Walt Whitman, America's Captain of Poetry

Oddly enough, my first introduction into the world of Walt Whitman was when I was a young child watching the family TV show Full House. If you watched the show, you may remember that Uncle Jesse, played by John Stamos, was a high school dropout. In the classic TV show way of doing things, he went back to school, proving that all dreams can come true, you can have second chances, yada yada yada.

Anyway, his first day back, he reads the first line of "Oh Captain, My Captain" in front of the same English teacher that made him feel stupid so many years ago. When the teacher asks what it means, Jesse says it's about a ship captain. Of course, the poem is actually about Abraham Lincoln. While I didn't know much about poetry at the time, I did recognize that a poem contains much more than the words on the page.

Years later, my husband gave me the deathbed edition of Walt Whitman's famous book, Leaves of Grass. Whitman is his favorite poet. At the time, I didn't have a favorite. After reading the book, I did.

Walt Whitman's way of capturing the world was full of meaning but relatable. I admire his abandonment of the structured verse in poetry. At the time, free verse poetry was not highly regarded, but most modern day mainstream poetry no longer rhymes. By certain readers and critics, his work was viewed negatively because of his focus on nature and the world around us. However, many successful modern poems are flooded with images from nature. It goes to show that a person's ideas aren't necessarily bad just because they're different. Someone just has to pave the way.

Another element found in Whitman's poetry is, as he described, "…personal…In my poems, all revolves around, concentrates, and radiates from myself." (Leaves of Grass, vii) His personal nature, opening everything to the audience, allows the reader to feel like the central character in any of Whitman's poems. The theme could be Lincoln's assassination or accepting oneself, but this personal nature and lack of pretentiousness lend to deeply meaningful experiences with his poetry if the reader is willing to be free, to feel, rather than to worry or to think.

I believe his greatest contribution to society, not just poetry, is that happiness and meaning are not derived from what is expected or what meets a certain structure. He was the person viewed as the first true American poet, the first to share an American voice rather than a rehashing of what European poets conveyed. Some of Whitman's most famous poems are "Song of Myself" and "Oh Captain, My Captain."

I hold a deep belief in the power of spoken and written words, and even though poetry is often written off as too cheesy, contrived, or irrelevant, there is a poem out there for every person. Whether it speaks to a person's past, pain, sympathies, sexual orientation, first dog, mother's cancer, or wedding day, someone over time has had the ability to reach everyone (if everyone would only take the time to look). Whitman's work is no exception. His way of writing about death conveyed acceptance and warmth rather than fear or mourning. His way of expressing a sense of self wasn't righteous or self serving, just of acceptance.

Walt Whitman was born in New York in 1819. He was known as a freethinker, a trait he may have earned from his father. Over the years, he held many different positions and was fired from a few for the "immoral" words in his book and his freethinking political beliefs. As anyone who writes or thinks that way could tell you, I imagine that was a compliment. Whitman's themes were bold for the times, but for the every person. One of his most successful traits is that his poetry is still relatable over 100 years after the final publication of Leaves of Grass.

While his work was said to have gained slow speed with readers, many of the day's famous authors and poets took interest. People from the likes of Mark Twain to Oscar Wilde even helped him financially as he found himself in a difficult time after suffering a stroke.

Of course, I had my own playful take on the "Oh Captain, My Captain" theme once in a poem I called, "Oh Thesis, My Thesis." It can be viewed here.