Without Meeting, They Joined to Celebrate America, Poetically!

SECTION 1:
Among my most-admired American writers are two women, Emily Dickinson and Camille Paglia. I might wax hyperbolic and declare that I am in love with them, and their minds too. A poet and critic, Michael Ryan, suggested that we, especially the admirers of Dickinson, wish we might write real poetry as she had done. She once told her newspaper editor and friend, "If I read a book [,] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way[s] I know it. Is there any other way [?]" (See, "My Favorite Poet: Emily Dickinson," in the sidebar of www.poets.org/Emily Dickinson. See last article by Michael Ryan).

Her "mentors" from whom Dickinson sought feedback, either failed to see her genius or wanted to change her poems too much, so that less than a dozen of her 1775 poems were ever published willinmgly by Dickinson in her lifetime. She did it her way - by including poems in her numerous letters of correspondence. We must begin to speak of Dickinson's poetry by saying, first and foremost, that Dickinson wrote for herself. (Or "her SELF"?) In a way, her contemporary and Civil War journalist, Walt Whitman, also wrote first for himself and only thereafter, for others. But few writers enjoyed the creative act of observing, note-taking and crafting with words as Dickinson seemed to do (and say about poerty), and her rather limited movement outside of her home and church, made writing rather an essential connecting activity for an universal soul. This poem, "A NARROW FELLOW IN THE GRASS," reveals quintessentially Dickinsonian characteristics of style and substance. The poem itself, below, is the version contained in the collection published by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi (COMPLETE POEMS, Boston. 1924).Emily Dickinson (183086). Complete Poems. 1924. Part Two: Nature, XXIV

A NARROW fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb, 5
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn. 10
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,
When, stooping to secure it, 15
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality; 20

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

Dickinson had a respectful, curious, almost transcendental attitude to nature. She did correspond, meet with and debate with Emerson during her lifetime. Although only 20 of her 1775 poems ever received titles during their writing, contemporary critics and readers refer to these poems by first line-titles. The "narrow fellow" in the grass refers to a snake, or several of the kind she encountered through childhood and adulthood in New England. The curious thing is that Dickinson does not use the word "snake" at all. She challenges herself to use words and images so starkly, briliantly and originally, that the reader knows she speaks of wriggling, slithering snakes! The opening lines suggest that this "fellow" is almost like some gentleman, out for his gentlemanly ride across the fields. Note that "ride" may be a double entendre, and some poets/readers have seen allusions to men throughout this poem. I choose to take most of her words as they are in the poems, at face value!

SECTION 2:
Walt Whitman tried to be his homosexual self in nineteenth-century America. Whitman succeeded to a considerable extent, although transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, were turned off by Whitman's unbridled sensuality. His contemporary poet, Emily Dickinson, was not allowed to read much of Whitman, either.

Whitman was happily liberated because America freed him as a person and as a poet. He tried to show gratitude by liberating American poetry from its imitation of European styles and forms.

He was willing to break with conventions (in poetry and in his human needs and sexual preferences) and created a fresh, new poetry for America. Among his notable influences is the Harlem Renaissance writer, Langston Hughes, who publsihed works with titles eerily similar to Whitman's patriotic poems.

In "I Hear America Singing," Whitman celebrates the ordinary song in the sounds and worklife of men and women who labor with their hands, be they carpenters, masons, mothers or seamstresses. This was new in poetry, this was new for America, this was also new for most of the world. Together, Emily Dickinson and Whitman helped write the notes to America's song, and lyrical poetry was born on our own, local and patriotic soil.

Whitman makes a case for those who have been excluded from high poetry and classical writers, especially from the European continent, in "I HEAR AMERICA SINGING." He is acknowledging the ordinary hands - see Line 2, in the poem quoted, below - and also celebrates the strong, beautiful bodies that build and rebuild American every day! Some of the pure sensuousness, the direct physicality of these words and images, both shocked and liberated his audiences.

"I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanicseach 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 boatthe deckhand singing on the steamboat
deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his benchthe hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter's songthe ploughboy's, on his way in the morning, or at the noon
intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the motheror of the young wife at workor of the girl sewing or
washingEach singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the dayAt night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs."

As the poem, above, demonstrates, Whitman does not seem interested in rhyme or form for the sake of form, and other poetic rules and conventions. Yet, in his ordinary, direct American idiom, he is able to capture something others had not - an authentic American voice. His lines are not typical poetry, and may appear to run like regular sentences, but there is no mistaking the big images and metaphors that Whitman deploys in these new, old arts of poetry and music. In Line 10, he uses "delicious singing" to talk of a mother connecting with her child, long before the word "delicious" became overused and trite in our day. Yet his comparison lives today because he elaborated on this word, and like "the girl sewing or washing," the mother's singing reveals what is special, shared and yet will always "belong to her." This is no one else's voice, or expression, or communication.

The last lines turn from day to night, and if somewhat revealingly, Whitman also enjoys the company of men: "their strong, melodious songs."

In this rather short poem, Whitman achieves a place for ordinary men and women who make America the great nation it is, and great as it can always be, when both sexes are celebrated and acknowledged. It is remarkable that "girls" and "mothers" and "working" females are as dominant in this work as are the carpenters, masons and "young fellows, robust, friendly/ Singing with open mouths."

Without Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, we Americans, may still be imitating the Europeans in the wonderful fashion of W.H. Auden, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliott. Is it not wonderful also to have an authentic American voice?