I Hear America Singing

By Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, 
                                                                Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe 
                                               and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off 
 work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck- 
                                      hand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing 
                                         as he stands,

The woodcutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, 
                                        or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young 
                                          fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Walt Whitman grew up in Brooklyn then later Long Island with his eight siblings. His early work in the printing industry fed him his love for written word. He would later teach himself to read. Walt worked first at a printer, then as a teacher, which he would do until he became a full-time journalist at age 22. He founded Long-Islander, a weekly newspaper, and worked as an editor to other New York City area papers until he moved to New Orleans in 1848 to edit their paper, The Crescent. There he was first exposed to slavery, which influenced his later writing. He released Leaves of Grass in 1855, initially with twelve poems, although throughout his life, Whitman would release several more editions of the book. “I Hear America Singing” was released as poem 20 in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Here, perhaps in reaction to the Civil War, Whitman is reminding the country that despite fundamental differences, we are still a country united; an important concept to remember in what can be a polarizing time of elections.

Value is subjective. Without readers, a poem is worthless. In this sense, the value of art is analogous to the value of our world. Without those who experience it, our world may as well not exist.

Given such a nebulous hypothesis, what value do we assign to a work of art? An old English teacher of mine once spoke the phrase, “Poetry is what you bring to it, and what it brings to you.” I couldn’t agree more. As we read (or observe, in the case of Rembrandt) all of our experience, knowledge, and spirituality becomes intertwined with the artwork. Any given word will produce a different set of thoughts, emotions, and images in each reader. What is discouraging to one reader is inspiring to another. There just as much tragedy in decay as there is beauty.

This is the power of art—it creates whole new worlds for each individual. But beyond that, it maps out the elaborate shape of humanity’s common ground (a shape that is continuously shifting to the tides of culture, and a place that is all too often invisible).  Therefore, we shouldn’t be asking what the objective value of a poem is, but what it is we value in ourselves.

Above all else: when the museum catches fire, get out.

Brendan Galvin and the late George Garrett briefly edited a mischievous journal intended to parody Poetry, A Magazine of Verse.  If memory serves, it was called Poultry, A Magazine of Voice.  Or maybe it was “voyce.”  At any rate, in each issue they awarded a dubious prize to the most confusing poem they’d seen lately, and they conferred upon it the “What Him Say?” award.  (Sounds like Chico Marx.)  More than a few people would love to go through Cummings’ books and ask the question.  However, I think Eslin almost always gives us more help than we see at first.

However, calling so many poems “poem” is not helpful, though when I see it, at least I know it’s not another bill I have to pay, though maybe it is an item on some bill of fare.  And yet, here in our Poem of the Week is another under that title.

Sometimes Cummings (cap or lower case?  I’m never sure how much I want to cooperate.)  strips his language like somebody hand-skinning a limb (“withe,” if you like, something limber) of forsythia, willow, abelia to make a switch.  Here, however, he embellishes,  enumerating and coining toward what is, in fact, a mighty conventional sonnet form.  An amatory sonnet, and once you’re on to that and start imagining some Romeo whispering it, you’re halfway there, but then there’s that internal sonnet machinery of echoes and winks to be fathomed.

When I catch someone writing “timelessness” twice and “time” four times in fourteen lines, I suspect I’m onto something.  I’m assisted by the contrarian turns of “falsely true”  and “undie.”  A little Hardy there.  And “hosts of eternity; not guests of seem”?  A whiff of Emily.  The opening simple question and overwhelming answer put me in mind of Rimbaud’s “Enivrez-vous.”  When he asks what time it is, the French poet says it’s time to be drunk.  (“With wine, with virtue or with poetry, as you will.”)

I am no exigete nor was meant to be, so I need to get out of this, maybe by saying those last three lines contrive a neat, intricate, very conventional claim for the love of the speaker and listener (as well as us eavesdroppers).  What clocks can measure is small change compared to this forever-eternity “children, poets, lovers” run on.  [In my experience, this is the opposite of Irish Time: these three species of beings come early, rather than late.]
Enough, but I would love to see how others parse this, even to see someone go through this piece (originally in Shenandoah in 1962) and follow the strands of negating phrases and deconstructing reversals.  A paraphrase would be a paltry thing, but a diagram, now there’s a project.  By the way, I’m pretty sure Cummings is pretty sure love and its time-twisting are better than a sharp slash with a switch, though to each his own.

Who reads Roethke anymore?  In the late sixties his work was widely loved, and Jim Dickey seemed the heir to Roethke’s great dramatic force and his sense of the non-human living things.  When I decided to feature Dickey’s “Deer Among Cattle” as our first Poem of the Week, I was thinking of the compulsion some poets used to feel to find the wildness in the tamed and the timid in the wild, a diminishing ingredient in our evermore urban and virtual culture.  I’ve held onto this poem (first selected for Shenandoah by Richard Howard, later appearing in JD’s collections Poems: 1957-1967 and Falling, from Wesleyan in ’69), even through the whitetails’ recent and unwelcome ravaging of my wife’s hostas, because I like to remember the quieter side of Dickey, the side he displayed when not playing the ringmaster, jester or Hun.

It’s not a poem that requires epic explanation, but I invite readers to watch the movement of light and sparks across the poem, where brightness is beauty and where it is invasive.  Larry Lieberman once wrote that Dickey was drawn to “spirits in flux,” but here the deer spirit, if I can play the primitive note for a second, is not changing itself so much as offering an alternative which the cattle just aren’t up to, but the narrator might be.  No less wild for being fenced (he — branched forehead identifies the gender — jumped in, he can jump out), the deer in darkness can afford to associate this night with the “bred-for-slaughter,” but before their demise, he’ll have to skedaddle, as the cattle owners would like to put him on their “table,” too.

What I’d really like to hear from readers is what you all make of the prominently placed “searing,” how you think JD believed the deer could “Turn grass into forest,” what the full import of “foreclosed” might be and whether you think the narrator, who evidently values the deer’s role in this tableau, can (or believes he can) feel more kinship with the free range deer than the fenced (“paralyzed,” though the word’s modifying of “fence” asks us to be a bit gymnastic) cattle.  (Speaking of gymnastic, my own syntax there leaves me with sore metaphorus maximus muscles.) Does “the only living thing” exclude the narrator because he’s not in the flashlight’s beam?  Does “night of the hammer” mean the night before they’re sledged, or is this actually occurring AFTER the cattle have been, to be arch, “slain”?
It’s a poem which I think invites and will reward a close reading, but I can’t guarantee a full investigation will leave you admiring the craft more that a brisk run-through.  Dickey has in this celebration and lament once again stepped onto risky ground.

On another matter altogether, as we go on-line, we want to game the Google as much as possible, to manage our site so that it will appear as an option for people seeking particular authors, topics, genres, contests and so on that appear on our site.  If you have suggestions, please let me know.  I’ll be your blogger pretty regularly until my interns can step in two or three weeks from now.
Meanwhile, enjoy the site, and please take advantage of the option to comment on posted poems and prose.

Aloha,
Rod Smith