Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
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Delphine Rumeau. <i>Comrade Whitman: From Russian to Internationalist Icon</i>.
Full text linkReview of Delphine Rumeau. Comrade Whitman: From Russian to Internationalist Icon. Academic Studies Press, 2024. 376 pp
Dara Barnat. <i>Walt Whitman and the Making of Jewish American Poetry</i>.
Full text linkReview of Dara Barnat. Walt Whitman and the Making of Jewish American Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2023. 202 pp
“But if I could see your face – if I could hear your voice!”: A Neglected Case of Transatlantic Whitman-Worship
No full textThe Walt Whitman Archive contains a rarely discussed letter to Whitman written in 1888 from the little-known British poet Charles William Dalmon (1862-1938). It opens the door to a neglected case of late nineteenth century transatlantic Whitman-worship by an unusual, if not unique, literary disciple. Dalmon’s identification with Whitman was literary, political, and homoerotic, comparable to the cases of more prominent middle- and upper-class British and Irish contemporaries such as Roden Noel, John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, and Oscar Wilde. Dalmon is set apart, however, by his thoroughly working-class background. The article discusses the contents of the 1888 letter in the light of what is currently known of Dalmon’s biography, focusing on his efforts to enter London’s literary and artistic milieu in the late 1880s-early 1890s. It shows how Dalmon’s response to Whitman arose from a wholly different set of socio-economic circumstances and with a correspondingly different set of priorities to those of his Whitmanite peers. The article also considers the ostensive products of Dalmon’s Whitman-worship, two poems published in his debut verse collection, Minutiae (1892): “The Good Grey Poet”, purportedly written at the time of the letter to Whitman; and “Walt Whitman is Dead!” evidently written soon after Whitman’s death in March 1892. The poems are revealed as the work of a rare Whitmanite responding to the intersecting political and homoerotic themes in Leaves of Grass as one of the working-class “comrades” to whom Whitman’s poetry is addressed
Allen Crawford Image Gallery
Full text linkA gallery of images from Allen Crawford's Whitman Illuminated Collection, courtesy of Cataloging, Metadata, & Digitization and Special Collections and Archives, University of Iowa Libraries
Filaments of Word and Image: A Fragmented Reflection on Allen Crawford’s <i>Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself</i>
Full text linkA fragmented reflection on the engagement with and teaching of Allen Crawford’s Whitman Illuminated. Necessarily so. As Whitman stated, "There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth." If I were to set forth a reflection upon the Earth, it would involve a series of fragmented glimpses from the atom (and smaller) all the way up. That is, I’d attend to several parts pointing toward their relationship to the whole. The challenge, of course, is that every part is its own universe unto itself; one could spend a lifetime and never move from the atom to the molecule. A reflection on Allen Crawford's Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself is an equally daunting task. Every detail of every illumination is its own part. Often, these parts correspond to phrases from Whitman's poem in surprising ways. And as each phrase, word, and sound from Whitman is its own universe, the complexity of relationships compound with a vertiginous velocity. And so, with every figure and passage I include in this reflection, I provide discussion, but 22 years of teaching has shown me that the discussion is woefully incomplete. I have spent over an hour with students their corresponding text, not unlike a cellular biologist who spends just as much time exploring the mitochondria with students. Here, I deemed it best to include multiple illuminations to better give a sense of the whole. Concerning wholes, the parts of this reflection cohere toward what Whitman may have meant by "original energy," toward Eros, and toward the poiesis of the ever reaching tirelessly spinning words and images launched forth by Whitman and Crawford
F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp. <i>Divine Style: Walt Whitman and the King James Bible</i>.
