Plains and Prairie through Whitman’s Eyes
By Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas
Hi, I’m Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas, here for Poets on the Plains. Today, I’m delighted to celebrate the end of the second season of Poets on the Plains and to also celebrate America’s 250th birthday by talking about the 19th century poet Walt Whitman.
The name might be familiar to many from school. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and is often called the father of free verse–meaning he broke his poems out of traditional meter and rhyme. He is best known for his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass. But why talk about him here on Poets on the Plains?
Well, in 1879, Walt Whitman made a trip out West—first to Kansas to attend the quarter-centennial celebration of Kansas settlement–and then across the Rockies. He wrote a great deal on that trip about his love of the landscape. So, I wanted to share what one of our finest poets in America had to say about the plains and poetry in his collection of journals called Specimen Days.
At a large meeting at Topeka, Whitman said:
"My friends, your bills announce me as giving a poem; but I have no poem—have composed none for this occasion. And I can honestly say I am now glad of it. Under these skies resplendent in September beauty—amid the peculiar landscape you are used to, but which is new to me—these interminable and stately prairies—in the freedom and vigor and sane enthusiasm of this perfect western air and autumn sunshine—it seems to me a poem would be almost an impertinence. But if you care to have a word from me, I should speak it about these very prairies; they impress me most, of all the objective shows I see or have seen on this, my first real visit to the West. I have again been most impress'd…with…that vast Something, stretching out on its own unbounded scale, unconfined, which there is in these prairies, combining the real and ideal, and beautiful as dreams.”
And that was not the end of Whitman’s praise of the prairie. Elsewhere he wrote about the plains as art and as a site as worthy of travel as any of the celebrated locations in Europe.
Here’s Whitman again in Specimen Days:
"I wonder indeed if the people of this continental inland West know how much of first-class art they have in these prairies—how original and all your own—how much of the influences of a character for your future humanity, broad, patriotic, heroic and new? how entirely they tally on land the grandeur and superb monotony of the skies of heaven, and the ocean with its waters? how freeing, soothing, nourishing they are to the soul?
“Talk, I say again, of going to Europe, of visiting the ruins of feudal castles, or Coliseum remains, or kings' palaces—when you can come here. The alternations one gets, too; after the Illinois and Kansas prairies of a thousand miles—smooth and easy areas of the corn and wheat of ten million democratic farms in the future——here start up in every conceivable presentation of shape, these non-utilitarian piles, coping the skies, emanating a beauty, terror, power, more than Dante or Angelo ever knew.”
I love that this celebrated poet who saw so much of our country, from his time serving as a nurse in the Civil War to his travels out west to see the spectacular landscapes the continent had to offer remained firm in his love of a good grass. In his journal he returns again to the supremacy of the prairie as the characteristic landscape of America:
“Speaking generally as to the capacity and sure future destiny of that plain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom) it is the inexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef and pork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes—land of ten million virgin farms—to the eye at present wild and unproductive—yet experts say that upon it when irrigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feed the world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling,) while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara falls, the upper Yellowstone and the like, afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the Prairies and the Plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.
Indeed, through the whole of this journey, with all its shows and varieties, what most impress'd me, and will longest remain with me, are these same prairies. Day after day, and night after night, to my eyes, to all my senses—the esthetic one most of all—they silently and broadly unfolded. Even their simplest statistics are sublime.”
Let us go out today and be reminded that this place where we live and love and lose is one of the most sublime spots on Earth. Thank you for being with us to conclude the second season of Poets on the Plains with the 19th century poet Walt Whitman. We look forward to bringing you more poems from the high plains states in Season Three.
I’m Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas coming to you from Manhattan, Kansas, “the Little Apple.”
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Traci Brimhall is the current Poet Laureate of Kansas. She's an avid reader of many genres, but her latest obsession has been reading retellings of Greek myths by authors like Natalie Haynes and Jennifer Saint. Those books help her talk to her 10-year-old son about myths, monsters, and demigods while he reads Percy Jackson. She's a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University and lives in Manhattan, KS.
https://tracibrimhallpoet.com/ . Her books can be ordered at https://tracibrimhallpoet.com/works/ .
