Martin Tupper

Martin Tupper was an English poet and writer best-known (favorably or unfavorably) for his Proverbial Philosopy. Apparently the book achieved, at first, no success either in Great Britian or across the Atlantic in America. However, it soon became something of a sensation in both countries, selling more than 30,000 copies—unparalled at the time. With sections on life, authorship, mystery, yesterday, flame, things, neglect, honesty—to name only a handful—the book takes a swing, often a weak one, at everything under the sun.

Tupper’s unrhymed prose lines bear close resemblance to Whitman’s, and indeed, the two were often compared to each other. Tupper was considered to be Whitman’s precursor with regards to prose poetry, and the latter undoubtedly admired Proverbial Philosopy. Writing in the Brookyln Daily Eagle, he spoke of Tupper as “one of the rare men of the time.” Tupper’s popularity in mass culture was likely another reason, beyond stylistic admiration, why Whitman took notice of the British poet. Additionally, an 1852 edition of Proverbial Philosophy that came out of Boston supposedly had a “fancy red binding with gold-leaf vegetation on the cover and a gilt design on the spine” (Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America) which probably influenced the design of Leaves of Grass three years later.

“Heed not him, but hear his words, and care not whence they come

..........................................

Let us walk together as friends in the shaded paths of meditation”

These lines from the prefatory poem in Poverbial Philosopy, elaborating on the role of the poet, strike me as sounding very close to Whitman’s notion of the role of the poet.

Drink, Smoke, and Insure Your Life with Walt Whitman

Following Whitman’s death in 1892, a slew of industries used the poet’s image and legacy for a number of different products and advertising campaigns. Whitman had become ubiquitous in the American consciousness, and the lords of industry (cigar makers, insurance dealers, hotel owners, etc.) banked on this to different degrees of success. Often the product or campaign had very little to do with Whitman the poet. It was more often about Whitman the celebrity, the personality. “Given the poet’s notoriety (both in his own time and in continuing controversies about his work and its meaning in the twentieth century),” writes Donald D. Kummings in A Companion to Walt Whitman, “it is intriguing that advertisers blithely used Whitman as an innocuous famous figure.  The Whitman represented is the writer who will unsettle the fewest possible people in the marketplace.”

In 1962, Old Crow Whiskey released this glossy advertisement, one that many people likely stumbled on in the pages of Life Magazine. Here, Whitman looks like a cleanly Santa Clause in a fashionable little library. Pictures of himself (oddly) appear on the book shelf. He looks up glitteringly into the eyes of this domestic maid (indeed, he even has a bell on his desk to, presumably, call her), holding what might be a poem (written for her?) as she brings him a whiskey glass. Apparently, a bottle of Old Crow was sent to Whitman by an admirer, Francis Wilson, and the advertisement has capitalized on this story. Of course, we know that Whitman was not a drinker of Old Crow or any other whiskey. He was, to my knowledge, opposed to drink for the better part of his life. Old Crow, knowingly or unknowingly, neglected this fact. This is not Whitman at all. But such advertising campaigns were rarely about Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman cigars, developed in the 1890s by Frank J. Hartmann, made slightly more sense, I suppose, than Old Crow using the poet’s image and legacy. The box had Walt Whitman’s face on the front. Interestingly, compared to the Old Crow ad, Whitman is represented as more of a backwoods figure. He’s iconized, but not necesarily as a man of letters. The slight background pictured is an outdoors scene. In 1901, the cigars were sold as “Whit Whitman Cigars: A Poetic Comfort.” It’s been suggested that the reason for Hartmann applying the Whitman image to his cigars had to do with his active involvement in unions. Whitman’s poems were often handed out to workers, so this is a possibility.

One of the most weird and fascinating advertisement I have seen comes from 1952 by the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company. At the top of the ad, Whitman (deeply) saunters over this hillside, intoxicated, relishing the air and what have you. Under the illustration is what is ostensibly a meditation on Whitman, which asks “What’s a poet good for?” It includes biographical information, mention of Leaves of Grass, and how “he showed us that America itself is the greater poem to be written and each of us is its poet, adding our verse to the big book that never ends.” To be quite honest, the advertisement is pretty enthralling. There’s not one mention of life insurance, and yet, one walks away from the advertisement thinking life insurance from the John Hancock Mutual Life Company is reliable and, most importantly, American.

 What one gathers from these advertisements is that Whitman had different associations in the American consciousness, and industries could tweak each association for their own purposes. Old Crow turned Whitman into a tasteful man of letters to show how sophisticated and historic their whiskey is. By comparison, the Whitman of Whitman Cigars is represented rather like a frontiersman or explorer; while the Whitman of John Hancock Life Insurance is, more than anything else, depicted as a patriot, a true-blue American. Whitman's multi-faceted character, the fact that he embodied and represented many things to many different people, made his image perfect for businesses to exploit. Any industry at all could turn the poet into their poster boy.

