Nobody wanted Walt Whitman, but Walt Whitman wanted himself,
and it is well for us that he did.
- Robert Henri, from The Art Spirit
Howard Nelson, author and Whitman scholar, has prepared this new, expanded edition
to his previous chapbook, Earth, My Likeness. His earlier book was popular with
Heron Dance readers, but Howard felt that much of Whitman’s most powerful
nature poetry had been left out. He’s prepared this more complete edition,
and the new edition also includes watercolors by Heron Dance artist Rod MacIver.
Howard Nelson is the author of Robert Bly: An Introduction to the Poetry, editor
of On the Poetry of Galway Kinnell: The Wages of Dying, and is a widely published
poet. He was a contributor to Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia.
Howard’s first, abbreviated edition (28 pages) was very
popular with Heron Dance readers. He has now prepared a new edition of Earth,
My Likeness with five or six times the number of poems and essay excerpts. The
new edition is 144 pages.
From the introduction to the new edition:
Thinking back at the end of his life to Emerson’s attempt
to persuade him to take some of the sex out of Leaves of Grass, Whitman said,
“if I had cut sex out I might just as well have cut everything out.”
The sex in his poetry is not located in just a few poems; it suffuses much more
than an erotic or taboo poem here and there. When Whitman wrote about sex, he
often wrote about it in terms of the natural world, and when he wrote about
the natural world, he often wrote about it in terms of sexual intimacy and pleasure.
The poems “Spontaneous Me” and “These I Singing in Spring”
are perhaps the premier examples; no other walks in the woods in literature
are quite like them. Eros and nature are richly tangled in a wet, lush bouquet.
Whitman does not want us to separate them. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
probably comes closest to this effect, though his idea was that it is Christ
and nature that are entangled. Hopkins said about Whitman, “I always knew
in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other
man’s living. As he is a great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession.”
Hopkins too recognized something wild, elemental, pre-Christian, in Whitman.
And one of the selections:
Thoughts Under An Oak — A Dream
This is the fourth day of a dark northeast storm, wind and rain.
Day before yesterday was my birthday. I have now entered on my 6oth year. Every
day of the storm, protected by overshoes and a waterproof blanket, I regu larly
come down to the pond, and ensconce myself under the lee of the great oak; I
am here now writing these lines. The dark smoke-colored clouds roll in furious
silence athwart the sky; the soft green leaves dangle all round me; the wind
steadily keeps up its hoarse, soothing music over my head — Nature's mighty
whisper. Seated here in solitude I have been musing over my life — connecting
events, dates, as links of a chain, neither sadly nor cheer ily, but somehow,
today here under the oak, in the rain, in an unusually matter-of-fact spirit.
But my great oak— sturdy, vital, green —five feet thick at the butt;
I sit a great deal near or under him. Then the tulip tree near by— the
Apollo of the woods — tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy, inimitable
in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the beauteous, vital, leafy
creature could walk, if it only would. (I had a sort of dream-trance the other
day, in which I saw my favorite trees step out and promenade up, down and around,
very curiously — with a whisper from one, leaning down as he passed me,
"We do all this on the present occasion, exceptionally, just for you.")
— Walt Whitman, "Specimen Days"
Our Favorite Excerpts from Whitman Books
rom SONG OF MYSELF
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close bare-bosom’d night – press close magnetic nourishing
night!
Night of south winds – night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night – mad naked summer night.
Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset – earth of mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow’d earth – rich apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.
Lake Meditation EARTH, MY LIKENESS
Earth, my likeness,
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth,
For an athlete is enamor’d of me, and I of him,
But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligible to burst
forth,
I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.
As I lay with Head in your Lap, Camerado.
As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume — what I said to you in the open air I
resume:
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;)
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had
all accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities,
nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me;
And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;
...Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge
you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated
I will not be a great philosopher, and found any school... But I will take
each man and woman of you to the window... and my left arm shall hook you round
the waist, and my right shall point you to the endless and beginningless road.
... Not I — not God — can travel this road for you....
(from Walt Whitman’s Notebooks)
from SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
Afoot and lighthearted,
I take to the open road
healthy, free, the world before me
The long brown path before me
leading wherever I choose
Good fortune, I myself and good fortune.
So I whimper no more, postpone no more,
need nothing.
Done with indoor complaints, libraries
querulous criticisms, strong and content
I travel the open road
...My call is the call to battle
I nourish active rebellion
he going with me must go well-armed.
...Comarado, I give you my hand,
I give you my love,
More precious than money,
I give you myself
before preaching and law.
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other for as long as we live?
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d
from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,...
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body,
or any part of it,...
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
— from Song of Myself
The world is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first,
nature is incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on,
there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine beings
more beautiful than words can tell.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the
journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a
grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the
highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn
the parlors of heaven
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts
to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head
surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger
sextillions of infidels.
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass
I
sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And disrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.'
Dear comerado! I confess I have urged you
onward with me, and still urge you, without
the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly
quell'd and defeated.
— Leaves of Grass
.
the
journey-work of the stars,
