1984 Foreword (Whitman) Tom wanted to be a poet

[Terrance]

 For Walt Whitman ("Do I contradict myself? Very well, I
 contradict myself") it was being large and containing multitudes....

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
                           
                                                    
     The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have
probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are
essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the
largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler
largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that
corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not
merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied
from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently
moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates
heroes
 . Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and
nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the
trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and
groupings and
the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth
and showers its proflic and splendid extravagance. One sees it must
indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be
bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or
the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
                                                                    
     Other states indicate themselves in their deputies 
 but the genius
of the United States is not  best or most in its executives or
legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches
or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors 
 but always most in
the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendship—the
freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of
their carriage 
 their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to
anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the
citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness
of their roused resentment—their curiosity and welcome of novelty—their
self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—the
air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the
presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech—their delight in
music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul

 their good temper and open handedness—the terrible significance of
their elections—the President’s taking off his hat to them, not they to
him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous
treatment worthy of it.
                                                                     
     The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a
corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not
nature nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous
business nor farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal of
man 
 nor suffice the poet. 

                                                                 
The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of
races. of them a  bard is to be commensurate with a people. to him the
other continents arrive as contributions
 he gives them reception for
their sake and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country’s spirit

 he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes.
Mississippi with  annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and
Columbia and Ohio and St. Lawrence with the Falls and beautiful
masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves  more
than they embouchure into him. The blue breadth over the inland sea of
Virginia and Maryland and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine and over
Manhattan Bay and over Champlain and Erie and over Ontario and Huron and
Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and
Cuban seas, and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied
by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above
and below is tallied by him. When the long Atlantic coast stretches
longer and the Pacific coast stretches longer he easily stretches with
them north or south. He spans between them also from east to west and
reflects what is between them. On him rise solid growths that offset the
growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and live oak and locust and
chestnut ...

to him the hereditary countenance descends both mother’s and father’s.
to him enter the essences of the  real things and past and present
events—of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and
mines—the tribes of red aborigines—the weather-beaten vessels entering
new ports or making landings on rocky coasts—the first settlements north
or south—the rapid stature and muscle—the haughty defiance of ’76, and
the war and peace and formation of the constitution 
 the Union always
surrounded by blatherers and always calm and impregnable—the perpetual
coming of immigrants—the wharf-hem’d cities and superior marine—the
unsurveyed interior—the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and
hunters and  trappers 
 the free commerce—the fisheries and whaling and
gold-digging—the endless gestation of new states—the convening of
Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates
and the uttermost parts 
 the noble character of the young mechanics and
of all free American workmen and workwomen 
 the general ardor and
friendliness and enterprise—the perfect equality of the female with the
male 
 the large amativeness—the fluid movement of the population—the
factories and mercantile life and laborsaving machinery—the Yankee
swap—the New York firemen and the target excursion—the Southern
plantation life—the character of the northeast and of the northwest and
southwest—slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it,
and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or
the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease. For such the
expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to
be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes
through these to much more.
   Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their eras and
characters be illustrated and that finish the verse. Not so the great
psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative and has vista. Here
comes one among the well beloved stonecutters and plans with decision
and science and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where
there are now no solid forms.
 
Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most
need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the
greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their  common referee so much as
their poets shall. of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not
in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of
their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good and nothing in its place
is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions
neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the
key. He is the equalizer of his age and land 
 he supplies what wants
supplying and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine out of
him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,  building vast and
populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and
commerce—lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality—federal, state
or municipal government, marriage,  health, freetrade, intertravel by
land and sea 
 nothing too close, nothing too far off 
 the
stars not too far off. In war he is the most deadly force of the war.
Who recruits him recruits horse and foot 
 he fetches parks of artillery
the best that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy
he knows how to arouse it 


 He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a
 helpless thing. As he sees the farthest he has the most faith. His
thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In the talk on the soul
and eternity and God off of his equal plane he is silent.

He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement 
 he
sees eternity in men and  women 
 he does not see men or women as dreams
or dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul 
 it pervades the common
people and preserves them 
 they never give up believing and expecting
and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness
about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the
noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a
great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest  artist

. The power to destroy or remould is freely used by him, but never the
power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose superior
models and prove himself by every step he takes he is not what is
wanted. The presence of the greatest poet conquers 
 not parleying or
struggling or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way see
after him!
   There is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or
exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or color or delusion of hell
or the necessity of hell 
 and no man thenceforward shall be degraded
for ignorance or weakness or
sin.                                                                     
     The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he
breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the
grandeur and life of the universe.

--Preface to Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman (1855)

 "To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow."
 
 "All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means."