprinted by permission of the translator, Didier Tisdel Jaén.

We Live in a Whitmanesque Age by Pablo Neruda. Copyright © 1972 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Nurse Whitman by Sharon Olds. From Satan Says, copyright © 1980. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

I, Menicus by Charles Olson. From The Distances by Charles Olson. Copyright © 1960 by Charles Olson, published by Grove Press. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Charles Olson.

Loving Walt Whitman and the Problem of America (an excerpt) by Alicia Ostriker. From Robert K. Martin, ed., The Continuing Presence of Walt Whitman, copyright © 1992 and reprinted by permission of The University of Iowa Press.

The Orange Bears by Kenneth Patchen. From The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen, copyright © 1968 by Kenneth Patchen. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

Salutation to Walt Whitman by Fernando Pessoa. From Selected Poems, Fernando Pessoa, translated by Edwin Honig, © 1971 by Swallow Press. Reprinted with the permission of The Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio.

How I Came to Walt Whitman and Found Myself by Marge Piercy; "On Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass by Garrett Hongo; and Kosmos" by Yusef Komunyakaa, copyright © 1992 and reprinted by permission of The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

A Pact by Ezra Pound. From Personae. Copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

What I Feel About Walt Whitman by Ezra Pound. From Selected Prose 1909-1965. Copyright © 1955 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

Beginners (an excerpt) by Adrienne Rich from What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 1993 by Adrienne Rich. Reprinted by permission of the author and W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Abyss, Part 2 by Theodore Roethke. From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1963 by Beatrice Roethke, Administrix of the Estate of Theodore Roethke. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Face on the Daguerreotype by Norman Rosten first appeared in West Hills Review, 1, no. 1 (Fall 1979). From Selected Poems (Braziller), copyright © 1979 by Norman Rosten. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Whitman and The Problem of Good by Muriel Rukeyser. From The Life of Poetry, copyright (1949) by Muriel Rukeyser and reprinted by permission of Current Books, Inc., A. A. Wyn Publisher.

Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain and Pacific Ideas — A Letter to Walt Whitman by Louis Simpson. From At the End of the Open Road, copyright © 1960 and 1962 by Louis Simpson. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

With Walt Whitman at Fredericksburg by Dave Smith. Copyright © 1976 by Dave Smith and reprinted by permission of the University of Illinois Press and the author.

Walt Whitman’s New World, Old World by Gary Snyder. From A Place in Space, copyright © 1995 by Counterpoint Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

For You, Walt Whitman by William Stafford first appeared in West Hills Review 1, no. 1 (Fall 1979), copyright © 1979 by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetary Part I by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, by Wallace Stevens, by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1936 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1964 by Holly Stevens.

For Whitman by Diane Wakoski. From Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch, copyright © 1974 and reprinted by permission of Black Sparrow Press.

Over Colorado by Derek Walcott. From Sea Grapes, copyright 1971, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 by Derek Walcott. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

The Good Grey Poet by Theodore Weiss. From Fireweeds, copyright © 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 by Theodore Weiss and reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc.

Fastball by Jonathan Williams. From The Empire Finals at Verona: Poems by Jonathan Williams. Copyright © 1959 and reprinted by permission of the Jargon Society, Inc. and the author.

The American Idiom by William Carlos Williams. From Interviews with William Carlos Williams: "Speaking Straight Ahead," edited by Linda Wagner. Copyright © 1976 by the Estate of William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

The Delicacy of Walt Whitman by James Wright. From The Presence of Walt Whitman, edited by R. W. B. Lewis. Copyright 1962 by Columbia University Press and The English Institute. Reprinted with the permission of Columbia University Press and Mrs. James Wright.

Illustrations

1. A photograph of Walt Whitman taken in 1861, the year the Civil War began.

2. An 1868 photograph of Walt Whitman.

3. A daguerreotype image of Whitman from the early 1840s. During this time, Whitman taught school on Long Island, worked as a printer in New York City, and edited The Aurora — a New York City daily newspaper. This image may have been made in one of Mathew Brady’s galleries.