Reviewing the Reviewer

I have chosen three essays from three different countries: the United States, Canada, and Ireland. I do wish I knew more about the journals and papers where these reviews appeared, because it would seem that their respective audiences would be the real determining factor for either severly condemning these “raving of a drunkard” or celebrating them.

What I find particularly interesting about each of the reviews, especially the more unfavorable ones, is how hypocrtical they are. They lambaste Whitman, this “nameless bard” according to The New York Daily Tribune, for what they describe as “ravings” “full of egotism,” but the reviews themselves are malicious, egotistical rants. The supioriety that each of the writers conveys, their self-righteousness, is absurd. Moreoever, one can gather just how undemocratic and oppresive the cultures are that these writers come from (as though loafing in the grass were a crime, as though a lack of meter suggested a lack of morality).  Whitman wasn’t merely attacking the opression that prevailed in conventional poetry, but the oppresive culture that created such poetry. Leaves of Grass acts almost like a manifesto in this respect, one that is calling for real American democracy and the end to the tyranny wielded by religious groups, the upper classes, high culture, pseduo-moralists, and others.  

Something else that’s interesting is the reasons these reviews give for detesting Leaves of Grass, are the very reasons why the book is brilliant: “His words might have passed between Adam and Eve in Paradise, before the want of fig-leaves brought no shame; but they are quite out of place amid the decorum of modern society” (New York Daily Tribune). What? Who wouldn’t be dying to know the words passed between Adam and Even in Paradise before the “fig-leaves,” or what the nature of those words were? I think it’s a true and lovely description of Leaves of Grass, only the metaphor is invoked here to suggest something abhorrent. But he’s more or less saying that Whitman has brought to life that moment in Paradise before shame, and that simply wonderful. “Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex. Without shame the woman I like knows and avows her” (Children of Adam).

What speaks to how radical Whitman was for the time is the great difficulty that the reviewers actually have as they try to write about Leaves of Grass. They aren’t really sure what passages to quote, they cannot find representative passages (probably because they do not know what it represents, but also because it’s impossible to sum up the immensity of the book with a few lines). The reviewers, especially D.W. for the Canadian Journal, ultimately ends up placing the decision on the reader, more or less undecided himself: “And so we leave the reader to his own judgment, between the old-world stickler for authority, precedent, and poetical respectability, and the new-world contemner of all authorities, laws, and respectabilities whatsoever.” D.W.’s review similarly demonstrates that Leaves of Grass was pushing people to reconsider their ideas about poetry, and about culture.

A-well-a, everybody's heard about the bird

In his entry entitled “Bird and Birds and Birds,” Whitman writes about the numberless species of birds that he’s been seeing all April. “Such oceans, such successions of them,” he writes. He goes on to catalog them all—Black Birds, Woodpeckers, Quails, Turkey-Buzzards, Cuckoos, Owls, Cat-Birds. The list is extensive. It's really intriguing since we see so many catalogs in  “Song of Myself” and elsewhere in Leaves of Grass. It seems to have been something that he did quite naturally; a kind of pastime. He undoubtedly would have been able to refer back to such catalogs as well in the event that a poem needed a list.

Frances Wright & Whitman

Born in Dundee, Scotland, Frances Wright became a prominent feminist, abolitionist, and liberal crusader of the 19^th Century. After traveling to the United States in 1818, Wright published Views of Society and Manners in America, a critique and celebration of American society that garnered praise from people like Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay, much like Alexis de Tocqueville’s later Democracy in America. After becoming an American citizen, Wright formed a utopian community, called Nashoba, where slaves Wright had purchased and liberated worked alongside white volunteers. The community turned out to be a failure. Wright became a public speaker, arguing for free love, birth control, equal rights for women, and separation of church and state. Among her critics, she was known as “The Great Red Harlot.”

Wright enchanted Whitman. Even as a small boy, he would have been familiar with Wright’s periodical The Free Inquirer, which his liberal father subscribed to. Perhaps as early as the age of ten, he saw her speak in New York. He later described her as “a woman of the noblest make-up” and “a most maligned, lied-about character—one of the best in history though also the least understood.” Whitman was a big fan of her A Few Days in Athens, a factually inaccurate book about the philosopher Epicurus. John W. McDonald states that, in her book, Wright made Epicurus into a determinist, and that this possibly led to Whitman’s interest in determinist philosophy and “the inevibility of all things.”

