Natural Whitman

Printer, teacher, journalist, editor, Walt Whitman is known as one of the most important American poets of the nineteenth century. He was born in Long Island on May 31^st, 1819. As an American writer he had one unique characteristic of his poetry. Whitman made the decision to use free verse in his poetry which relied on the rhythms of American speech (Allen). He published his first version of “Leaves of Grass” in 1855. As a result, multiple versions of the text were published over his lifespan (Allen). During his life time, Whitman took part in the Civil War as a nurse for the army and was also a correspondent for the New York Times. “Leaves of Grass” was not his only famous poetry he is also famous for “O Captain! My Captain!” which he wrote in 1866. Before his death in 1892, Whitman produced his final “Deathbed Edition” of “Leaves of Grass” (Allen).

Whitman’s poetry is traditionally centered on ideas of democracy, equality, and brotherhood. Whitman also created the theory of nature which explains a sense of unity between the body and soul. That “the idea that no matter how poorly you're feeling or how bad your day has been, just take a walk in the cleansing air and enjoy nature in its element. After that, you can't possibly continue to be down and depressed...the energy of nature will uplift you like a pep rally for your soul” (Kepner 179-183). Diane Kepner reveals that “Whitman thinks we cannot ignore either the body or the soul in the search for what is permanent and changeless about ourselves” (Kepner 179-183). For Whitman, spiritual communion depends on physical contact, or at least proximity. The body is the vessel that enables the soul to experience the world.

From the first couple of lines in section 6 of Songs of Myself, “A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;” (Whitman 27). The bunches of grass in the child’s hands, Kepner and Albert Gelpi share, becomes a symbol of the regeneration in nature. Gelpi considers Whitman as able to see the grass as the recapitulation of the whole cycle of life, death and rebirth. It is the symbol of the individual, of reproduction, of the new social order of American democracy, of death, and of the new form in which death transforms life (Gelpi 153-216). Both Kepner and Gelpi confirm Whitman’s statement that what is natural cannot be avoided and that we all have something to learn from nature because we belong to it. Subsequently, Whitman reveals that he is both in and of the world, that he has fully immersed himself in nature and therefore understands the world and himself because of it.

Allen, Gay Wilson. The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman. New York: Macmillan, 1955. Reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Gelpi, Albert. The Tenth Muse--The Psyche of the American Poet. Cambridge: Harvard, 1975.

Kepner, Diane "From Spears to Leaves: Walt Whitman's Theory of Nature in "Song of Myself." American Literature 51.2 (1979): 179. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2009.