Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to
shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the
heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half
an hour high;
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others
will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling
back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

- from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”

What is most intriguing about Walt Whitman is that he could see us, the generations after him. America was still a young nation in his lifetime, with no literary tradition of its own.Whitman believed in the poet as prophet, seer and a voice of the people. He saw that America had no such voice and took it upon himself to be that poet.

I speak the password primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
Through me may long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseased and despairing and of thieves ad dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deformed, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veiled and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

-From “Song of Myself”

Whitman is inclusive, not leaving anyone of any race, gender or sexual orientation out. Many historians believe that Whitman himself was homosexual or bisexual. Oscar Wilde once visited Whitman, later writing to a friend that Whitman was indeed a homosexual(like Wilde himself) “I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips,” he gushed.

Whitman was self-educated, self-confident and free-spirited. The American Experience documentary (aired on PBS), discusses his career as a newspaperman. He fought with his editors and couldn’t be kept under control. He would be sent to cover a story and ended up elsewhere. The city drew him, he was an obsessive people watcher. He adored New York, not seeing the dirt and crowds but only the people rushing around him.

Whitman’s poetry is often overtly sexual. He was not shy about discussing the body-it is one of his favorite topics. “I believe in the flesh and the appetites,’ he wrote. He uses the human body as a metaphor for the group of people moving together to form unions.

A woman’s Body at auction!
She too is not only herself–she is the teeming mother of mothers;
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the
mothers.

Have you ever loved the Body of a woman? 120
Have you ever loved the Body of a man?
Your father–where is your father?
Your mother–is she living? have you been much with her? and has she
been much with you?
–Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all, in all
nations and times, all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man, is the token of manhood untainted;
And in man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibered body, is beautiful
as the most beautiful face.

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

- From “I Sing the Body Electric”

The Civil War effected Whitman’s life heavily. Whitman was a patriotic Yankee. He didn’t belive in slavery, but he didn’t believe in abolitionism either. He became an army nurse, after traveling South to look for his brother, a soldier in the Union. Often, he would see Abraham Lincoln riding his horse to work at the White House. He admired him immensely. Upon Lincoln’s assassination, he penned “O Captain!My Captain!” and allegorical poem in which Lincoln is the captain and America is the ship:

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up–for you the flag is flung–for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths–for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

For more Walt Whitman poems:

• www.poemhunter.com
• www.poets.org
• For documentaries about Whitman:
• www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/whitman/program/ (American Experience. Not suitable for kids but really, really good!)
• http://learner.org/resources/series164.html