Song for Occupations: Revising Revisions

I. Initial Reaction to “Song for Occupations” (1855)

In “Song for Occupations,” Whitman immediately takes up where he left off in “Song of Myself.” Once again there’s that call for physical and spiritual union, and Whitman continues to make the case that his poems are essentially each and every one of us--that he is not “the head teacher or charitable proprietor or wise statesman.” He's talking again about the uniformity of experience, the democratic nature of his identity. It does seems to differ from “Song of Myself” in that Whitman addresses the reader far more directly. He broaches us with question after question:

“Why what have you thought of yourself?

Is it you then that thought yourself less?

Is it you that thought the President greater than you? or the rich better off than          you? or the educated wiser than you?

The urgency and sheer number of these questions show that Whitman is crushing the barriers set up between poet and reader to an even greater extent than he did in “Song of Myself.” It’s almost as if he  expects us to answer. It’s rather galvanizing in that way. The other effect it has is didactic, for he’s laying it all out for us without abstractions or innuendo. He’s taking a very no-nonsense approach in the poem to tell us what he has to tell us.

Interesting lines abound in the poem. The following passage for instance:

The sum of all known value and respect I add up in you whoever you are;

The President is up there in the White House for you . . . . it is not you who are          here for him,

The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you . . . . not you here for them,

The Congress convenes every December for you,

Laws, courts, the forming of states, the charters of cities, the going and coming of          commerce and mails are all for you.

Here Whitman likens American institutions (Congress, the White House, etc) to his poetry, reiterating the importance of the individual, the worker, and we the readers. Like American institutions, the ultimate purpose of Leaves of Grass is to benefit us. Without us the poetry is useless, as useless as a government without a people to serve.

II. Alterations Made to “Song for the Occupations” in Later Editions.

In 1856, the poem became “Poem of the Daily Work of The Workmen and Workwomen of These States.” We see that the same stylistic changes have been made  that were made to “Song of Myself.” In the 1860 edition, the poem becomes part of the “Chants Democratic” sequence, and so, clearly, has been given less indiviual significance. (However, it does keep its place toward the beginning of Leaves of Grass.) Here, the poem been altered in such a way as to sound more like a chant. Exclamations such as “American Masses!” and “Workmen and Workwomen!” have been added to make it sound like Whitman is directing a rally.

In the 1871-72 edition, the poem becomes “Carol of Occupations” and appears in the middle of Leaves of Grass. The poem has been drastically revamped in this version. Lines have been reorganized or removed completely, and certainly some of the oomph has been lost in the process of these alterations. Most significantly, perhaps, the ending that appeared in the 1855 edition has been cut:

When the psalm sings instead of the singer,

When the script preaches instead of the preacher,

When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting          desk,

When the sacred vessels or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate          as effectually as the young silversmiths or bakers, or the masons in their          overalls,

When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince,

When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter,

When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions,

I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and          women.

 However, in the 1881 edition, many of these changes were scraped. The poem, now back to “A Song for Occupations,” looks more like the original  that first appeared in 1855. The stylistic changes have been revised, so that the lines are long again. Also, the original ending has been revived, and the sections have become longer. By the time we get to the 1881-92 edition, Whitman seems to have more or less satisfied himself with this version. 

It's worth noting how the poem changed from a "song" to a "chant" to a "carol" and then back to a "song." Each of those has its own associations. We typically associate a chant to a rallying crowd, and a carol of course has its religious connotations. There's something about a song that, I think, is useful to Whitman--it suggests music, something universal and something that's valuable in itself. Chanting and caroling have  specific functions for specific people. There's also something about a song that has more appeal to the masses. And  songs themselves are diverse--there's drinking songs, working songs and so forth.

Original Hipsters

The Bowery B’hoy, a phrase coined in the 1840s, referred to the young men who belonged to New York City’s most delirious, drunk, and carnivalesque quarter, dubbed the Bowery. The neighborhood was infamous as the poor man’s section of the city—or the working-class quarter—and was known for its notorious bar scene, lurid lights, eclectic street vendors, and street performers (among them, apparently, an Englishman who could slip swords down his throat). Bowery B’hoys dressed sharply—oiled hair, silk hat, upturned collar, boots—and had a peculiar “swing” in their gate. They disdained everything bourgeois (they never dressed too sharply), possessed a sense of adventure, and took great pride in their independence. They embodied the neighborhood, and it became part of their identity. 

It comes as no surprise that Walt Whitman was infatuated with the Bowery—its bustling energy, night life and diversity would have been a constant source of fascination to him. He said that the neighborhood had “the most heterogeneous melange of any street in the city: stores of all kinds and people of all kinds are to be met with every forty rods.” Much like Whitman’s interest in the American Museum, Whitman found in the Bowery oddness, a misfit character, and a medley of social classes coalescing in the streets and bars. And like how we can think of Leaves of Grass as like the American Museum, so we can think it as like the Bowery. Indeed Whitman has been referred to as the “Bowery B’hoy of literature.”