4. Dr. R. M. Bucke called this image the Christ Likeness of Whitman. This daguerreotype was made at the same time (July, 1854) as the frontispiece for the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. It is probable that this image was made by Gabriel Harrison — Brady’s best cameraman.

5. A photograph circa 1863, probably taken by Alexander Gardner in Gardner’s Washington, D.C. gallery.

6. & 7. Photographs taken on April 15, 1887 by George C. Cox — one of Whitman’s favorite photographers. Over twenty photographs of Whitman were taken that morning in Cox’s studio at Broadway and 12th, including illustration 17.

8. Photograph of Whitman from the early 1870s.

9. Photograph of Whitman by Napoleon Sarony in 1879, taken while Whitman was in New York to deliver his Lincoln lecture. Sarony’s opulent studio was on 5th Avenue.

10. An 1891 photograph of Whitman by the painter Thomas Eakins. One of many photographs Eakins took in Whitman’s Camden, N.J. home.

11. An 1881 photograph of Whitman taken in Boston by Barlett F. Kenny. Whitman called it The Pompous Photo.

12. Photograph dated 1871.

13. Photograph circa 1880.

14. (See 10. above.) An 1890 Eakins photograph of Whitman sitting in a buffalo-skin covered chair.

15. Photograph dated 1880 and labeled the Lear photo.

16. Photograph of Whitman taken by Alexander Gardner in 1864, Washington, D.C.

17. & 18. (See 6. & 7. above.) The children are Nigel and Catherine Jeannette Cholmeley-Jones, the nephew and niece of Jeannette L. Gilder (1849-1916; founding editor of The Critic and sister of Richard Watson Gilder, an editor of Scribner’s Monthly), who accompanied Whitman to Cox’s studio. Cox perceived these children as soul extensions of Whitman.

1

Preface to the Second Edition

When Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song was published in 1981, it gained an enthusiastic reception. The book recorded an ongoing argument between America’s ur-poet, Walt Whitman, and the generations of poets who followed him. We called the phenomenon talking back to Whitman, and, as it turned out, a lot of readers began talking back to us. The book was reviewed in over thirty journals and newspapers across the country and was named by Choice as one of the Outstanding Academic Books of 1982. A survey of college teachers published in 1990 in the Modern Language Association volume Approaches to Teaching Whitman’s Leaves of Grass named Measure of His Song the most valuable anthology of Whitman criticism, noting that "of the numerous collections available, the one most widely admired is Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song." In its review of the book, American Literature noted that if scarcity is eventually added to its quality and sparkle, this could become a collector’s item. It was not our intention, back in the early eighties, to make the reviewer at American Literature a prophet, but in fact Measure did fall out of print and became a sought-after prize on the second-hand book market.

Over the years, the editors have kept listening to the spirited conversation that American poets continue to have with Walt Whitman. As the century nears its end, over a hundred years after Whitman’s death, American poets and poets from many other nations are talking back to him more than ever before. For this revised edition, we offer an updated introduction that traces some of the new directions the conversation has taken, and the book includes some significant additions of poetry and prose, including a poem by Rudolfo Anaya written especially for this new edition. To make room for the additions, we have deleted some material that no longer seems to work as well as it did in 1980. Since the initial publication, an entire new generation of poets has entered the dialogue with Whitman, and the generation that was responding back then has continued to respond in creative and illuminating ways. For this new Measure of His Song, we have tried to capture the ongoing energy of the conversation with Whitman, a conversation that has expanded in both variety of subjects and diversity of participants. The bibliography, listing hundreds of poet’s responses to Whitman over the past century, has been expanded and now extends to responses through the 1990s.

The original edition contained four major sections—responses from the first fifty years after the 1855 publication of Leaves of Grass, responses from the next fifty years, responses from the twenty-five years after that, and a group of what were then very recent responses (many written especially for the book) from the beginning of the 1980s. We have retained the four sections but have expanded the final one to include responses from all of the 1980s and most of the 1990s, taking us to the edge of a new century of engagement with the still talkative Walt Whitman, who is, as always, Expecting the main things from you.

E.F., J.P., & D.C.                       

