life of walt whitman
TRANSCRIPT
8/6/2019 Life of Walt Whitman
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/life-of-walt-whitman 1/7
I. (Childhood)
Little Walt Whitman loped down the patchy green hill
And splashed into the Huntington River,Whipping water onto littler Andrew,
Running high-kneed as the submerged pebblesScratch and bruise the soles of his young feet.
Walt! Andrew! George! Thomas!
Mother Elizabeth stands at the crest of the hill,Her head swimming with pacifism, silent meditation,
But only for a moment.Then her head dreads the western world
Over the horizon; Brooklyn,
And an eternal escape from poor business sense.That Walter Sr. has not an inch of it.
Her arms severely crossed,She stomps toward the cramped family home,Where little Walts trunk is ready.
Little Walt lifts it with both hands,It barely clears the ground,
And he hands it to his father
To load into the carriage.
Soon they have no home,Only rooms where their entrance
Is preparation for exit.
Each room appears identicalWalter Sr.s face grows heavier
With each passing day;
He loves mankind too much,Has too much feeling for his fellow,
And is therefore a damn fool,And righteous all the same.
But what good is righteousness,
Especially today? So says mother ElizabethAs she stands before Walt,
Who sits cross-legged before the lit stove.
So it is time for you to work.Schooling is at an end.
So says mother Elizabeth.
II. (The Working Word)
The Long Island Patriot.
Typesetter, printers devil.
8/6/2019 Life of Walt Whitman
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/life-of-walt-whitman 2/7
Walt walks home with ink staining
His fingers, his face, smeared on his forehead,Thin cuts on his fingertips.
Words, black wet words fill his head every day,Burn themselves into his retina.
He is in Brooklyn.Printers devil.
The fumes of the ink
Make his eyes itch,And rashes develop on his thin wrists.
Walt walks home by a different routeEvery day; greasy, ripped bills
Bulging from his back pocket.
He is in the library, listening to the debates,
Flying spittle and men red in the face.He runs his hands over the pages as he reads,Feeling the raised ink like Braille.
The Brooklyn Eagle.
The Huntington Report.
The Brooklyn Dial.The New Orleans Crescent,
Though the heavy swamps do not suit him.But Manhattan beckons, the azure nights
On the bayou a splash of the foreign,
And a shock to the system.
III. (Sentimental bits)
The seamstress Mrs. Josephs daughter
Mary gave birth to a baby boy this past Sunday,Which they promptly named Ezekiel,
After the Hebrew prophet.
Mr. Harold Smith, proprietor of the Dekalb Grocery,
Was wed to Mrs. Angelica Cranford,
Daughter of Mr. John Cranford, the Jackson Street cobbler,In a ceremony at the New York Protestant Church.
Mr. Walt Hackford, tailor, fifty-seven years old,
Passed away this previous Friday night
When he was run down by a two-horse carriagePiloted by an unknown gentlemen.
8/6/2019 Life of Walt Whitman
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/life-of-walt-whitman 3/7
IV. (A mystery)
Who is Walt Whitman, our Walt Whitman?
I do not see him, or who I think is him, in this printers devil,This hack beat journalist.
What propelled the birth of his keen eye?His insatiable hunger for specimens of a peculiarly human nature?His ever-expanding hubris?
Was it acquired one foggy day, or had it been molting
In the great pressure of his chest for thirty-one years,To come bursting into the winter air
Fully grown, and racing against the dropping dusk light?And from what overturned stone?
V. (The Daily Mirror)
By Anonymous:Lo! The gulls circle overhead on a lark.Lo! The blades of grass sway in the autumnal breeze.
Lo! The oysters hide themselves in the mud.Lo! Tis an ode to Olde Huntington.
VI. (Upon Return)
Its the streets that are pregnant with inspiration,Not the mechanical whirr of the printing press.
The dandy is dead, he says,
Find me the cloth of the wanderer.
Walts head dips below the fold of The Poet ,
Where is that American voice?When will these young United States
Leave behind lyric European romance?This is not a land of cultivated beauty,
This is a rough land that rushes headlong
Into the blinding fog of the future,With tireless work ethic, with unique resolve.
Where is its great bard?
VII. (The Countess of Rudolstadt)
I tie my books, my quill, my gold-adorned Bible,
In cloth on a study walking stick,
And I walk the countryside a wandering bard,Preaching the eternal church of Humanity.
8/6/2019 Life of Walt Whitman
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/life-of-walt-whitman 4/7
VIII. (The Bohemian)
How long did it take to position that black hat just so?
His gripped fist rests, presses on his hips,His collar opens on an undershirt,
Drops over his belt,His head tilts to the side,Curious, but his eyes are confident,
And his bearded mouth purses downward.
There is the man,The young American lion.
Walt stalks the streets, hitching rides in carriages,
His hair always flowing back and forth in the breeze,
A leather-bound journal resting on his lap as he sits,Or tucked under his arm as he walks.
The name appears in journals, publications: Walt Whitman,Which rolls effortlessly off the tongue.He is a member of the vanguard,
Thumbing through Byron, Wordsworth,Coleridges forgotten dreams;
All mannered, all delivered with the sweep of an open palm,
All beautiful, for their rainy English days.
Walt writes poetry for the bohemian publications,But who knows where they are now?
Walt knows the printing press, the type setter;Oily ink is still a familiar sensation.
IX. (A Possibility)
Every day is experience I file away, to later recall the smells and the air.Every experience I make a part of my electric being.
Every man on the street is a poem.
Now I begin to write.
X. (Another Possibility)
The world looks new today.
Mannahatta beckons to me,Having no song to speak of.
I am no longer a man of the world,
Blind to its machinations.Now I must write.
8/6/2019 Life of Walt Whitman
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/life-of-walt-whitman 5/7
XI. (Leaves of Grass)
Walt stands over the press, a whale-oil lamp by his side,
His back hunching over the type-set letters.Its a cold night, and coldness seeps through the walls,
But still a bead of sweat rolls down his forehead.One by one.Now it is a word.
Now it is a poem.
Now it is a book.He stands on the corner of Pearl Street,
Gripping the stiff manuscript.Some are sold for a few cents,
Some are sent to magazines.
And one finds its way to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Everything is within my scope.To catalogue the Earth is to own the Earth,And I cease to write, but Sing.
To Sing of history, and history in the making.Songs are about common people.
Songs are about common people, and about me.
Walt unfurls the letter.
His eyes scan up and down;Theres the signature.
He begins to read.
His eyes dart from left to right,Incomparable thingssaid Incomparably well.
Immediate, and new.
His heart aflame, heSets the letter down
And climbs into his cot.His mouth feels sticky, and dry.
The afternoon drapes heavily around his chest.
He falls asleep, and awakes to a changed world.The stretched fabric of the bed feels smoother.
The setting sun fades blood-red, less purple.
The waters of the Hudson capture new shadows.
XII. (Assassination)
A great commotion,
He leaps onto the stage (Crack),And limps onto the sawdust street.
Limbs moving in every direction,
8/6/2019 Life of Walt Whitman
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/life-of-walt-whitman 6/7
8/6/2019 Life of Walt Whitman
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/life-of-walt-whitman 7/7
Yet who in deed rode the waves of change,
Was all too aware of their ubiquity.And he was us,
The prism through which all points of light pass.