Uncle Walt Keeps Yawping

Wherever I turn these days, I bump into Walt Whitman. He lent me a line for a poetry anthology I edited, where I invoked his lilac metaphor, concluding, “Every leaf a miracle.” My son, on the hunt for a classic, asked for a copy of “Leaves of Grass,” Whitman’s slender opus of purely American Romanticism. Now John Marsh suggests Whitman can also save me from what ails me. In fact, Marsh believes Whitman might save us all. "In Walt We Trust,” Marsh trades on many of Whitman’s poems to explain, “how a queer socialist poet can save America from itself.” While the subtitle might strike some readers as hyperbole, in four slim chapters, with a couple brief interludes, Marsh details how Whitman and his poetry provide insight for rethinking death, debt, the decline of democracy, and more. “The result is a mix of biography, literary criticism, manifesto, and…self-help,” Marsh says in his introduction. Associate professor of English at Penn State, Marsh admits his treatise springs from “relentless, disabling headaches” that first afflicted him in his late twenties, indicating “fully-grown doubts, not just growing doubts, about the meaning of life and the purpose of our country.” While others “may quit their jobs, have an affair, or medicate,” at the onset of pain, Marsh instead drove to Camden, New Jersey, because he became convinced that Whitman, “the greatest poet America ever had…is the cure for what ails us.” On the existential worry of death, Marsh explains, “Few remember (Whitman) as a poet of death.” For Marsh, however, “death is (Whitman’s) great theme, though he treats it unlike any poet then or since.” Using “Leaves of Grass,” first issued in 1855, and other poems, Marsh explains how rather than nosedive into despair at the eventuality, “Whitman suggests that if you could see what he sees and experiences, these shared visions and experiences would reveal the hidden scheme of the universe.” In “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” from 1856, Whitman explains he is a part of the “’simple, compact, well-joined scheme,’” but more importantly, Marsh contends, asserts we are all part of this universal scheme, as we too “’shall cross from shore to shore years hence.’” On wealth and democracy, Whitman is equally worthy of our attention. In “A Song for Occupations,” the poet explains “the role of economics in our lives,” wondering, “’Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would/that satisfy you?’” His point of course is “money and property…are a dead end.” Democracy, however, is not a dead end, as Whitman explains we must move “toward affection, toward friendship, toward a nation founded on care.” Simple solutions cannot eradicate existential crises. But “In Walt We Trust,” John Marsh offers a clever examination of how America’s most notable poet might offer solace. Good Reading. www.monthlyreview.org