Twenty-one years ago I visited Walt Whitman’s home with my sister. He had lived in New Jersey, and we visited his house there, which has been preserved, and walked where he had spent time strolling and writing. It was a blessed connection for me.
Whitman is America’s first Transcendental poet, whose embrace of life heralded a new age of awareness and connection. Allen Ginsberg, a modern disciple of Whitman, often signed his book “Howl” with the message, “Remember the Future”. In 1855 Whitman’s prophetic voice celebrated an existential egalitarianism, echoing our own contemporary milieu. A society without slavery and oppression, where the arts and sciences elevate us to embrace the miraculous in the commonplace.
A one world sensibility, present in the humble field mouse, or the pelican, or leaves of grass.
“Even one atom of mine shall in turn belong to you.”
Within Whitman’s pages I hear a cognition that everything with appearance possesses consciousness. Within his ecstatic, cataloguing lines is testament to silence, to listening deeply, and to presence, hearing all that is around us.
Coming of age in Missouri, I found his embrace of the land profoundly moving, as I too connected to silence and sentience within the fields, streams and forests. I was much happier among the Redwings and the Red Tail than among people then. But as with Walter, as a young man I found myself helping others through nursing while I was finding my own voice.
Whitman’s compassion served him, but with a profound burden within the heavy days of the Civil War. Years after visiting his tomb, I found myself living among that divisive war’s lingering energies while in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Those days remain for me some of my most difficult, but they were also rich with healing.
Whitman was a printer as well as a writer and editor. He designed and set some of the type in the 1855 edition himself. I learned the basics of letterpress in college, and my first job was working in a print house that set hot lead type. Every time I reach into a California Job Box in my studio, I am reminded of the sights, sounds, and scents of the steam rolling out of the corner where the Linotype assembled the freshly melted and reformed lead into lines. Today in my studio, letter by letter, my words slowly take their silent form as they are embossed into clay.
Wherever we are, there is silence. Become truly present, without expectations. Ingest, absorb, and transform what is within and around you. Reflect presence, become dreams.
Dream the world you wish for everyone.
Thank You, Walter for your presence in mine.
Do you see me, Walter…?
this wind in pages,
telling of the moon
.
.
Below is a video recording on wax cylinder from 1890 from Walt Whitman reading “America”. This recording and many others of poets reading their work is available on:
“Poetry on Record”, 98 Poets Read Their Work, 1888-2006, Compiled and Produced by Rebekah Presson Mosby. Shoutfactory.com 2006
Transcript: “America” /Center of equal daughters, equal sons /All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old, / Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich / Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love
Copyright 2015 Harry D. Hudson
