Bicentennial Birthday

Two hundred years ago today, a son was born to a struggling carpenter living on Long Island. The oldest child in a large family, he was sent to work at an early age in a printing shop. But he longed to write, so he pursued a career in journalism, wandering here and there, keeping his observations in little notebooks he stored in his pockets or travel bag. He wrote about everything and anything: spiders, grass, slavery, working people, ferryboats, the beach, the Gods, the jealous God, the spirit, the soul, the passion of lovers, science, family, politics, war, and this country, America. Eventually he turned all these observations into poetry. And then he became our national poet.

This is the bridge that bears his name today. He would be flabbergasted.

When I despair about this country, when I think it cannot get any worse, I remember that he saw worse. He worked in an Army hospital during the Civil War. He wrote about it, too. And yet he kept his optimism about America, about love, about the soul, and about the body and its place in the world.

I feel his spirit in Camden, the city where he chose to be buried. I stopped to see his tomb today, and it was open.

His work is timeless. If you want to see its latest iteration, try this. It's amazing.

Happy birthday, Walt Whitman! Prop us up here! Keep America singing -- its varied carols, for all of us.


"Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness,

All seems beautiful to me."

--Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"