Bloom, author of "The Western Canon" and one of the world's most renowned literary critics, surveys Walt Whitman's vast poetic work, from early notebook fragments of "Song of Myself" to the late poems of "Good-bye My Fancy."
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Bloom, author of "The Western Canon" and one of the world's most renowned literary critics, surveys Walt Whitman's vast poetic work, from early notebook fragments of "Song of Myself" to the late poems of "Good-bye My Fancy."
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When I learned that the American philosopher Richard Rorty's late work "Achieving Our Country" had praised Walt Whitman (1819 -- 1892) ,his patriotism, and his optimistic vision of America, I had to revisit Whitman. I had earlier been reading and thinking about Rorty.
I found this edition of Whitman's "Selected Poems" chosen and introduced by the noted literary scholar Harold Bloom which was published as an early volume of the American Poets Project series of the Library of America. The LOA has published a large volume of Whitman's poetry and prose as well as a new (April, 2019) book, published to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Whitman's birth, "Walt Whitman Speaks: His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America". The American Poets Project is valuable in its own right as it publishes a broad range of American poetry, much of it by poets less well-known than Whitman, in small, uniform editions so that Americans may learn more about their country's poetry.
The American Poets Project edition of Whitman includes Harold Bloom's introduction to the poet. Bloom has written extensively about Whitman and about many other American poets. More importantly, the book consists of a concise selection of Whitman's best work. Whitman is a poet that will bear a selective reading, especially for busy readers new to his writing or wanting a reminder of what he is about. There is more than enough in this volume for extensive reading and thinking about Whitman. The selections are drawn from Whitman's final "deathbed" 1892 edition of "Leaves of Grass" with the exception of the poem "The Sleepers" which is presented in its early 1855 version.
The volume consists of seven sections. It opens with a short selection of early fragments that Whitman worked into his masterwork, the "Song of Myself". This poem appears in full in its final version in the second section of the book. In itself, it will reward many readings and would be enough, if the poet hadn't written another word, to establish Whitman as the great American poet. The third section of the book includes, five lengthy poems, "The Sleepers", "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", "I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life" and the Elegy to Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". "Brooklyn Ferry" and "Out of the Cradle" have long been my favorite Whitman poems.
The remaining four parts of the book consist of a selection from mostly shorter poems from "Leaves of Grass". Different readers might choose other or additional poems. Bloom includes a large selection of erotic, sexual poems together with some of Whitman's Civil War poetry, and some late, reflective and valedictory works. The poems I like include "The Wound Dresser", "There was a Child Went Forth" and "Good-Bye My Fancy!"
In Section 2 of "Song of Myself", Whitman makes a large promise to his reader:
"Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? Have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left.)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."
At times in reading this volume, I was almost persuaded that Whitman had fulfilled the promise he had made in this passage.
I found that I needed the time and more spent with Whitman. Whitman wrote for himself and for the brawling diverse multitude of America. In a divided, polarized America, Whitman's is a voice we need to recover.