Iowa City and Duluth, 1997

Preface to Corrected Second Edition

The second edition of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song has now been out of print for a number of years. We are pleased to offer a new corrected reprinting of that edition, so that the book can continue to have an ongoing life in the study of Whitman’s influence on American poetry. Since the 1998 edition appeared, poems to and about Whitman have continued to appear, as have essays and books by poets about Whitman, as well as books gathering some of the poems. Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman, edited by Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro, appeared in 2003 and contained a hundred poems by a hundred poets responding to Whitman, and, in 2005, Eric Athenot and Olivier Brossard edited Walt Whitman hom(m)age: 2005/1855, collecting thirty-eight poems, all responding to Whitman, written by thirty-seven American poets and one British poet, with French translations. Such books supplement Measure of His Song, but none comes close the richness and breadth of the work printed here. We are happy to have our book back in the conversation, continuing to talk back to Walt Whitman.

J.P., E.F., & D.C.                       

Iowa City and Duluth, 2014

2

Talking Back to Walt Whitman: An Introduction

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ED FOLSOM

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Poets to Come

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than

before known,

Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the

darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a

casual look upon you and then averts his face,

Leaving it to you to prove and define it,

Expecting the main things from you.

— Walt Whitman

AMERICAN POETS, who in the Inscriptions to Leaves of Grass became Whitman’s implied readers, have over the years become his best readers, the readers who took him at his word and wrestled with his poems, defied his authority. Once, reading a poem addressed to him, Whitman noted with satisfaction, You see, if I can’t write poetry [at least] I can inspire it (WWC, 2, 32). More than a century after his death, American poets still talk about, talk to, and talk back to Walt Whitman. So palpable is Whitman’s presence that it is difficult for an American poet to define himself or herself without direct reference to him. At some point in the lives of most twentieth-century American poets (and, increasingly, poets from other countries as well), some encounter with Whitman takes place. Again and again poets come to grips with his definition of what the American poet should (and should not) be, respond to his development of the poetic line, his concepts of poetic subject and object. And, at some point, most American poets after Whitman have directly taken him on—to argue with him, agree with him, revise, question, reject or accept him—in an essay or a poem. Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song documents this intersection and interaction of a twentieth-century poet’s life with the continuing presence of Whitman, that recorded moment in a poet’s life when Whitman’s presence is most vividly felt. And that moment is often a highly charged encounter that forces the poet to define his or her role as a writer in America.

The encounter is different for each poet: some take on Whitman’s voice, imagine themselves to be Whitman talking; others view him from an ironic distance, or imagine scenes in which he is the major character; some deal with him more analytically, carefully examining their attitudes toward him in prose. But most talk directly to him: this remarkable and unique dialogue, continuing now for over a hundred years, is the most surprising aspect of his continuing influence. The fact that today’s poets continue to talk with Whitman confirms his boast that time and space can be conquered:

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not. . . .

Roy Harvey Pearce, in The Continuity of American Poetry, suggests that "All American poetry [since Leaves of Grass] is, in essence if not in substance, a series of arguments with Whitman." But what is remarkable is how much American poetry has been in substance a record of that argument. Whitman is not only an influence, he is a presence, and this distinction defines the unique relationship poets have had with him over the past century. One way to understand twentieth-century American poetry is as an ongoing and evolving discussion, debate, or argument with Walt Whitman.

Beginnings

Listener up there! What have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

. . .

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

The temptation to talk back to Walt Whitman has always been great, and poets over the years have made something of a tradition of it. There’s nothing quite like it anywhere else in English or American poetry—a sustained tradition, a century old, of directly invoking or addressing another poet. Whitman asked for it, and, remarkably, it has occurred: it has become a litany running through our poetry, this call to Whitman, a rough muse, to enter our poems, our time, and pass on his secrets about how to deal with experience in America. American poets cannot rid themselves of his presence; he always seems to stop somewhere, as he said he would, waiting for them, and sooner or later they must come to terms with him.

British poets have no ongoing tradition of addressing their past masters: Keats wrote with Shakespeare’s portrait above his desk, but he never actually beckons the bard in his poetry; Blake feels Milton’s spirit filter into his body in Milton, but the muses addressed there are the sexually-charged Daughters of Beulah, not Milton himself. Wordsworth is the most conspicuous example of a major poet who talks to a poetic predecessor; in London, 1802, he futilely beckons Milton’s spirit, an absent muse: Milton! thou shoulds’t be living at this hour:/ England hath need of thee. For American poets, though, the call to Walt Whitman is no isolated case, but more like a common necessity, an important step in discovering each poet’s own calling.