Full text linkReview of F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp. Divine Style: Walt Whitman and the King James Bible. Cambridge, U.K.: Open Book Publishers, 2024. xxiii + 386 pp. Available to read and download online at openbookpublishers.com
Christopher Sten and Tyler Hoffman, eds. “<em>This Mighty Convulsion”: Whitman and Melville Write the Civil War</em>
No full textReview of Christopher Sten and Tyler Hoffman, eds. “This Mighty Convulsion”: Whitman and Melville Write the Civil War. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019. 264 pp
Postscripts from Whitman: On the Queer Affordances of Paratexts
No full textThis essay examines Walt Whitman’s distinctive use of postscripts, a genre that virtually no critical work has focused on at length. Despite and because of their relatively subordinate and surreptitious position within their respective texts, postscripts–along with similarly “subterranean” paratextual genres such as footnotes–harbor unique rhetorical and generic affordances. I argue that Whitman and a variety of other nineteenth-century authors who would today be read as queer often turned to these seemingly minor and marginal spaces in order to express, conceal, and interrogate aspects of their sexual identities. For instance, postscripts afforded their authors an air of nonchalance and spontaneity that made it possible to smuggle in material that might otherwise fall outside the norms of nineteenth-century correspondence. Further, the addition of postscripts and other surrounding materials created a kind of prolonging or dilating effect, whereby writer and reader could linger over the sensuous materiality of the letter’s “body,” as a kind of stand-in for the beloved’s body. Finally, the unusually intimate and immediate space of the postscript provided an important stage for performances of “closetedness” and “coming out”–even if such performances were at times only legible to queer audiences. In emphasizing the rhetorical and aesthetic work performed by paratextuality, I follow the lead of recent scholarship in media studies, where critics have shown how paratexts can function as literally “marginal” spaces in which to present, perform, and protect marginalized or otherwise silenced identities. The essay’s first section situates Whitman's “philosophy of correspondence” both within and against the literary and sexual norms of “the postal age,” demonstrating along the way how postscripts by Melville, Poe, Lincoln, and Dickinson similarly challenged normative epistolary conventions. The second section analyzes Whitman's postscripts in depth, considering correspondence he exchanged with Anne Gilchrist, John Addington Symonds, and a variety of the poet’s young lovers. Engaging in detailed discussion of Whitman's poetry and recent Whitman scholarship throughout, the essay ultimately argues for the distinctive role that postscripts play within nineteenth-century archives in general and Whiman’s queer archive in particular
Walt Whitman on Fire: Brian Selznick's <i>Live Oak, With Moss</i>.
No full textReview of Brian Selznick's Live Oak, With Moss. Abrams ComicArts, 2019. 192 pp
Whitman in Art: The Case of Paul Peter Piech
Full text linkOver thirty years ago, I readily accepted an invitation from Paul Piech (1920-1996)and duly made my way to a small bungalow on an estate on the outskirts of Porthcawl. His interest in Whitman, he explained, dated all the way back to his youth, and originally owed something to the fact that he himself was not only a New Yorker but a Brooklyn boy, whose working-class background chimed with that of Whitman, as did the values he had imbibed from that background broadly correspond to those he felt he encountered in the poet’s work. As an artist, his specialty was linocuts and, realizing that 1992 would mark the centenary of Whitman’s death, he was engaged in an ambitious project to produce a series of images to mark that occasion. Since Piech’s aims as an artist were, like Whitman’s, crusading ones, his only concern was that his images reach as wide an audience as possible, so that they could do their work. To this end, he insisted that should his prints be framed, those should be cheap to maximize circulation. When I happened to mention I was due to return to Harvard as Visiting Professor in the autumn of 1991, his eyes immediately lit up. “I’ll give you a set of my Whitman prints for distribution over there,” he exclaimed. “But what should I charge for them?” I cautiously asked. “Nothing,” he replied. “Just give them to the kids.” He was as good as his word. When I did duly arrive in Harvard, I found a generous selection of his prints awaiting me—sent entirely at his own expense. And give them to the kids of course I did, little realizing that some of Piech’s prints were so highly valued that they were held at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The eminent Victoria and Albert Museum in London owns 2,000 of his prints and in 2016 it published a fascinating monograph of him. Today a print fetches some $600: Paul Piech would be at once amused and appalled