I Sit and Look Out

In 1848, Whitman attended a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The event galvanized Whitman’s energy, marking his shift from journalist to poet as he aimed to become the new kind of poet for which Emerson called:

Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet unsung (Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Poet.” American Transcendentalism Web, 1999, 2002).

Emerson wanted a new kind of American poet, one who could sing the particular idioms and experiences of the American continent and live up to the great beauty and potential of America. Whitman was eager to fulfill the role of this kind of American bard.

After paying for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Whitman sent Emerson a copy. Emerson wrote a letter back, praising Whitman’s efforts. Whitman used this letter to market subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass without Emerson’s permission to use the letter. But it seems as if Emerson forgave Whitman for the unauthorized use, for he continued to support Whitman’s efforts; later, he and Henry David Thoreau, the leaders of the Transcendentalist movement, a uniquely American offshoot of Romanticism that emphasized the following of “transcendent forms” of truth and the discarding of the dying forms of artifice, would both visit Whitman to learn more about the man behind such innovative, uniquely American lines.

But most of the American literary community disapproved; Whitman was seen as “obscene,” and there were many calls for censorship. Emerson suggested that Whitman delete some of his controversial poems dealing with sexuality so he could gain more acceptance, but Whitman refused, convinced that the importance of his work was due to the way he embraced all aspects of life, including sexuality. Still, Whitman sought readership and even wrote very favorable, anonymous reviews of his own works, but acceptance eluded him. In the Preface to Leaves of Grass, Whitman states that “[t]he proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he absorbs it” (Updike, John. “Walt Whitman: Ego and Art.” The New York Review, 9 Feb. 1978). He was aware, however, that he was not “absorbed” by the country he so loved. This personal frustration may explain some of the pessimism and disillusion in some of the poems in the 1860 edition.

While critical reception began to shift in Whitman’s later years, it was not until after Whitman’s death that Whitman started to enter the literary canon; many Modernist writers felt their connection to the lines of Whitman rather than the more conventional 19th-century poets such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and the other “Fireside Poets,” who were more popular in Whitman’s day. Today, Whitman is often recognized as the father of American poetry, and Leaves of Grass is often seen as the first American epic.