How does Whitman's Leaves of Grass reflect the belief in the United States' need and use for poets?
In Leaves of Grass, especially in “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman becomes a poet who tries to show the United States in all its glory, from the highest to the lowest, embracing all places and people with a true democratic flavor. Let's look at this in more detail.
Take a look at section 10 of “Song of Myself.” The speaker brings us from the mountains to the sea. He is a hunter and a sailor. He writes of a Native American woman and a runaway slave. These are all people of America, and Whitman wants to record their stories and honor them.
Over the next few sections of the poem, Whitman writes about the butcher-boy and the blacksmith, carpenters and children, farmers and lunatics, machinists and hunters. He mentions people of every race, men and women, old and young. He writes of the activities of daily life...
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that these people share and relish and suffer through. These people and these activities, the poet implies, are all important: they are all equal in some way, all part of the human experience, and all part of American life.
Here is democracy in print. Whitman wants to let us know that all people have a voice and a role in their country, even the ones who seem to be at the bottom of society. The United States belongs to all of them, and they are all connected in one great endeavor of nationhood.
How does the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass relate to Whitman's belief that the U.S. needs poets?
"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."
In his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman reflects on the scope for poetry that is inherent in the United States. In so doing, he illustrates the quotation about the US having “veins full of poetical stuff” and needing poets to express it. Let’s look at this in more detail.
Whitman begins the preface by talking about how Americans “have probably the fullest poetical nature.” In fact, he claims that the United States is actually the “greatest poem,” for it has the greatest potential, in its diversity, for beauty and action. There are heroes, beautiful scenes of nature, and plenty of energy to be captured in poetry.
The “genius” of the country, Whitman continues, is not in its government or education or inventions or newspapers. Rather, it is in “the common people.” In these people is the stuff of poetry, for in these people is the soul of the nation.
American poets, then, according to Whitman, must strive to grasp the “old and new” in their country. They must see the traditional and the innovative. They must applaud the common people as they live their common lives yet reach out in trust toward higher goals. Poets should also realize that, while they can and must capture the beauty of the nation in its natural wonders, the common people see this, too, perhaps even more than the poet, for they live within that beauty.
The poet must strive to love the entire “known universe” and present it as well as possible, capturing the spirit of people, nature, events, and emotions, past, present, and future, with “generosity and affection.” Indeed, American poets must be the greatest of poets, for they write about the greatest of nations in all its magnificent diversity.