The tradition began early, while Whitman was still alive, and continues to the present day. Most of the poets who address Whitman do so to satisfy a gnawing urge to talk things out with him, to relieve the itching of his words at their ears. So poets as diverse as Joaquin Miller, Hamlin Garland, and George Cabot Lodge; Edwin Markham, Ezra Pound, and Hart Crane; Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Duncan; Louis Simpson, Theodore Roethke, and Richard Eberhart, have all entered into the dialogue with Whitman. Notable contemporary poets like Dave Smith, Judith Moffett, Sharon Olds, William Heyen, Jorie Graham, and Patricia Goedicke continue to enter the conversation. African American poets, beginning with Langston Hughes and continuing through Calvin Forbes, Calvin Hernton, Michael Harper, and June Jordan have developed their own unique dialogue with Whitman, as have Native American writers like Joseph Bruchac, Maurice Kinney, Simon Ortiz, and Sherman Alexie. And the response is not limited to just Americans: British poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne, Robert Buchanan, and D. H. Lawrence; Hispanic poets like Fernando Pessoa, Federico García Lorca, and Pablo Neruda; German poets like Hermann Hesse, Christian Morgenstern, Kurt Tucholsky, and Gabriele Eckart; Swedish poets like Artur Lundkvist; Chinese poets like Li Yeguang and Ai Qing; and poets of various African nations, like Timothy Wangusa and Syl Cheney-Coker, have joined the dialogue too.

Whitman, of course, invited the response; to address Walt Whitman, after all, is to complete his poetic act, to create the other half of the dialogue he initiated. No poet has ever made his reader more of an intimate than Whitman has; his poems demand your presence—My left hand hooking you around the waist—and your response—Will you speak before I am gone? He claims to hear his reader talking and often speaks his words for him: It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you. . . . The reader, like it or not, is made to be Whitman’s comrade, and the book the reader holds is Whitman himself:

Camerado, this is no book,

Who touches this touches a man,

(Is it night? are we here together alone?)

It is I you hold and who holds you. . . .

Whitman even ends Leaves of Grass with a suggestion of ongoing conversation: Remember my words, I may return again. . . . Many poets, then, have simply taken Whitman at his word. He is, as he said he was, someone who can be talked to, confided in, someone who can be persistently recalled. William Carlos Williams, reflecting on his own fascination with Whitman, once said: I don’t know why I had that instinctive drive to get in touch with Whitman, but he was a passionate man. . . .

The earliest poetic responses to Whitman, many composed by British poets and many written during Whitman’s lifetime, were almost without exception written in rhyme, and most in very regular and traditional meters—ironic responses to the poet of free verse, who was trying to teach the new democratic poets to liberate themselves from the shackles of poetic convention. At least ten of the early responses were traditional sonnets. Some of the early rhyming attempts used their formal qualities as a quiet corrective to Whitman’s apparent wildness, and—even while they praised him—tried to yank him gently back in line. The recurrent rhymes and meters function as a rote reminder that the proper way to talk of beauty is in strict and controlled form. Ernest Rhys, for example, a founding member of the Rhymers’ Club, travelled to America to encourage Whitman to consider the possible use of rhyme and what may be called pattern-verse in the new poetry he had inaugurated. . . . But, no, he would not budge. For the most part, the nineteenth-century poets who responded to Whitman struggled with the tensions between their allegiance to traditional forms and their fascination with the new line Whitman had created.

Even when poets wanted to praise his new form, then, they tended to do so in old forms. Albert Edmund Lancaster’s tribute, for example, approaches self-parody as it loudly praises a rough muse who obviously had never visited Lancaster himself: Your lonely muse, unraimented with rhyme, / Her hair unfilleted, her feet unshod, / Naked and not ashamed demands of God / No covering for her beauty’s youth or prime. And Joaquin Miller, the flamboyant frontier poet, praises Whitman’s rough form in rhymed iambic pentameter:

What though thy sounding song be roughly set?

