O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should hav blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

one standard figure that rises when old poetry people (like me and you) talk about walt whitman goes something like this: i'm so lucky that i never studied him in school... i was able to discover him on his (and/or my) own terms as i needed him. and that's pretty much my own situation.

i had none of him in high school... my teachers were afraid of poetry... none of him in college (and i was a bloody ENGLISH MAJOR)... o some of my friends read him for their standard survey of american lit (why did i not take that course? must have had my gaze set on europe... my path probably followed the mu english department's british bent)... so when did i first read whitman?

it might have been during grad school theology in washington... i was hungry then for real reading... anything other than grillmeier's christology or macquarie's systematics... but it was probably in houston... as i prepared to teach american lit for the first time. i remember reading - not reading... devouring - Leaves of Grass in two or three sittings... i was suddenly understanding something of american life and art... and something of myself... it wasn't history... it was immediate and alive and necessary under my fingers and eyes... i was suddenly understanding what all the noise had been about... walt... making something fresh and beautiful in the new world...

and now... i swear this is true... i pull down the library of america volume and open randomly to this page from Specimen Days, dated May 31, '82... today, yes... his 63rd birthday then... 184th today... and he says

I tried to read a beautifully printed and scholarly volume on "the Theory of Poetry," received by mail this morning from England -- but gave it up at last for a bad job. Here are some capricious pencillings that follow'd, as I find them in my notes:

so nice to know that walt, too, had trouble getting through his expected reading (you should see my bookpile... and more on the way)... and to be reminded that a book's beauty and scholarship don't always mark it as indispensable... he goes on:

In youth and maturity Poems are charged with sunshine and varied pomp of day; but as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuous still included,) the Dusk becomes the poet's atmopshere...

and i wonder about this because some of my young poets today are dark spirits... not much sunshine... credit this to the songs of their day? classic teen angst... would walt have recognized it? the songs of his own "youth" (he was 36 with the first edition of leaves) are notably bright and encouraging... hopeful in their positive resistance to the cultural stagnations of the day... i guess that's why i have pushed them on my students (not so lucky to have found him on their own)... an antidote of sorts to their beloved poe...

The play of Imagination, with the sensuous objects of Nature for symbols, and Faith -- with Love and Pride as the unseen impetus and moving-power of all, make up the curious chess-game of a poem.

Common teachers or critics are always asking "What does it mean?" Symphony of fine musician, or sunset, or sea-waves rolling up the beach -- what do they mean? Undoubtedly in the most subtle-elusive sense they mean something -- as love does, and religion does, and the best poem; -- but who shall fathom and define those meanings? (I do not intend this as a warrant for wildness and frantic escapades -- but to justify the soul's frequent joy in what cannot be defined to the intellectual part, or to calculation.)

at times, i admit, i've been that common teacher, but i'm mostly very conscious of working against that standard reductive approach ("what does it mean?")... ever since that day at marquette when a friend read my notebooks (surreal blurtations) and scrawled a painful "what do you mean, tom?" across the top of a page. walt's thought here encourages me in my current project with finish your phrase... which i know in my guts is not a wild or frantic escapade (though i have less against them than walt seems to have)...

At its best, poetic lore is like what may be heard of conversation in the dusk, from speakers far or hid, of which we get only a few broken murmurs. What is not gather'd is far more -- perhaps the main thing.

and with this walt is singing to my soul... once this would have been an utterly vague pronouncement... but now i know exactly what he means... "what is not gather'd"... indeed... the main thing.

so now i'm lifting up my boot-soles and wishing walt a happy 184th... and many more...

in other news... it has finally happened... after four or five years of internet life, i've finally met in person a friend from the web. suzanne (self-described sirenic unruly crone) arrived yesterday bearing gifts (the best kind because so richly undeserved and unexpected... i had none to give beyond a little lunch and a long walk and talk)... she managed to get my mind off that last test i needed to grade and all the other pressing administrivia of school year's end... we had a good afternoon... ustalk poemtalk webtalk schooltalk spinningtalk dyeingtalk planttalk birdtalk...

and tomorrow is june!

Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Walt Whitman

 

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