WALT WHITMAN

 

WALT WHITMAN

          If you ask me who was Walt Whitman, you will find me short of words.  I will say that he was an American poet and essayist (1819 – 1892).  But I won’t be able to tell you the type of poet he was.  Was he a classical or romantic poet , or was he a realist or transcendentalist. His poetry does not accept a standard title.  It is something unique. We should be thankful to him that he has described himself as a poet in the following words.

            “I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,

            The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me.

            The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new    tongue.       

             I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,

And I say it is great to be a woman as to be a man,

And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.”

 

            How to classify a poet of this self-description? Impossible! Enough to say he is a great poet, a poet of the whole world and of all mankind.  He is not a poet who writes simple poems. He is one who writes the soul of everything that is poetic.

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G.R.Kanwal

2^nd November 2023