In Walt We Trust reviewed on Truthout

Radical Walt! (Whitman, That Is)

In Walt We Trust, By John Marsh, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015, 229pp, $25

It is always a bit of a surprise when Americans learn that a poet or any writer taught in basic literature classes was terribly radical, perhaps suspect in the day for dangerous ideas or behavior and, in some ways or at least among some audiences, barely acceptable even now. Walt Whitman’s homosexuality, pretty much undisclosed to the public for generations, has become since the 1960s the subversive side of Walt’s reputation, and for good reasons. His same-sex imagery is pretty clear as well as brilliantly poetic in his writings and assorted wonderful anecdotes (like his possible interlude with a visiting Oscar Wilde) seem to confirm suspicions. Never mind that the term “homosexual” was not used in his lifetime; gender relations were so differently configured that he could kiss, cuddle and such without the conclusions that later generations drew for themselves and others.

That Walt was still more radical has been known to insiders since the intimate young friend in Walt’s last years, later ardent Philadelphia socialist Horace Traubel, convened an annual Walt Whitman Fellowship event with notables that included socialist champion Eugene V. Debs. Traubel’s Conservator magazine, a literary weekly of politics and culture, brimmed full with the same message, including Traubel’s own Whitmanesque poetry. In the time between the last publication of Leaves of Grass during Walt’s days, and his sweeping recognition as a modern poet, Traubel and his circle had done much to keep the Whitman legend alive.

In Walt We Trust is a sprightly, extended essay or first-person peroration by a young lit prof who felt a ton of frustration and heartache, or at least headache (self-medicating with alcohol, he tells us), and in despair, threw himself at Whitmania. That is, the poetry, the life, the setting and the aura. The project was obviously successful and not only because of the resulting book. He feels, he insists, better about life, death and even sex – the trifecta that pretty much wraps up human earthly possibilities. But he had to take a gloomy field trip to Camden, New Jersey, to get his mind in place…

Read the entire review in Truthout