Whitman's Poems Create Fire

Walt Whitman's poetry style flouted traditional meter and rhyme and gained him the label, "the father of free verse

Whitman’s Poems Create Fire

Walt Whitman has been the Jesus of poetry. With innovative poems, Whitman revolutionized poetry and spread enriching verses to everyone. His vivid and inspiring writings touched many people’s hearts and gave energy to hopeless souls, and his free verses, which did not obey the conservative rules of poetry, initiated a completely new era of poetry with a looser form and a direct personal voice. Whitman’s poetry has a wide scope: in embracing all of nature, he sometimes expresses his veneration of God, but also portrays the most infinitesimal part of nature. In thinking creatively about Whitman as both an energetic poet and nineteenth century individual, one can imagine similarities between him and a fire hydrant. Just as publishing makes poems easily accessible, fire hydrants make water accessible everywhere in the city. Invented during the nineteenth century, this red-colored fire hydrant is always there to save civilians in emergencies. In brief, Whitman and a fire hydrant share similarities in that they both have saved people, symbolize sexuality, and have endless reservoirs tapped with great spewing force.

Whitman’s poems and fire hydrants imply sexuality. In Whitman’s poems, readers can easily identify themes of sex and sexuality. In Song of Myself, using erotic phrases and tones, Whitman connects bodies with souls and redefines sexual intercourses as a spiritual experience. For instance, Whitman argues that sexuality is a way to directly connect with the world as he writes, “I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked/I am mad for it to be in contact with me." Moreover, in one of his anonymous reviews of his own work, Whitman states: “body, he teaches, is beautiful. Sex is also beautiful. He works the muscles of a male and the teeming fibre of the female throughout his writings, as wholesome realities, impure only by deliberate intention and effort.” In some rare places, some of Whitman’s works explicitly describe sex. In the nineteenth century, lines like these might have been scandalously vivid: “sex contains all, / bodies, souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations... / Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of sex." Furthermore, most readers can easily detect Whitman’s affection towards men because Whitman used his poems as the only way to express his struggles and suffering from the taboos of homosexual love during his oppressively conservative era (Aspiz 10). At a time when many homosexuals gave up on expressing their love toward men, Whitman wrote lines like “You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs! / You twain! and processions moving along the streets! / I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand” (A Leaf for Hand in Hand 5-8). Similarly, and in an obvious way, a fire hydrant suggests sexuality in that its shape resembles a masculine phallic symbol and it sprays water with force.  

Whitman and a fire hydrant share another similarity: life-saving qualities. The fire hydrant was invented to save lives in conflagrations, and Whitman, though not a professional doctor, volunteered extensively to help thousands of wounded soldiers during the Civil War. In 1862, the second year of the Civil War, Whitman saw his brother’s name, George Washington Whitman, in a New York Herald list of wounded soldiers from the war. After learning about his brother’s severe injury during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Whitman strenuously searched for his brother at numerous make-shift hospitals in Virginia. Despite failing to find his brother for several days, Whitman finally reunited with his brother in an Union Army camp at Falmouth, Virginia. After the two weeks that Whitman spent with his brother, Whitman started to shepherd many wounded soldiers from battlefields to the hospitals. He did so throughout most of the Civil War period. Through observing the hospital and listening to soldiers’ stories and emotions, Whitman could gain inspiration and sources for his poems. He told Ralph Waldo Emerson that “I desire and intend to write a little book out of this phase of America, her masculine young manhood, its conduct under most trying of and highest of all exigency, which she, as by lifting a corner in a curtain, has vouchsafed me to see America, already brought to Hospital in her fair youth—brought and deposited here in this great, whited sepulcher of Washington itself." Moreover, readers, through reading his poems, could infer how considerate and humane Whitman was during the violent and unstable period in America. In his wartime poems, by using phrases like “the tearful parting—the mother kisses her son—the son kisses his mother” (Drum-Taps 37) and “the blood of the city up—arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere” (Drum-Taps 34), Whitman sought to inform the readers how tragic and inhumane the Civil War has been, and he urged the public to finish the seemingly endless warfare in this country. Similar to how Whitman cared for the wounded soldiers and tried to disseminate the brutality of the Civil War, fire hydrants have functions of not only saving innocent civilians from large fires, but also of safeguarding the community in times of droughts. Reports have emphasized the importance of having a well-functioning fire hydrant in the community, such as when houses in Montgomery, Alabama, burnt down when the fire hydrant could not supply enough water to extinguish the fire in town. In addition, the community of Spicewood, Texas is trying to install more fire hydrants because people have been fully aware that fire hydrants have saved thousands of lives and properties from burning in wildfires. As a result, fire hydrants and Whitman are comparable to one another because of their life-saving records.

Whitman’s poetry and a fire hydrant share similarities in that they both have endless reservoirs tapped with powerful spewing force. While his contemporaries used traditional poetic rules and banal subjects, including patriotism and slavery during the Civil War, Whitman devised a more flexible style of writing that allowed ordinary individuals to enjoy reading poems without feeling bored and facing difficulties. In addition, Whitman also used diverse themes, varying from religion to politics and sex. Since poems often contained profound and complex message in shorter length than proses, many who were barely literate without receiving proper education avoided reading poems and were not capable of understanding them. However, Whitman’s revolutionary free verses that consist of both impressive expressions and easy format.

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