Parnassus’ self is rough! Give thou the thought,

The golden ore, the gems that few forget;

In time the tinsel jewel will be wrought.

This is ironic praise from the poet whom Whitman admired because he has broken loose some—been more or less free in technique, unlike those who are still writing in the old ways, hugging the traditions.

But Whitman could forgive others’ reversions to old forms if their responses were otherwise full and passionate. So, when Rennell Rodd—British diplomat, classicist, and poet once championed by Oscar Wilde—sent Whitman a poem in 1887 that castigated Swinburne for recanting his earlier praise of Whitman—(He has turned on you too, Camerado, has passed from the few to the throng, / Content you and smile and remember he called to you once for a song), Whitman pronounced it mighty good even though It’s scholarly and all that: sort of schoolish. What Whitman liked about Rodd’s verse is that it seems intended seriously—as a real handshake. . . . He liked the sense of completion it suggested, the confirmation of a hand out there that has grasped his own through the medium of his poetry. Whitman’s listener up there has ceased to be a voiceless spectre and has manifested himself—just as Whitman hoped—in a song of answering.

In a poem written on the occasion of Whitman’s death and addressed to the dead poet, Robert Buchanan—English poet, novelist, reformer, and like Rennell Rodd a detractor of Swinburne—actually employed the handshake metaphor:

One handshake, Walt! while we, thy little band

Of lovers, take our last long look at thee—

One handshake, and one kiss upon the hand

Thou didst outreach to touch Humanity!

Buchanan here sets the tone for much of the poetry to be addressed to Whitman after his death; there is a continual sense that Whitman’s soul was permanently embodied, a sense that we would always be able to embrace him, to feel—through the palpable body of his book—the firm grip of his hand. Manifesting himself so effectively in his poems—pulling what C. Carroll Hollis calls the great metonymic trick—Whitman would always seem corporeal, would always radiate physical presence. This, then, is one reason he has continued to be addressed—because poets continue to have the remarkable feeling that, though dead, he is still physically there, able to be spoken to.

But it was while Whitman was still living that Swinburne—the villain for Buchanan and Rodd—addressed Whitman in one of the most rousing (and one of the earliest) calls to the poet. In 1871 he published To Walt Whitman in America, entreating Whitman to allow his chants, with their air of freedom and youthful democracy, to flow freely to England and Europe to help re-energize a decayed and cruel culture: Chains are here, and a prison, / Kings and subjects, and shame; / If the God upon you be arisen, / How should our songs be the same? For Swinburne, Whitman becomes the singer of Freedom, whose poems are capable of initiating a revolution—A song to put fire in our ears. . . . Whitman is addressed as O strong-winged soul with prophetic / Lips hot with the bloodbeats of song. . . . His words have actual substance That pierce men’s souls as with swords. . . . Swinburne’s address to Whitman, then, also completes the embrace; he feels through Whitman’s poems A blast of the breath of the West. Swinburne never saw Whitman in the flesh; their camaraderie (such as it was) was entirely through words, and so, like all the poets who would talk to Whitman after his death, Swinburne gave and sought response from a presence he never actually saw. The charged encounter exists solely between poems, words taking on body, poems that must body forth an unseen Whitman just as he bodied forth unseen readers.

Robert Buchanan, who made a career out of satirizing and condemning Swinburne, admired Whitman as much as he despised Swinburne (he may have been, in fact, one reason for Swinburne’s later loss of enthusiasm for Whitman). In the first of several poems addressed to Friend Whitman, he did his best to distance Walt from the decadent Swinburne: Ne’er have thy hands for jaded triflers twined / Sick flowers of rhetoric and weeds of rhyme. Buchanan goes on to discern in Whitman a divine soul that makes him Christ-like . . . in mien, and then envisions Walt as a reincarnation of not only Christ, but Socrates too: God bless thee, Walt! . . . / The wisdom and the charm of Socrates, / Touch’d with some gentle glory of the Christ! Buchanan was not the first nor would he be the last person to see Christ incarnated in Whitman. The perception of Whitman as son of God or divine prophet, in fact, led to several early poems that, while they are addressed to Whitman, really are nothing but disguised prayers. Swinburne’s and Buchanan’s poems, to be sure, have some of the reverent and beseeching overtones of prayer, but other more minor figures simply replace God with Walt, as does a well-wisher named Leonard Wheeler:

O pure heart singer of the human frame

Divine, whose poesy disdains control

Of slavish bonds! each poem is a soul,

Incarnate born of thee, and given a name.

