Walt Whitman (Lives & Legacies (Oxford)) Review

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Walt Whitman (Lives & Legacies (Oxford)) ReviewThis year, 2005, marks the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", the most influential work of poetry yet written in the United States. The event has been appropriately marked by new editions of Whitman, new studies, and by many conferences and celebrations to explore Whitman's legacy.
But the most fitting way to celebrate Whitman is to read or to reread him. David Reynolds's short biography, "Walt Whitman" (2005) breaks no new ground about its subject. Instead, in 154 pages it introduces the reader to the main facts of Whitman's life and to the many themes that appear in his poetry and prose works. It is a good introduction for those readers wishing some background before beginning a study of Whitman. David Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. This book is largely a distillation of Professor Reynolds's longer study "Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography" (1995).
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) had little formal education. He held a variety of jobs as a newspaper editor and writer before publishing his masterpiece, the first edition of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855. This work set forth a vision of a United States based upon pluralism, egalitarianism, a kind of secularized and ecumenical mysticism, and acceptance of one's sexuality that many readers, myself included, still find deeply inspiring. Whitman largely fulfilled the goal he set himself of setting forth the ideals of the United States in poetic form. The free verse he developed in "Leaves of Grass" changed dramatically the structure and technique of subsequent poetry.
Professor Reynolds's study opens with a brief chapter on Whitman's life. The remaining six chapters of the book discuss themes and influences important to Whitman and to the understanding of his work. Professor Reynolds offers vivid but brief pictures of the New York City of Whitman's day, of Whitman's interest in oratory, the theater, and music, both popular and classical. Professor Reynolds describes Whitman's interest in the new medium of photography and in art. There is a discussion of Whitman's religious and philosophical views and of his dream of a secular, ecumenical, yet personal faith. We see Whitman's interests in phrenology, spiritualism, and, later in life, in the religions of the East. There is a chapter on Whitman's attitudes towards sexuality -- a subject much explored which receives only a limited treatment here -- and a chapter on Whitman's reverence for Lincoln and on his services during the Civil War as a nurse. The themes of each chapter are illustrated with appropriate short quotations from Whitman's prose and poetry.
I think Whitman's importance lies in his poetic expression of the democratic ideal, his commitment to nonsectarian religion, and to his recognition of the force of sexuality in human life which, interestingly, Whitman thought formed one of the bases of democracy. The Nobel-Prize winning author J.M. Coetzee has recently written that "the most attractive feature of Whitman's dreamed-of United States is that it does not demand of its citizens the sublimation of eros in the interest of the state." (New York Review, September 22, 2005, p. 22) Reynolds's book will introduce the reader to these aspects of Whitman's work.
Reynolds's book will have served its purpose if in encourages readers to visit or revisit Whitman. For those readers wanting to do so, I recommend the outstanding edition of Whitman's poetry and major prose works in the Library of America series.
Robin Friedman
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