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Walt Whitmen

Walt Whitmen

John Bell
Mrs. Taylor
English 2
May 30, 2000
All Alone
Walter Whitman was an American poet of the 1800�s.
Walt was arguably one of America�s influential and
innovative poets of his time. Whitman began work as a
printer and journalist in the New York City area. He wrote
articles on politics, civics, and the arts. During the
Civil War, Whitman was a volunteer assistant in the military
hospitals in Washington, D.C. After the war, he worked in
several government departments until he suffered a stroke in
1873. He spent the rest of his life in Camden, N.J., where
he continues to write poems and articles. Leaves of Grass,
a book of poems Whitman began in 1848 was so unusual at the
time that no publisher would publish it. In 1855, he
published it himself. Between 1855 and his death, Whitman
published several revised and enlarged editions of his book.
Walt sent a copy of the book to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
Ralph would send the poet an enthusiastic letter which he
hailed him �at the beginning of a great career�(Whitman
732). Walt believed that Leaves of Grass had grown with his
own intellectual development. Calamus, a section of poems
in Leaves of Grass is a section talking about love and
friendship. Poems in Calamus have been put in and taken out
through the years with the revisions of the book. Two poems
that can be found in Calamus today are �I Saw in Louisiana a
Live-Oak Growing� and �To a Stranger.� These two poems have
not been Calamus together since the beginning of the book,
but now they are together and very similar.
Since love and friendship are two major aspects that
Whitman was looking for in life. He wrote many poems on
those topics alone. Calamus is group of poems that explain
love and friendship. �I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak
Growing� and �To a Stranger� are two poems that explain his
loneliness and his wanting of a companion. Whitman uses
people and objects to symbolize his thoughts and feelings.
Calamus is a series of letters written during the years
1868 to 1880 by Whitman to a young Civil War companion,
Peter Doyle, the unsophisticated Washington horsecar
conductor. The letters have been published under the
appropriate title Calamus, as they constitute a record of
precisely the kind of relationship Whitman meant to describe
by that title. � The terms of endearment Whitman uses in
these letters are lavish and suggest metaphorically the
character of the emotion motivating his attachment� (Allen
25). It is difficult to challenge the purity and
spirituality of the feelings Whitman and Doyle had for each
other. Many cant figure out what was between them. �There
can be no doubt that these feelings transcend those usual to
friends or companions of the same sex� (Allen 25). Whitman
was a homosexual and many of his poems relate to manly
love. �To the serious reader of Calamus, the �manly love�
that recurs both as a term and as an idea is of such genuine
poetic complexity as to render it a good deal more than
�abnormal� and considerably less than �deficient��(Canby
124). The poems also show the friendship of men and women
through his life.
Calamus is a section that has changed along with the
revisions of the book. The poems came and gone with how
Walt felt each poem held up in each section. � No section
in Leaves of Grass has received so much close attention and
been the center of so much discussion and controversy as
Calamus� (Bliss 288). Whitman�s own saintlike, spiritual
life shows as proof that the poems could not be unwholesome.
�William Sloane Kennedy calls Calamus, �Whitman�s beautiful
democratic poems of friendship� (Bliss 288). The purity,
innocence, and spirituality of the Calamus concept cannot be
missed. The idea in not original with Whitman. As he
states, � the Calamus idea was expressed by all mankind�s
saviors and has frequently been expressed by the term
�brotherly love��(Bliss 289).
In the early stages of Calamus poems there were twelve
in number and had as their title and unifying symbol, �Live
Oak with Moss.� �I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing� was
one of the first twelve, �To a Stranger� didn�t come till
later. �This twelve poem series is am artistically complete
story of attachment, crisis, and renunciation and was
motivated by some specific emotional experience� (Bliss
293). Through time some of the poems would leave the
section and lines would be changed in some. Contrary to
frequent implications by Whitman�s critics, his revisions of
Calamus over a period of some thirty years do not reveal
that he was trying to cover up or change the original
character of the group of poems. The 1860 version of
Calamus had forty-five poems, by the time of Whitman�s last
edition, it had been reduced to thirty-nine.
�I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing� was one of the
first poems that Whitman put into Calamus. It took Walt two
months in New Orleans in the spring of 1848 to write this
poem. This poem was originally intended as the key poem of
Calamus. In 1860 this poem was place number twenty of the
Calamus poems. This poem is about Walt himself. �The
Live-Oak poem evidently originated in some private
experiences that happened to Whitman� (Allen & Davis 178).
Whitman�s loneliness mad him feel wanted and needed. �But I
wonder�d how it could utter joyous leaves all its life
without friend or lover near, for I knew I could not�
(Whitman 126). Whitman thought that if he was going to do
something great that he couldn�t do it alone. He feels that
if he doesn�t have a friend of lover near, the will be
nothing that will drive him to success.
The tree in �I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing� was
alone with no other tree to be next to.

�Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous
leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of
myself� (Whitman 126).

Whitman felt that he was alone in the world just like the
tree was standing with no companion near to grow with.
Whitman was alone during this time of his work. If Walt was
not in this setting of mood, there are many who believe that
Whitman would have been able to write such poetry. Walt
being alone kept him from being happy, although this
motivated Whitman to express his thoughts and feelings in to
what he wrote. Also the look of the tree being rude,
unbending, and lusty was how Whitman felt how he looked and
how he was.
This poem is also about the love that Walt Whitman
wanted in his life. Whitman felt alone without a lover
near.

And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves
upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight of
my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear
friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of
them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think
of manly love� (Whitman 126-127).

The twig from which Whitman broke off the tree, is the
object that represents Walt. He relates the moss in this to
be a lover. I lover that he has not found in life yet. He
believes that the moss being twined around the twig proves
that the twig and the moss are strong together. This
represents the love that Walt needs in his life. �The poet
believes the expression of his emotions of �manly love� to
be as rudimentary and natural as growing vegetation� (Allen
& Davis 184). To Whitman and the romanticist �natural�
means �good.�
As Whitman looks at the tree, he realizes that the tree
is wonderful tree with nothing around it. �For all that,
and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary
in a wide flat space� (Whitman 127). The tree has made
itself great with no support or help around it, which Walt
feels that he can not do at all. �Uttering joyous leaves
all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well
I could not� (Whitman 127). The tree �uttering joyous
leaves� is like Whitman writing great poems, which Walt
feels he can not do without the help of friends. He repeats
this line again at the end because he knows that there is no
way he can make it without a friend or lover.
�To a Stranger� is a poem in Calamus just like �I Saw
in Louisiana.� The poem started out being titled �A Passing
Stranger,� but in 1867 the poem was put into Calamus with
its present title. It placed number twenty-two of the
Calamus poems. Unlike other poems, this poem was not
revised or moved around. This poem is different from �I Saw
in Louisiana,� because there are no objects in the poem that
Whitman uses to represent his feelings. On the other hand
he uses strangers he sees to show how there can be people
you relate with all around you and you don�t even know it.
�We are all strangers on earth� (Schyberg 291). Whitman
feels that this is true. Whitman says, �an accidental
meeting is a reunion from the era of stars� (Schyberg 291).
In this poem Whitman sees strangers and wonders if they
can be something he was looking for.

�Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look
upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it
comes to me as of a dream,)� (Whitman 127).

Whitman thinks of the stranger as someone he was seeking in
life that could be a friend to him or even a lover. When he
sees the stranger thinks of it as a dream, because he
doesn�t know if that is who he is seeking. Whitman not
wanting to be alone, is constantly looking for another
companion along the way.
As Whitman sees these stranger, he thinks of what
similarities that he could possibly have with these
strangers.

�I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall�d as we flit by each other, fluid,
affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with
me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become
not yours only nor left my body mine only,� (Whitman
127).

Whitman thinks of the good times that he has had, and if the
stranger has had good times just as he did. Walt thinks
about himself growing up, and if the stranger went through
some of the same things that he went through as a child.
Whitman thinks of stranger even after the stranger is long
gone. �I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when
I sit alone or wake at night alone� (Whitman 127). Even
though Walt does not speak to the stranger he thinks about
he or she when he is alone. Whitman does not want to lose
the stranger that he has seen.

�I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you� (Whitman
127).

Whitman wants to be with this stranger sometime in the
future. But to Whitman, being with the stranger could be
how they were before they met. He can still grow up with
the stranger as a friend and eat and sleep with the
stranger, but it doesn�t mean they will be together
throughout life. Whitman doesn�t want to lose the stranger
because he or she could be a good companion to him.
�I Saw in Louisiana� and �To a Stranger� give good
examples on how Whitman puts his life into his writing.
Love and companionship are to major aspects that Walt
Whitman needed in his life. Without those two things,
Whitman felt that he could not produce good poems or even
have a good life. The poems in Calamus are some of the best
poems that show Whitman�s true feeling of his friends and
lovers. Many don�t even understand how Whitman felt. John
Burroughs say, �Whitman is so hard to grasp, to put in a
statement. One cannot get to the bottom of him, he is
bottomed in Nature, in democracy, in science in personality�
(Loving 1).