There are many more poems like this one, some by well-known literary figures in Whitman’s day, like Edmund Clarence Stedman and Francis Howard Williams. (And this worshipful tradition stays alive today; William Heyen responds to Whitman in Eight Poems for Saint Walt, where he associates Whitman with Jesus, offering a vision of Jesus and Walt together, building a fire at Shiloh that seems to redeem the souls of dead soldiers.)

There were a few poets in the nineteenth century who began to carry on the dialogue with Whitman in forms modeled on his own. Sadikichi Hartmann—a Japanese-German immigrant dramatist, art critic, poet, Bohemian, and devoted follower of Whitman—wrote a poem to him in 1887 composed of lines that in length exceed even Whitman’s; he called his works prose poems in imitation of Whitman. But far more common were the writers like George Cabot Lodge, for whom imitation inevitably led to ambivalence. Lodge made painstaking analyses of Whitman’s rhythms and tried to model his lines and rhythms accurately on those in Leaves of Grass. He dedicated his second volume of poetry, Poems (1899-1902), to Whitman, and opened the volume with an address to him:

Upon Thy grave,—the vital sod how thrilled as from

Thy limbs and breast transpired,

Rises the spring’s sweet utterance of flowers,—

I toss this sheaf of song, these scattered leaves of love!

But Lodge was his whole life a sonneteer, and even this dedicatory address to Whitman turns out to be an unrhymed sonnet; we can feel the Whitman-spirit in Lodge struggling with the formalist-spirit for control of the poem.

Similarly, Hamlin Garland’s Prairie Songs of 1893 are called chants rhymed and unrhymed of the level lands of the Great West, but Garland unaccountably chooses to cast in rhyme the one imitative song he addresses to Whitman. In bringing the elements of many of the early responses to Whitman together in one poem, though, Garland transcends them and creates one of the most effective and interesting of the pre-twentieth-century poems to Whitman. What makes this poem important is that Garland begins, if ever so gently, the tradition of arguing with Walt, delineating clearly their differences in stance and in geographical affection. Garland thus initiates the tone of much of the twentieth-century response—a tone of love and admiration for, but also an affirmation of separation from, Whitman. While Garland had great respect for Whitman, calling him the genius of the present, he was no blind disciple. Garland’s poems were varied in form, and he believed that the subject should have its own dress, a garment which would take its shape from the inner urge. Given such an organic view of poetic form, his use of rhyme in the poem to Whitman stands as one more quiet affirmation of an identity separate from Walt’s. Garland’s poem is called A Tribute of Grasses and he brings to his idol a distinctively midwestern offering:

Loving my plain as thou thy sea,

Facing the east as thou the west,

I bring a handful of grasses to thee,

The prairie grasses I know the best—

The shifting rhythm and informal tone pay homage to Whitman; the rhyme, though, and the emphasis on a place Whitman had only once visited (he recorded of that visit in Specimen Days that the prairies were what most impress’d me, and will longest remain with me) suggest the independence of one who is most honoring the style of his teacher by carving out a separate identity. The early responses to Whitman thus reveal that already Whitman’s call for defiant readers was beginning to be heard.

The Modernist Debate with Whitman

Ezra Pound, twenty years later, picks up on Garland’s gentle quarrel and sets the tone the twentieth century would often use to address Whitman. The earlier responses were either taunting chants of ridicule (early parodies of Whitman would themselves fill a large volume) or, more commonly, comforting words of support for a beleaguered poet. Most were cheering replies of confidence, responding to the poet by assuring him that he had friends who believed in him and who believed in—and would help bring about—the persistence of his poetry. By early in the twentieth century, though, the battle for lasting recognition was won. As the nineteenth