Baptism by Whitman

"...Most of the great poets are impersonal. I am personal...in my poems, all revolves around, concentrates in, radiates from myself. I have but one central figure, the general human personality typified in myself. But my book compels, absolutely necessitates every reader to transpose himself or herself into the central position and become the living fountain, actor, experiencer, himself or herself, of every page, every aspiration, every line."

I copied Walt Whitman's words into my journal from my 1993, Modern Library edition of Leaves of Grass on February 19th, 2001, adding my own commentary: This is why I love Whitman, he writes poetry meant to personally interpreted, to me there is no other way. I think I may have been a romantic era poet in another life, they understand me well, especially Whitman. I had recently procured said edition as a Valentine from my high school sweetheart, who inscribed "O Erin, My Erin, you are simply the most wonderful person I know" on the inside of the front cover. For the three months we had been dating he had heard nothing but Whitman this and Whitman that. I was introduced to the poet by my friend, Jill, and shortly thereafter read "A Noiseless Patient Spider" as an assignment for Mr. Connolly's junior, Advanced Language Arts class.

I poured over my Modern Library edition with the attentiveness of a little boy who had just received a new set of legos. I looked up words I didn't know and picked out favorite poems, reading them aloud to an imaginary audience in the solace of my bedroom. I loved the way the words sounded as they rolled off my tongue:

“Unfix’d yet fix’d
Ever have been, ever shall be and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.”

Mostly, I loved the inclusivity of his language, always "himself or herself," every walk of life was acknowledged and no experience dismissed.

Jill and I began a weekly ritual, we would both pick out a poem to memorize and recite at our usual, Friday night sleepover. We sat on the old navy and green area rug in her basement bedroom with pretzel sticks, carob chips, and some ghastly mixture of clear liquors that we called "vogin" between us.

"Alright," Jill began, "take a shot of this," she poured the mixture into two Dixie cups from next to her bathroom sink.

"A toast," I offer, raising my Dixie cup, "to words, written to be read. And to friends." We clinked cardboard cups and drank the vodka/gin hybrid, wiggling and making faces as we swallowed and then dissolving into giggles over the mischief we had gotten into.

"Okay, okay,” I begin, “this week, for the Jill and Erin Poetry Recital, I have memorized Walt Whitman's "Starting from Paumanok, 19":

O Camerado Close! O you and me at last, and us two only.
O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
O now I triumph- and you shall also;
O hand in hand- O wholesome pleasure-O one more
Desirer and lover!
O to haste firm holding- to haste, haste on with me.

I recited the words of my favorite poem with delight. The romance and excitement I felt at falling in love, with this poem, with the world around me, with my friends and the limitless possibilities that life held. How was he able to describe the ineffable quality of human feeling with human words?

The more I read, the more enamored I became; I even sort of had a crush on him. I imagined that I would meet him in the afterlife and wrote my own poems seeking his approval. Upon reading, "Once I passed Through a Populous City,” I wrote my own version:

To live in this great city
Anonymous to everyone but you
Is the most comfortable dream I’ve ever had

To lie silent with your hand on my stomach
As cars and life pass below
Forgetting time and existence

To open the windows and doors
Bare against the cold, wood floor
Talking about our lives outside this little room.

To let you know me fully
So that I may live without reservation
And be anonymous to everyone but you.

Walt became a giver of sage advice and a role model for broad-mindedness in the Lily-white community I was raised in. I spread the word of Whitman to my artsier friends. Lydia and I read "In Louisiana I Saw a Live Oak Growing" on the roof of her parent’s farm house and I analyzed "To You" with Matt Wilson while waiting in the wings of the high school auditorium at rehearsal for Much Ado About Nothing. Leaves of Grass was a companion reader to my young life, spurring me to see the beauty in my surroundings and to find romance in the most mundane of events. I found the Whitman quote "a mouse is miracle enough to stagger quintillions of infidels," and suddenly the grass became greener, my little sister became cooler, even algebra was interesting on Whitman. He had brought me to the Promised Land; it really was the little things in life after all.

Though my enthusiasm has been tempered, my love of Walt Whitman and the steady ability of Leaves of Grass to impact my life, as I grow older, has remained unchanged. As I read on, new poems strike my fancy and the old favorites have become comforting friends, reminding me to continue finding beauty in the small things and to record my discoveries with as much love as Walt did his own leaves of grass.