Marsh John - In Walt We Trust : How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself

In Walt We Trust

How a Queer Socialist Poet Can
Save America from Itself

JOHN MARSH

Copyright 2015 by John Marsh

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marsh, John, 1975

In Walt We Trust : How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself

/ John Marsh.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58367-475-8 (hardback)

1. Whitman, Walt, 18191892Appreciation. 2. Whitman, Walt, 18191892Influence. 3. Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) 4. Conduct of life in literature. I. Title.

PS3231.M186 2015

811.3dc23

2014050291

Monthly Review Press

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5 4 3 2 1

2. Walt Whitmans Credit Report Looks Even
Worse than Yours

TO NORA FITZGERALD MARSH

Thanks to John Christman, Melissa Flashman,
Chad Lavin, Carole Marsh, Mike Marsh, Benjamin
Schreier, Erica Stevens, Michael Yates, and most of all
to Debra Hawhee, still my first reader, best reader.

Depending on how you count, Walt Whitman published six or seven editions of Leaves of Grass, making additions, deletions, and changes along the way, rarely for the better. These multiple editions make citing poems more difficult than usual. Unless noted, I cite the text of the poem as it originally appeared. I also retain Whitmans original punctuation, including his various forms of ellipses, which should not be read to indicate omitted text. With one or two exceptions, I give the title that Whitman ultimately bestowed on the poems, and by which they became known. For example, when discussing Song of Myself, I cite the original 1855 version of the poem, and I refer to the poem as Song of Myself, even though Whitman only gave it that title in the 188182 edition. Similarly, I cite the 1856 version of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the edition in which it first appeared, even though Whitman gave it that title in the 1860 edition. In the 1856 edition, it appeared as Sun-Down Poem.

In general, I have relied on two collections of Whitmans poems: The Library of Americas Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, which reprints the original 1855 Leaves of Grass, the 189192 deathbed edition, and the 1892 Complete Prose Works; and Gary Schmidgalls Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 18551892, which reprints most of the poems as they originally appeared in the various editions. References are always to page numbers.

Is he beloved long and long after he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middleaged and the old think of him?

WALT WHITMAN, Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855)

On the night of July 15, 1979, Jimmy Carter sat down in the Oval Office, stared soulfully into the television camera, and delivered one of the most honest, passionate, and imprudent speeches in American history. Carter began by outlining the problems Americans currently faced: an economic recession, spiraling inflation, unemployment, and, most urgently, energy shortages and gas lines. He argued, however, that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper. Sounding more like an existential philosopher than a president, Carter observed that Americans had more and more doubts about the meaning of their lives, and less and less faith in a unity of purpose for the nation. What ailed America, he said, was a crisis of confidence, a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.

Carter sympathized with ordinary Americans in their moment of crisis, but he did not let them off the hook. In the most controversial part of his speech, he charged that in a nation that was proud of hard work, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.

Although Carter never used the word, newspapers quickly dubbed the whole effort his malaise speech.

Perhaps. Today, though, Carters speech seems more relevantand neededthan ever, especially as the United States suffers from another crisis of confidence and wallows in another bout of malaise. We do not have gas lines or rampant inflation, but otherwise America circa 2015 looks a lot like America circa 1979. Then, as now, the United States wanders in the shadow of an economic recession. Then, as now, Americans have lost faith in their government. True, unlike then, we do not face an immediate energy crisis, but we do face an even graver long-term one in global warming. And if Carter thought that Americans in 1979 worshipped self-indulgence and consumption, what might he make of our bookmarked pornography sites, our McMansions, or Black Friday, the annual holy day we set aside for shopping?

When it comes to malaise, that vague awareness of moral and social decline, the 1970s have nothing on us.

I know because I had been given a fair share of it myself. From the outside, I could not look more content: good job, happy marriage, adorable daughter, even a loyal dog. All was not well, though, despite the outward prosperity. I had reservations about having a child, which never entirely went away despite the fact that our daughter grew more lovely and cheerful nearly every day of her life. I also doubted whether my professionteaching college students literaturedid anyone any good, or if it was not, as our campus and our culture seemed to insist more and more, and louder and louder, a frivolous, luxurious diversion, like sailing or chamber music, that an austere, hardheaded nation could no longer afford. After all, if it could not get you a job, or grow the economy, what good was it?

Worse, in my late twenties, I started getting relentless, disabling headaches. They would linger for days at a time, occasionally for a week or longer, pounding away at my temples and leaving the left side of my face numb. As I aged into my thirties, the headaches came more often. They consumed my life. I spent most of my time trying to get rid of them, and the rest of my time monitoring myself for new ones. The daily medication I took, a generic antidepressant, did little for the headaches but, on the bright side, did give me horror-show nightmares. And because even a whiff of alcohol would bring on a headache, I gave up drinking, which probably did me good in the long run, given how much I drank and how much comfort I found in it, but now in the short term left me dreadfully sober.

None of these maladies compares with losing a job, losing a loved one, or losing your healthalthough the headaches felt like a serious enough attack on the country of my health. But together these woes often made daily life seem more like a chore than a blessing. When my neurologist looked me in the eyes and asked me if I had thoughts of suicide, I lied and said no.

Less personally, and in Carters terms, I suffered from fully-grown doubts, not just growing doubts, about the meaning of life and the purpose of our country.

As for our country, its purpose seemed to be to make a handful of people fabulously wealthy while locking everyone else into a life of economic insecurity. In the wake of the recession of 2008, unemployment reached levels not seen since the Great Depression, and more children lived in poverty than had in generations. Yet little was done, or even proposed, to repair either of these quiet disasters, except to wait and hope, and so, Meanwhile, our president, who had campaigned the first time around on hope and the second time around on being the lesser of two evils, had mostly disappointed, not least because (to those of us on the political left, anyway) one of our two major political parties had been captured by reactionaries who wanted to turn the clock back to the 1950s, except when it came to taxes and the safety net, when only the 1890s would do.